Road Trip with Autistic Child: Essential Tips for a Smooth(ish!) Journey

ByMargie Pumpa

Planning a road trip with a child, especially an autistic child, might seem a little overwhelming at first. But let me tell you, with clever preparation and a positive attitude, it can turn into an incredible smooth-ish adventure for your whole family!

We’ve travelled thousands of kilometres around Australia with our 3yo and 5yo – both Autistic, likely ADHD, and more specifically PDA autistic kids, and road trips are part of any big lap of Australia (or any holiday!)

Here are some practical tips and personal stories to help make your journey as smooth and enjoyable as possible. For your autistic child and for you as you embark on a road trip.

1. Prepare and Plan Ahead to be Flexible!

Preparation is your best friend when it comes to a road trip with your autistic child. Knowing what to expect and having a plan in place can make the experience less stressful for everyone involved, especially when things go pear-shaped quickly.

  • Plan Your Route: Identify stops along the way that cater to your child’s needs. Look for rest areas, parks for sensory breaks, and quieter locations, such as community libraries.
  • Create a Visual Itinerary: Using pictures or a simple checklist can help your child understand what to expect during the day, if visual itineraries work for your child. Transitions can be tough, and having a clear schedule to refer to can ease anxiety.
  • Create a ‘new routine’: We use the words ‘travel day’, ‘explore day’ or ‘rest day’. That way, our kids know what to expect for the day – travel, explore or stay around the campsite.

Our autistic, adhd kids like flexibility, and also want to be included in the decisions when planning our road trips. We don’t use visual itineraries as they don’t work for us, but we verbally let our kids know what is happening and ask them for ideas for the day. When talking about a travel day, we also let them know the length of the drive.

2. Be Flexible while still having a plan…

Bear with me on this one, while planning is important, it is also very important to have a very flexible mindset.

Be prepared to not get to your destination. If you need to stop for the sake of calmness, have a few different options at different distances away. If you must arrive somewhere at a particular time, consider leaving days early, or postponing your event. It isn’t worth the potential big meltdowns if you need to rush.

3. Pack the Essentials

Packing for a road trip with an autistic child is all about being ready for anything. Here are some must-haves we never leave without:

  • Comfort Items: Bring along their favourite toy, blanket, or noise-canceling headphones. These familiar items can provide a sense of security in an unfamiliar setting. Always add a change of safe clothes if they end up in water… (yep, that’s us!)
  • Snacks Galore: Have a stash of their go-to snacks to avoid any food-related meltdowns. A well-stocked snack bag can save the day! Don’t forget to put in snacks for the adults too!
  • Entertainment: Whether it’s a tablet loaded with their favourite shows, audiobooks, or simple toys, having activities on hand can make those long stretches in the car more manageable.
  • Emergency Kit: Don’t forget the essentials like fidget tools, a first aid kit, and any medications your child might need.

Our Tip: If you’re about to drive through an area of little/no phone reception and your kids are used to hot-spotting data from your phone, give them the heads up. We get our kids to look for the internet towers. It keeps them busy and also gives them reason why their videos aren’t playing. Also have backup downloadable videos, like you can do on YouTube Kids.

4. Create a Sensory-Friendly Environment

Road trips can be overwhelming with all the noise, light, and motion, but you can take steps to make the car a sensory-safe space to help keep your autistic child emotionally regulated.

  • Noise Management: Keep the car quiet or play calming music at a low volume. Noise-cancelling headphones can also be a game-changer. Especially if you have multiple kids with different sensory needs!
  • Light Control: Use sunshades to reduce glare and make the space more comfortable.
  • Regular Breaks: Plan for frequent stops to let your child move around and reset.
  • Try to stop before your kids need to stop. If you see them start ‘playing up’ or being hard to deal with, this is well and truly time to stop. Try to stop before this happens. It could be the difference between a 5-minute stop and a few-hour stop to calm your child down. Our record is travelling about 5 minutes down the road before needing to stop again. We only got 20 minutes total from our campsite before calling it a day at the next site!
  • Star Jumps: If your autistic child starts to show signs they need to move their body (that could be anything from starting to throw things, trying to get out of their seat, shouting back, generally being dysregulated), stop the car when safe to do so, preferably on a quieter side street, not the main highway. (If safe – ie not prone to running when dysregulated) take your child to the non-road side, and start doing star jumps with them. Make it fun, make it a game. Do big funny bear walks, and get them to copy you. If they’re more of a runner, hold them and spin around or whatever big movements work while keeping them safe.

5. Set Expectations and Communicate

Preparing your child for what’s ahead can make a big difference. We’ve found these strategies super helpful during road trips:

  • Social Stories: Write a short story about what the trip will be like, including stops and activities. This helps your child visualize and understand what’s coming next.
  • Timers and Countdowns: If this works for your autistic child, a timer can help during the drive. Using a timer to signal when a stop is coming up or when it’s time to transition to a new activity can ease the pressure of the unknown. We use ‘the Google lady’ to help – this way the distance to the destination isn’t coming from us, it is being heard from the GPS.
  • Go easy on yourself: Don’t compare your journey with families from the internet. We try to avoid any driving day over 2 hours, take things very slow and if the kids, (or us) don’t feel like driving, we stay another night or have a big think about our next destination. Travelling with autistic kids takes lots of patience.

6. Plan for Flexibility

Even with the best-laid plans, things don’t always go as expected—and that’s okay.

