Here, There, and Everywhere...Without Tears or Meltdowns (We're Going to Try Anyway...)
Whether you're traveling far from home or just to a busy, overwhelming store, this issue of Guiding Gifted discusses strategies to help make travel and breaks in routine easier to navigate.
Hello Gifted Guides!
We’re so glad you’re here!
How are you doing?
As temperatures rise and summer is in full swing (at least that’s the weather here in Reno, Nevada where we are!), you might be getting ready for a family vacation with your gifted or twice-exceptional (2e) child. Traveling tends to come with a variety of stressors. Traveling when neurodivergent can be particularly stressful, as traveling often requires us to break our typical routines, often in environments that can have overwhelming sensory input.
Think of the colorful neon lights over a moving walkway that is Michael Hayden’s Sky’s the Limit at O’Hare International Airport. It’s beautiful, but if you’re not expecting it, after a long flight, it might be disorienting or overwhelming.
Add to that the fact that travel tends to require a lot of executive functioning as you plan and navigate through your trip.
In this issue of Guiding Gifted, we’ll focus on finding different travel strategies that might be useful to you and your gifted learner this summer. In fact, we’ll be focusing on “travel” in the broadest sense. So, we’ve got you covered whether you are:
Going on a family vacation
Planning for a new summer day camp schedule
Bracing for trips to the grocery store with extra “helpers” because they’re out of school
Planning and managing class field trips
Or just want a few more strategies in your back pocket for the next family gathering
What makes vacation so great is also what makes it so hard!
What makes summer vacation or camp or class field trips so fun and memorable is that they are special occasions. They are a break from the regular routine, and they are a chance for us to explore and experience new things.
However, that break from routine and new set of experiences is exactly what can make travel challenging, even if we’ve REALLY been looking forward to this trip or activity.
As an adult, we have more tools and resources to help us through these stressful travel moments. We may have made the plans, so we more fully know what to expect. We may have traveled before, so we know what to expect from delays or detours. In the end, we just have more monetary and executive functioning resources to help us navigate a situation that is uncomfortable or untenable for us. Our gifted learners do not have these same resources.
Even if you let your learner participate in the planning of the trip, you still ultimately have more control over the situation than they do. This can make changes feel even bigger or more overwhelming to your child, as they are facing an unfamiliar situation, and they may also be feeling like they don’t have much control to keep themselves feeling safe, secure, and/or knowledgeable.
Keeping this in mind, it can be helpful to talk to your learner not just about what is planned for the trip but also what they can do if they’re feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, understimulated, frustrated, etc.
Overstimulation or understimulated? They can both equal dysregulation.
Travel can be accompanied by a lot of anticipation, excitement, and/or anxiety. In the heat of the moment, it can be hard to decipher the difference between these feelings. At the same time, logistically, travel can have a lot of “hurry up and wait” energy, which can be both overwhelming and underwhelming for your learner. Transitions are often a challenge for gifted and 2e learners, and travel—even if it’s just to the grocery store—can seem like nothing but unending transitions.
When the “hurry up” part of travel is taking you away from another activity that you enjoy (or simply an activity that you’ve chosen for yourself), and then, the “wait” part of travel means that you can’t do the thing you want to do AND you can’t even move forward with the thing you’re being told you need to do, that can be really hard to rationalize and process—especially if you’re growing increasingly dysregulated throughout this process.
So, part of helping your gifted learner navigate the regulatory needs and frustrations of travel can include making a plan for dealing with the careful balance of overstimulation and understimulation during your travels.
A lot of what we, as adults, do to keep ourselves regulated or entertained comes from years of experiences and trial and error. We can use these lessons and experiences to help our learners figure out what works best for them.
Key to helping learners figure out what works best for them is practice. Before hopping into the car for a 14-hour trip to grandma’s or before you take on the challenge of a long travel day with multiple connections, where you’ll be going through several airports, help them start building their Regulation Toolbox.
Regulation Toolbox: If you build it, you’ll find calm…or get closer to it.
Everyone’s Regulation Toolbox will look a little different. And the regulation tools you need when severely dysregulated or dealing with a crisis situation are probably different than what you use when you’re stuck in traffic after a long day or when the grocery store is too crowded and noisy.
When we think about helping our learners find ways to regulate during travel, we’re looking for tools and strategies that are small and readily available, while also able to provide comfort pretty quickly. Think about when you blast your favorite song on the drive home or when you grab a snack from your snack drawer when you’re at work and feeling hangry around 3pm. These are the types of quick, accessible, and impactful tools we’re looking for.
It is helpful to think about how these tools can be used on a day-to-day basis. If a coping strategy is easy enough to employ on a day-to-day basis, your learner is more likely to be able to use this same strategy when traveling. Remember though, learning how to recognize our needs and learning to self-regulate takes time and practice. They won’t be able to perfectly self-regulate every time they are dysregulated. No one can.
So, what might a Regulation Toolbox look like for your learner?
If your learner is sensitive to sounds, maybe you can encourage them to bring noise canceling headphones with them to quiet the environment or earbuds and a device that can play music, podcasts, or audiobooks.
If your learner has a hard time sitting still, maybe you can encourage them to have a fidget or two handy. Depending on their age, playing a game on their phone or taking a short walk (around the block, down the hall, etc.) might also be effective strategies.
If your learner is a voracious reader, maybe having a book in their bag or an e-book or audiobook on their phone/device can be useful to keep them occupied and regulated in stressful travel situations.
These are just a few examples to get you started. Think about what your learner enjoys. Talk to them about what they wish they were doing in those stressful or tedious travel moments. This might give you both some insight into what regulatory strategies could work for them. Then, you can brainstorm more effectively.
Can’t pick just one strategy? You don’t have to! A 5 Senses Box might be a better fit for you or your learner.
A 5 Senses Box typically contains five individual items related to the five senses. The goal is that each of these items can help to ground and regulate the person using the box.
Because these items (and the box itself) are typically on the smaller side, they can be easily brought along as your child moves through their day. This way, if they find themselves feeling overwhelmed, upset, or otherwise dysregulated, they can take a moment to center or ground themselves using the items in their box.
Because a 5 Senses Box is small, it can be taken with you many different places, or you can even make multiple boxes, to leave at the places you’ll regularly be this summer.
For example, other learners who have used a 5 Senses Box have kept them at school (in a desk, backpack, or locker) or at home to help them regulate. Some have several boxes that they keep in places they often go (home, car, school, etc.), so they don’t have to worry about remembering their box as they go about the day.
Depending on your student’s age, they may be able to do this on their own, or they may need your help. You can also take time to make your own sensory survival kit, so this becomes a family activity.
Pro-tip: A 5 Senses Box is a great tool to help with the “back-to-school" transition at the end of summer. Starting to employ this strategy now can make it easier to use in the fall.
A Regulation Toolbox is unique to each person. There is no one right or wrong way to pack this toolbox. To that end, it’s also important to remember that individual needs and rhythms change over time, so revisiting your Regulation Toolbox—and helping your learner get into the habit of revisiting theirs—can help make the toolbox even more effective.
There is nothing worse than trying to solve problems or regulate with tools you’ve outgrown.
Conclusion
As you dive into adventures of traveling with your learner—whether you’re going far or just need to help them sit through their sibling’s recital or game—take comfort in knowing that regulation and striking that elusive balance between overstimulated and understimulated is a practice. It is not something you can fail at, because needs in this area will continue to grow and evolve over time. There is a reason that we keep some of our comfort foods and habits from youth but add some new ones over the years as well!
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