Travel and Vacation Tips for Neurodivergent Children

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we are talking about travel with kids, particularly how to make traveling and vacations easier when you have one or more kids with some extra challenges or needs. I often make the distinction for myself as well as for other parents between taking an actual vacation and taking a trip. To me vacations are relaxing, rejuvenating, they are not actually what happens when we take our kids places. Going on trips with kids is a different thing than a vacation. That’s how I think about it for myself. But obviously, these are great opportunities to do things with our kids, and with the summer season coming up, I know that lots of you are probably thinking about some kind of travel or some of those experiences, so this is a perfect time to cover this topic. And my guest today is a travel expert who has literally written the book on how to make travel easier when you have a child who maybe is anxious or on the spectrum or with any other type of special consideration; how to do that in a way that’s fun and easier for everybody involved. So let me tell you about her.

Dawn Barclay is an award-winning author who has spent a career working in different aspects of the travel industry. She started in sales, marketing and management positions with her family’s firms, Barclay Travel and Barclay International Group Short Term Apartment Rentals, and then branched out into the travel trade, reporting with senior or contributing editor positions at Travel Agent Magazine, Travel Life, Travel Insider Report, lots of others. And she has a mom of two who resides in New York Scenic Hudson Valley, which is awesome because I grew up in that area. And she also writes fiction and has leadership roles in several organizations. Dawn has got lots of stuff going on. Thank you for being here. I’m so excited to talk about this topic with you.

Dawn Barclay

Well, thanks for having me. And that intro made me feel very tired.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

When people read about our life, we are like, “Oh, wow, there’s a lot of things that I do.” I think this is such a fascinating topic. When you had emailed me about it, I was like, wow, this is something we haven’t covered on the show. And yet, it’s something that comes up for virtually every family, anytime, whether it’s taking a trip because you have to maybe for a family obligation or because you want to give kids experiences of travel or vacations, but it can be tough to navigate that when kids have challenges. So I would actually love to hear how this topic got on your radar. What interested you around this that sort of led you down the path of writing about it?

Dawn Barclay

Well, to be quite honest, in the early 2000s, when I needed a book like this, it didn’t exist. And being a travel trade reporter, I had it in the back of my mind to write the book. And at that time, maybe a few years later, I had the opportunity to interview some leaders in the field. I interviewed Dr. Tony Atwood, who’s huge in autism spectrum disorder, I interviewed Ellen Lippmann who’s huge in ADHD, especially with girls, and then I kind of hit a stumbling block because I knew what I wanted to do, and I wanted to speak to a lot of parents as well, and I didn’t have access to them. And it wasn’t until a group called IBCCES, which stands for the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards, created a designation called the Certified Autism Travel Professional, that I knew exactly how I wanted to write the book, because I knew I could survey all of those agents and the ones that were kind enough to speak to me, many of them introduced me to their clients who were special needs families. Many of them themselves or special needs families. And then there was so much more on the internet to access allies and advocates, that I was really able to put together the book I wanted, which is the culmination of over 100 interviews with these people. It’s not really my story. I have a few tidbits here and there, but it’s mostly all experts talking about what’s worked, what didn’t work, and I broke it up by different modes of transportation, accommodations, restaurants, camping, anything I could think of is in the book.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s amazing. And you really crowdsourced the best on the ground ideas for this stuff. I love that you went to parents too, and were like, what’s worked for you? What hasn’t? I mean, parents are such a wealth of information, sometimes especially in the like, “Okay, here’s what we did that definitely didn’t work/would not repeat this experience.” I think that’s so valuable for families to just have access to that kind of experience and information.

Dawn Barclay

Yes, I also have a blog called traveling different that’s going to update the book, but I also hope to have parents who read it and say, “This worked for me, this didn’t work for me. I tried some of the autism-friendly places you recommended, this is what happened”, and these things change every day. More and more places are becoming autism-friendly or certified. So the blog is really going to be a place to keep updated. And I also put those updates on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s amazing. That’s great. And you are right, there’s so many more things all the time that are being tailored to kids with differences. There’s a recognition, I think, in a lot of these industries, in entertainment and travel and everything, that there’s more and more neurodivergent kids. And if they want families to be spending their money there and accessing them, they are going to have to make those things more accessible, right?