  • Be Adaptable: Be ready to change your itinerary if your child needs more downtime or if a planned stop turns out to be too overwhelming.
  • Don’t book campsites or accommodation in advance if possible: This takes the pressure of needing to be somewhere at some time. Yes, in peak times, you probably won’t be able to book into caravan parks, but think outside the square. Do you really need to be there – in a packed out, busy location? How about a Hipcamps in a not-so-popular location during those times?
  • Handling Meltdowns: If your child becomes overwhelmed, pull over to a safe spot and give them time to calm down. They will happen. Stop as soon as safely possible, and you know your child best. Keep them safe (number 1), then do your usual method – big hugs, big movements, sitting next to them while. Take your time and don’t rush anything.

Choose destinations that will be great for everyone. If your child loves the beach, go there, if it’s a forest, go there. If there is a place you really want to go, but won’t be possible with your kids, can you take turns to go?

7. Celebrate the Wins

Don’t forget to celebrate the little victories. Whether it’s a meltdown-free stretch of driving or your child trying something new, every success is worth acknowledging.

  • Positive Reinforcement: Praise your child for their efforts and adaptability. A sticker chart or small rewards along the way can also keep them motivated. Keep in mind, if they’re PDA autistic, a sticker chart or positive reinforcement probably won’t work. Instead, just do what you normally do at home.
  • Create Memories: Take lots of photos and involve your child in documenting the journey, if possible. Looking back on these moments can turn even the toughest days into treasured memories.

8. PDA specific tips

If your child is PDA, the usual Autisim ‘tricks’ won’t work for you. Our suggestion is to follow a very low-demand parenting style. Travel increases many demands, but there is also lots of room for flexibility from the child’s point of view.

For example, our family ‘rules’ are: don’t hurt others (physically or with words), don’t hurt yourself and don’t hurt our things. Apart from that, everything else is very relaxed.

The good news is you probably won’t look out of place if your kids don’t shower for days, or brush hair or teeth – if everyone is out camping, it becomes the norm! 😛

Include your child in the decision-making. When planning campsites and new destinations, we always consulted our kids and asked them if they’d rather beach, forest, or caravan park, and choose accordingly. Even down to choosing the campsite when we got there, if possible. Give them as much autonomy as possible.

9. Travel times

Have a rough guide to how far you want to travel for the day, but also have your plans B, C and D! Before you set off for the day, check if the adult driving is OK to drive – did you have a bad night (or no) sleep? Are you mentally prepared to be calm and patient for the day? If not, can you stay another night?

If your kids travel better during a particular time of the day, try to plan your road trip then. If your autistic child travels worse at a particular time, then whatever you do, don’t drive then! We always try to arrive around 2 pm, which gives us plenty of time to stop, play with the kids, slowly set up, and then be with them for that crazy hour around dinner time.

We plan no more than around 2 hours per day, up to 3 days, then a rest day. No, that doesn’t give us a big distance to cover but we elected to travel slowly and calmly rather than stressed and rushed. We can always pick up our travels later.

Our Tip: Give your Autistic kids food and drink before you arrive at a park/destination/campsite. That way at least they wont be hangry when you arrive. I pass food back to one child in their lunch box about 20mins before arrival, and I physically feed the other who ‘can’t’ feed themselves. Its great! you have a contained audience, with little distractions! Once you arrive, it’s usually too exciting to get any food in!

10. What about the Parents?

So often I read things all about the kids and making sure ‘the Autistic child’ is being looked after. But who is looking after the one doing the looking after? It is so important to make sure you’re calm, in order to help your kids stay calm and in control, especially on a road trip.

  • Before you start travelling, make sure both parents are on the same page. Typically one or both parents are working full time and the other is either full time at home or part time prior to leaving on your road trip. Whatever dynamic you’re coming from, you need to sit down and discuss parenting styles before you leave. It must go to even parenting when travelling as you don’t have the support you may have at home. It is also can be a tricky, changing environment and you need to be a team.
  • Don’t dismiss how monumental the change will be for at least one of you – going from full time work to full time parenting. Work together and keep communication a priority.
  • How are you both going to get ‘down time’?
  • How is the ‘safe parent’ going to have time off? (Is the full time at home parent the default parent?) The kids won’t click into gear and automatically change to even parenting – how will other tasks be delegated to ensure you both get a break?
  • Who is going to do the camp set ups/etc? We worked on one of us doing the set up/pack down while the other took the kids to play and kept rotating this. It is important to make sure both of you understand how the caravan works.

For us, I (Margie) handled all the meltdowns, overnight wakeups, and general keeping the peace, while Tim worked behind the scenes, preparing the snacks if a meltdown was due to the hangries, entertaining the other child, moving items out of reach if needed etc.

Tim is also our default driver due to my lack of sleep. He didn’t get up early if it was a driving day. I also removed myself from our campsite at least once on a daily basis – for me, running is my thing (also ADHD). Find what works for you, even if it’s grabbing a book and sitting under a tree out of sight for an hour or so to recharge.

You must put yourself first. Trust me! Have a good virtual support network, whatever your team looks like.

11. How long do you travel for?

Be realistic with distance vs time off. Whatever you plan to do, if you have a PDA autistic ADHD kid, I suggest half it and have many plan B options. This might mean planning many trips, but it’s better to see less but stay happy than to rush a lap of Australia and end up in burnout.

Embrace the Journey and Make Lasting Memories

A road trip with your autistic child may come with its challenges, but it also offers an incredible opportunity to bond, explore, and create memories together. With a little planning, flexibility, and a focus on your child’s unique needs, you can turn any journey into a rewarding adventure.

Travel offers so much – we found without the usual societal rules and no walls to keep them contained, our kids thrived. Yes, it is very difficult, but once you find your routine, it’s no more difficult than staying at home. Meltdowns will still happen. Parenting doesn’t take a holiday. But you get some beautiful locations while calming your child through their struggles. Embrace it!

Margie Pumpa is the owner and writer for Margie and Tim: Travel and Adventure. She specializes in outdoor camping, caravanning and all things adventure.