Here is the irony our family has never stopped noticing: our son loves to travel. The boy who needs his routines, his own bed, the world arranged just so — that same boy lights up at the word trip. And above everything, he loves what waits at the end of the journey, a word he says with more reverence than most people save for church:
The hotel.
The pool. The lobby. The beds that aren’t his bed but are somehow, magnificently, better. If we could teleport to the hotel, our travel life would be nothing but joy.
But there is no teleporting. There is the airplane.
A storm with a boarding time
He doesn’t hate flying, and he doesn’t fight us down the jet bridge. He wants the trip. He chooses it, every time, because the hotel is on the other side. But somewhere between the gate and altitude, his body overrules him. The pressure in his ears, the engine roar, the strapped-in stillness, the sealed-shut, no-exit fact of it: his system reads the airplane as an emergency, and no amount of wanting the trip can talk it out of that.
My wife sits next to him on every flight, his body curled into hers. Through his shirt she can feel his heart — not elevated, racing, a runner’s heart in a boy sitting perfectly still. She knows the number is climbing and has no way to slow it down.
Then his body pulls the one release valve it has. He throws up. Usually with little warning, rarely neatly, always with an audience.
And then — this took us years to understand — he’s fine. Not better. Fine. Color back, shoulders down, asking about the hotel. His body did the only thing it knew how to do with that much alarm and nowhere to go, and then it returned him to us.
The strangers see a sick child and a mess. We see a scared body finishing its work.
The second hard seat
Our son has the hardest seat on that plane. But there’s a second hard seat right next to his.
It isn’t him that mortifies my wife — she would hold that boy through anything, and has. It’s the turned heads. The passengers leaning away. The performance of apology to the people nearby while he shudders against her. The sense of an entire cabin grading her.
If that’s your seat too: you are allowed to stop apologizing. The people around you are having a slightly worse flight. Your child is having a genuinely hard one, and you’re the reason he’s getting through it. That is not something to be sorry for.
What helps
- Preview everything. Our son studied videos of the hotel until it felt familiar before we ever arrived. The same works for the airport and the plane. Some airports go further and hold rehearsal days through The Arc’s Wings for Autism and Wings for All programs, where families go through check-in, security and boarding without actually flying.
- Call TSA Cares. It’s a free helpline for travelers with disabilities. Call (855) 787-2227 at least 72 hours before you fly, and you can ask for a Passenger Support Specialist, an officer trained to help your family through screening.
- Ask about the sunflower lanyard. Many US airports take part in the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower program. The lanyard quietly tells trained staff your child may need more time or help, and participating airports usually give them out free at the information desk. Check your airport’s website first.
- Pack for the valve. Bags, wipes, and a change of clothes for your child and for whoever is sitting next to him, all within reach, not in the overhead bin.
- Put the steadiest person in the seat next to him. Firm, close contact helps our son’s body settle, and a calm adult beside him gives him something steadier to match.
- Ask your child’s doctor before the trip. Whether it’s motion sickness, anxiety, or both is a question for a professional who knows your child, and there may be options worth discussing.
- Plan the landing. Keep the rest of arrival day easy. The flight costs more than it looks like from the outside.
This is one family’s experience, not medical advice. Every child’s reasons for finding flying hard are different, and so is what helps.
Then we land
And the whole sky changes. Off the plane like the flight never happened. Through the lobby doors like arrivals are his birthright, scouting for the pool before the bags are off the cart. And my wife, watching him bounce on the not-his-bed that’s better than his bed, doing the quiet math she does after every flight: it was worth it, it was worth it, it’s always worth it — while some part of her already starts bracing for the flight home.
She was right every time, by the way. About the racing heart, and about when it was getting bad. She just deserved, all those years, not to be the only one who could tell.
Sources
- TSA Cares, Transportation Security Administration.
- Wings for Autism / Wings for All, The Arc.
- Hidden Disabilities Sunflower program — for example, as described by DFW International Airport.
More on what a hard day costs a child in why a great day at school ends in a meltdown at home.