Dawn Barclay

Yes, it’s definitely an economic decision as well as a compassionate decision. But when you have 1 out of every 44 families having a kid on the spectrum, and that’s not even including mood and attention disorders, I mean, it really focused on invisible disabilities, though, I will put physical challenges in the blog as well. But this book was really concentrating on invisible disabilities. And what was interesting is when IBCCES did a recent survey of 1000 special needs families, they found that 87% don’t travel, which is a real shame. But of those 87%, 93% said they would if they knew where to go and what to do. And so now you have places like tourist boards, who are getting certified with IBCCES as certified autism centers, and then they are getting everyone involved in the tourism and hospitality industry in their city to also come on board. So you have got cities like Mesa, Arizona, or Visalia, California, or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, who are all getting on the bandwagon. So that makes it a lot friendlier when you go to a city and you know: Wherever I go, there are going to be people who are trained to take care of me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, well, and I think that’s beautiful, even what you just shared, that these places exist and are becoming more common, because I think a lot of parents aren’t even aware of that. And to your point, that percentage that don’t travel, I have seen that in my clinic for years, there’s a lot of fear and trepidation around that, right? It’s like, especially if you are dealing with a child, regardless of their diagnosis, or whether they have a diagnosis, but when you have a kid who struggles with being out of routine, or who gets easily dysregulated with their behavior, and you are looking around in your daily life and going: This can be tricky to manage even in our controlled known environments. The idea of traveling somewhere where everything is uncertain, unknown, or being stuck on a plane and having something happen, or whatever, I do think a lot of parents just go, “I don’t have the bandwidth, that’s going to be way too much.” And they just kind of shut down to the idea.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah, and while I list a lot of, say, autism friendly or certified autism places in the book, the real heart of the book, I would say 80% of it is creating that predictability and routine for the child. How to start small, how to introduce even the concept of travel. And I break it down into really easy steps, and there are action steps at the end of every chapter. And then broke them down so you can prepare to the nth degree. You think through that trip from leaving the front door of your house to coming back. And to be honest, I left out what happens afterwards. So one of my first blog posts is really going to be how do you come down from the trip? Because one podcaster said, “Well, tell me about this.” And I said, “Oh, gosh, that should have been my last chapter!” Well, you know what, I had already been driving my editor crazy, because I kept changing things because designation keeps changing. So I didn’t have the heart to say, “Oh, can I put a whole new chapter?” I said, “Don’t worry about it. I will put it in the blog.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s great. So I would love to have you share just with everybody that you talk to around this, and all the parents that you talk to, what are some of the biggest mistakes or misguided ways of thinking or doing things? What are some of the things that that create problems, even right from the get go when families are thinking about travel like this?

Dawn Barclay

Well, I think the number one thing that stops families from traveling is something you alluded to, and that is fearing what’s going to happen if the child has a tantrum. What are people going to think of me? Are they going to think I’m a terrible parent? Are they going to think that my child is a brat? And you have to overcome that type of thinking, because it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. What matters is if you deserve to go out and travel, and so does your child, because traveling is going to make them a global citizen, it’s going to teach them about the world and that there are differences out there. And it’s also going to teach the world about autism or special needs, because they are going to be ambassadors for that. So you can’t be all hung up on what people think. There is kind of a large section in the book about how different parents are handling that. But they said your child is the only person you have to consider, to get that child into a quieter area where they can decompress and to feed them or give them whatever they need. It’s your child, you know what’s going to trigger them and you know what’s going to come down. So that is a big misconception.

Also, the idea that you don’t need to prepare. You do need to prepare so much, and so much of my book is about that preparation. You do need to introduce the idea of travel, and you have to make it a-child centric holiday. So I spend a lot of time talking about what that means, whether it’s pacing, which means you can’t go at the same schedule as you did before you had kids. It’s maybe one or two things you are going to tackle in a day, not five or six. And you know what? If you have to come back another day, you have to come back. You have to look for locations that understand you, and if you work with a certified autism travel professional, they have been trained in all the different elements of travel, so they are going to be able to place you where you need to go. I can’t say enough about how great this designation is. So working with a professional who knows how to break down your trip, but also thinking it through like, “I need to get my kids buy in on this. So maybe I will offer them two or three options about what we should do each day.” Of course, I have pre-approved all those options, so there’s no wrong answer, but also helping them. “What do you want to bring with you? What toys do you want to bring?” I had one person who said, “Well, we ship them ahead of time if we can’t fit them all in the bag, so they always have what they need.” And also previewing what travel is going to be like. So if that means going to a friend or a relative’s house for the night, so you can see what it’s like to sleep in a place other than your own home before you spend thousands on a hotel, you instantly see, “Oh, I guess we are going to have to bring our own blankets and sheets, I guess we are going to have to bring our own toiletries because they are used to the smell, maybe we need to bring their familiar lamp or a fan to block out the noise.” One mother that I spoke to brings a blow-up pool, because there might not be a bathtub in the hotel room. So all of these things are ways to introduce — Same thing with airline transportation, you can use us an organization like Wings for Autism, which hopefully is coming back over after being closed for COVID, which let you walk through the airport and have a tour and experience and roleplay every part of the trip up until boarding. That’s invaluable. And a lot of airlines will let you, if you call in to make arrangements, they will let you come and tour, and they will guide you through the same thing. There’s an organization called TSA Cares. They will accompany you through security and help you out so if there’s a meltdown, they can intercede. So these are all really important ways to prepare. Social stories, which I’m sure many of your listeners are familiar with, videos of every part of the trip, because thank goodness, with technology, not only can you bring all the movies to keep them busy every time you go anywhere, you can bring all your electronics, but you can preview every part of it. You can roleplay it. You can create a visual schedule of every day. So there are ways to create predictability and a frame of reference, and that’s really what it’s all about.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So the preparation piece is big, huge. Not just going on a wing and a prayer of like, “Well, okay, we are going to go on a trip, and let’s just hope this works out.” And then everybody feeling exhausted and feeling like it was a horrible experience. And I have had families come back from trips that were like “We are never going anywhere again”, or “This was terrible.” And to your point, I think it’s “An ounce of prevention” sort of way of thinking, like “Let’s pre think about it, let’s be proactive, let’s really plan so that this can be a good experience for everybody, or we can minimize the challenges”, I think, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And even just some of the programs that you were talking about. I mean, I love that you are mentioning those, because I think a lot of parents are unaware that there actually are supports and programs and things that they can access to help them manage some of these things.

Dawn Barclay

So many, and growing every day. And what I have also done is when I talk about a child-centric holiday, people with children on the spectrum know that they have specific interests that they can think about 16-18 hours a day, it’s what they live for. So what I did was that I thought about as many interests as I could. I mean, the obvious ones like trains and cars and anything with wheels, but insects and dinosaurs and all of that, but also more unusual interests as well, like construction, anything, elevators. And then I created have a list of venues that might feed into those interests, whether they are activities, or they are museums, broken down by state. So you might be in a state where there’s an insect museum, and your kid loves insects. Why aren’t you trying that? Even if it isn’t autism friendly, and have a sense of low sensory day or whatever, the child is going to be so excited about going. And that’s how you frame a tour. So later, when you go on a real tour, you say, “Remember, we went on a tour to the insect museum? Well, this is going to be just like that, we are going to go on a tour.” So you create a frame of reference.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

One of the things I’m hearing as a theme, as you are talking, is to really think about who your child is and what their needs are, what their interests are, and to really take that into account for the planning of it. I love what you said earlier about “You are probably going to need to structure the timing of it and how much you do in a day, in accordance with what your child can handle.” And I think that’s where I see some families really go off the rails with this, is they just think, “This is what we are going to do and do,” and it’s like, think about this child: What is your child able to manage, day to day, right now in normal life? How much activity can they handle before they need to decompress? How much can you do? And to take that into account because when you are pushing, pushing, it’s like, oh, no, these are the things say like, we are going to the Magic Kingdom for an entire day without any breaks. Well, you are asking to have a meltdown in the middle of Main Street USA at Disney World, right? So I think I think your point with that, and taking their interests into account and realizing that this really does need to be geared around the developmental level and who your child or your children are, if you want to have this be successful.

Dawn Barclay

Yes. And for those parents who are listening and saying, “Well, then I will never get to do anything I like”, there are options. You can bring a relative or a sitter with you to stay with your children when you are not available because you want to do something with your partner. And there are also resorts, like beaches in Jamaica and Turks and Caicos that have kids clubs, in which the people are trained to work with kids on the spectrum and kids who are anxious and inflexible, which gives you some privacy and time alone. There are cruise companies, the five major cruise lines all have programs for people on the spectrum. And there is a company called Autism On the Seas that puts together specific cruises for people on the spectrum. And then you have got sports vacations, which are very therapeutic for a child, whether they are golf, or adaptive skiing, or — this was a real surprise to me, the scuba diving. Very therapeutic because of the compression of the suit, it helps the child, and also when they are under the water, they are not interacting with other people, they can have some peace and quiet, there’s low stimulation down there. So there are companies that work. Dive Heart is one, I think they have a new documentary coming out. And they work specifically with children on the spectrum. They have more than one person that goes down under the water with them and teaches them, and they have had great success, even making nonverbal children start speaking. I mean, it’s just been amazing. So I do cover things like that as well. And if you are a golfer, you are going to love to have your kids start learning to golf. And here is a sport with repetitive action where they can keep working on their swing, and they will enjoy it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I think this brings up the point that I talked about a bit in the intro, which is us as the adults properly calibrating our expectations. I mean, look, my oldest is 22, I have been a parent for a long time, taken lots of vacations and trips, and you do have to set the bar appropriately. If you are going on a trip with your children, whether they are diagnosed with something or not, just with kids in general, you have to set the bar appropriately. It’s not going to be the most relaxed, it’s not going to be about what I want to be doing all the time. It’s not going to be relaxing. If that’s the kind of trip I want, then that needs to be something separate, then I need to schedule a weekend with my girlfriends to go away, or my partner and I go way together and we leave the kids at home, or I know some families, especially if they have you know maybe a child in the family who is more significantly impacted by their disability, they sometimes will make arrangements to do some trips where you know that child is home and comfortable, and doing well with grandma, grandpa or whoever, and they go with the other kids to do a vacation, and I wonder if this came up at all in your talking with parents, because I have had a lot of parents express a lot of guilt to me around that, like “Our children, we really want to do this experience with them,” let’s even say like Disney World as an example, but they know that their child who’s severely impacted by their autism and maybe medical conditions and things, that it wouldn’t be safe or comfortable, that child would not have a good experience. And they feel a lot of guilt around “Well, can we go away and take a trip or a vacation without that child?”, and to me, that conversation is around what’s going to be best for this child. If it’s going to be traumatizing, and not supportive and good for this kid to go do that, then by all means, leave them in their comfortable environment, and you can take your other kids and do that. But I wonder if that came up in conversations with the families you talked to?

Dawn Barclay

I believe that I really spoke to people who didn’t have severely, severely impacted children. But I will say two things: One is that families that had neurotypical and neurodiverse children said that these tips for the neurodiverse children helped neurotypical children as well. And I will also tell you that when I was a kid, my parents travelled a lot. They owned a big travel agency in Manhattan. We were always traveling, but my brother and I didn’t get along so well when we were young, and I have to say, although my husband would probably disagree, I’m pretty neurotypical. You could just say I’m insufferable, but I’m pretty neurotypical. We would travel separately; my parents would take me away sometimes. And then I would stay with my grandmother who lived with us, or they would take him away, and we had different experiences. Even going down to Florida, I believe my mother took my brother on the train because my mother really hated flying, and I flew with my dad, and we met there. So and believe me, there was not one ounce of guilt from my parents. They were like, “You are lucky to be going anywhere.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I’m so glad you shared that. And I think we sometimes have these ideas of what is expected with that, like, “Oh, we all need to be doing the same thing.” And the reality is that I think we need to look at our unique family situations and our unique children, and figure out what makes the most sense, what’s going to be the healthiest and best for everybody here. And that doesn’t need to look a certain way. If you have a family, that for whatever reason, it’s not going to be safe, or healthy or happy or productive for all of you to go away and do the same thing, it’s okay to think about structuring that in whatever way is going to be best for you.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah, absolutely true. But I will say, because I should have said it earlier, that Disney, as well as many other theme parks and water parks have tremendous amounts of support for those on the spectrum. So you have to look into that. And again, your travel professional can help you with that. But I do include a lot of information on these theme parks. There’s Lego Land, there’s SeaWorld, there’s Disney, Sesame Place. In fact, one person I was speaking to said that he was so impressed with SeaWorld because when they got to the area where they were allowed to feed the seals, there was signage to explain exactly what it was going to smell like when they walked past a certain point, so the parent would know and could tell the child, and the child could make a decision about whether they the joy of feeding the seal would be worth dealing with the smell. But I mean, just knowing those things is so important.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, for sure. That’s great. And yes, Disney and all those do an amazing job with that. And to your point, I think that part of the planning is communicating and finding out what the options are, because I think a lot of parents make a lot of assumptions that there are no options for supports, accommodations, whatever. So to communicate and inquire and actually find out because you might be surprised at the realm of options and supports that are available.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah. And I also include checklists of what to look for when you are renting a vacation rental or picking out a campground. Some possible dude ranches. If your child is involved in equine therapy, they might really enjoy being on a dude ranch. If you don’t want to go on a large cruise-ship, how to rent a houseboat, things like that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It strikes me as you are saying all this that what you said is so true. These are things for every family, that are awesome. I mean, how many times have I been on a trip somewhere and I see typically developing kids melting down because parents didn’t think about planning food very well, or were trying to push them to do way too much. I mean this is where family vacations kind of go bad, is when we are not thinking about these basics. And then everybody’s mad at each other, and everybody is like “Oh, why did we even come on vacation?” So these are these are really helpful for any family thinking about traveling with kids.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah, that’s a great title for an article for me: “When Family Vacations Go Bad.” I’m going to use that. Thank you very much.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yes. I mean, I think we have all had that — I remember even growing up, like we did some great trips, but there were moments, man, where you just go, “Why are we even doing this?” Right? Because everybody’s grumpy, and that’s going to happen. I mean you are going to have those moments even with the best planning, but I think your point is such a good one, that the more we think about how to manage even these basics, the more we set ourselves and our kids up for a good experience.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah. And that’s what it’s all about. Because you are trying to create memories. That’s the whole point of the trip anyway, is to have a little bit of peace and quiet, recharge, relax and create a bond with your child.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love it. I’m curious. with all the people that you talk to, the professionals, the parents, all of that, or maybe even in your own parenting experience, what was the one of the most surprising things you heard from families or from people around you? Something that surprised you that you maybe hadn’t even considered was a challenge, or maybe a surprising way that people navigate some of these things.

Dawn Barclay

The scuba diving was a surprise to me, the fact that the neurotypical kids could enjoy travel with these tips was a surprise to me. They were just little tips that I thought were so brilliant, like when you get on the plane, bring something your child with buttons that your child can press so they don’t press the flight attendant button. Or if you are going to a place with sand, and your kid has never experienced sand, go to a craft store and buy some sand and lay it out on a tarp in your living room and have the child walk on sand. Or if the child is growing up in Florida and they are about to go to Alaska, have the child practice wearing layers of clothing. You never want a child to be wearing new clothes. I would always go and buy new clothes for every cruise we would go on. Never do that. Because you don’t want to have the new feeling. Also bring clothes that haven’t been washed. So they have the scent of home. I mean, I would have never thought of that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Those are great. And I know the book is filled with these. Yeah, I mean, those are awesome. And really, that piece of practicing ahead of time. And you touched on that earlier, when you said don’t go away for a multi-night trip in a hotel if you haven’t had your kid in a different environment besides their bed in their house. Practice sleeping over at grandma’s or spending time at a neighbor’s or whatever. Practice being in the sand, practice wearing a coat, or being in the heat and feeling warm, or practice, give your child that experience so that you don’t have the double whammy of them having that experience for the first time, and now you are out in public and you are stressed and you are out of your environment. That’s really probably the biggest takeaway, I think, of this, is that really prepping those experiences ahead of time.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah, it’s the same thing if you are going to take a long train ride, take a short train ride, even if it’s to the next town, if you are going if you are going to go on a long car ride, go on a short car ride. Even for flying, you got a 10-hour flight? Maybe you should take a one-hour flight. Test it out because you are spending a lot of money. And luckily, with cruises, cruises come in all different lengths. You can take a 3-day cruise before you get on a 14-day one. So it’s worth it. To me that’s paying for insurance. That’s the insurance to make sure that your trip isn’t going to be a disaster, and you are going to waste a lot of money for nothing.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think that’s brilliant, especially with the transportation piece. Yeah, don’t do something where your kids have to actually be on a plane for five hours if they have never been on a plane for an hour. And also, I think that allows us as the adults to see how we are going to manage that and what tools and strategies, what work do we need to be doing to be able to show up in that experience in a way that’s going to be supportive. if we are really anxious and struggling and frazzled taking a short car trip, maybe for an hour or a shorter plane trip with our child, we need to really think about that for ourselves. Does it make sense for us, or our child, to be on a 10-hour flight? Or do we need to do some work and some things and do some stuff for ourselves for a while first before we tackle something like that.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that if you do that sort of thing, then you are going to be going on the trip with a lot more competence and a lot less worry. And if you are worried your child is going to pick up on your worry, so why not have that competence. And again, frame of reference: Remember when we went to the aquarium? Well, now we are going to go on a trip where we are going to go to another aquarium. And if the child had a good experience, great. If they didn’t, maybe you don’t go to that aquarium on the second the second time around.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I have to imagine too, in talking with the families that interviewed for the book, that as much as you plan and you prepare and you try to keep to schedules, like whatever it is that’s needed for your child, that there’s probably a theme of a certain amount of flexibility, at least on the adults’ part, like going into it with a with a certain way of thinking that, “Okay, we are just going to have to be flexible here, we are going to have to take this one piece at a time, and we are just going to have to go with the flow of what comes up.

Dawn Barclay

Yeah, always have a backup plan. I had one parent who said we were going to go on — I don’t remember where they were, but I think they were in the American West. And they had to take a tour that went over a rope bridge, and they were very nervous about whether the child would be able to do it. So what they did was they made arrangements that the tour guide would drive the child around the long way and meet up with them. As it turned out, the child was fine, but they had a plan in place. It’s always about trial and error. I put a lot of different suggestions for every aspect of the trip, and you are going to try each of them and see which works and which doesn’t, because it may not work for your family. you really have to try and see what does work but always have a backup plan.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s smart. I’m glad that you touched on that, because that also helps to keep parents in a more grounded, regulated place. If you know you have got a backup plan, then you don’t have to be as anxious and stressed about it, which then will help your child relax into it. So that’s a great point. So the book has so many of these kinds of tips and strategies and recommendations. I know that it’s not available, that people can preorder it. So share with everybody the title of the book, tell us about the book, where people can get it.

Dawn Barclay

Great. The book is titled “Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse”.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love the title, it’s great.

Dawn Barclay

Thank you, it’s available for pre-order now in both the hardcover and the audiobook version. The ebook version will be out on August 15. You unfortunately can’t pre-order that, but you can certainly get it on the 15th. But the rest can be pre-ordered, I do ask, if you would, you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, you can find it on any of these online retailers. You can order it from any bookstore. It won’t be sitting on the shelves, but you should be able to order it. But if you do, ask your local library to carry it too, because that way, if someone can’t afford it, they can still have access to the information. So I think that’s really important. The website that will back up the book is called travelingdifferent.com. And my email address is there as well as in the book. If you find a different experience than what I have portrayed, or have you found other places that I haven’t listed, or if I have opened up the world to you in some way and you would like to share an anecdote, I would love to hear from you. It may end up on the blog, it may end up in a future edition of the book. But I just love hearing from people and making sure that I’m on track and I hopefully have helped you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. I love that, just continuing to crowdsource the best tips and suggestions and resources. It’s great. So we will put all those links to your website and to the book with the show notes. Preorder it now. Do you have some articles and things out there if people are like, “Oh, I want to access some stuff that Dawn’s got out there now”, are there some things available now that they can go to?

Dawn Barclay

I have some on the website. I also write for insidertravelreport.com, but those articles are geared toward travel agents and how they can better do their business. But you certainly can pick up — anytime I see anything worthwhile, I retweet it on @travelingdiff. There wasn’t enough room for Traveling Different. And on Facebook, on Traveling Different, so they can certainly follow me there, I would love that. Yeah, and one of the reasons I was doing these podcasts now instead of in August is that some people can use the tips to get a head start on the travel season.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s exactly right. And that’s why I thought the timing is perfect. You provided so many great nuggets and tips and suggestions, even just in this app. so that people can get started with, so thank you for that. Let’s leave people with one final thing — if you want people to take one concept, or idea, or something around this topic away from our discussion, what do you want to leave people with?

Dawn Barclay

Don’t get down on yourself if it doesn’t go perfectly, because you are always going to have another chance. And just the fact that you are trying is something that I think your child will appreciate. If you are there for them. That’s the most important thing.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, I love it. That is a perfect note to end on. Dawn, thank you for doing all the research into this and taking the time to put it into a book. Everybody’s going to benefit greatly from that, and we appreciate your time with us today as well.

Dawn Barclay

Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks to all of you, as always, for being here and for listening. We will catch you back here next time.