London travelling tips

Travelling Tips for London 🇬🇧

As promised useful tips that worked for us,

whilst exploring London.

Firstly it was a reality shock for both children, we live in a really small seaside town. Where we are use to the quiet & calm, so London was a whole new level for the kids and totally out of their comfort zone.

• For the night trip/ staying over in a hotel.

I had brought sleeping eye masks for the kids, being in a room all together and having different preferences for sleeping made it tricky. Jess likes a light, Harry likes darkness.

Having an eye mask allowed him to shut the world out, he also said that when his brain wasn’t switching off. He put an eye mask over his brain and it helped it turn off for sleep 💤. I think again as Harry is very visual, having this helped his brain to wind down.

• Wrist straps off Amazon, the bungee cord style ones. Having this helped Harry’s anxiety no end, although he never strayed from us as he was worried about the busyness. Having this attached to him and me, he said gave him a lot of comfort and allowed him to relax. I think this was one of the crucial things for our trip.

• kids mask or tissue with eucalyptus on it.

I always remember myself that the underground and some places can have a high smell of urine. For sensitive noses this can be really unpleasant.

Both my children have strong aversions to smells. So I had a tissue with some kids eucalyptus on it, allowing them to have that to bypass the smells was really helpful. By placing it in a sealed food bag meant the eucalyptus stayed for longer.

• Underground

The underground is extremely noisy and busy. Ear defenders are great to have to combat noise. Some tracks are louder then others and we found can make horrendous screeching.

Also a sunflower 🌻 lanyard for riding the underground. Many people recognise the lanyard and the tubes were very very busy, but we were very blessed to have people offer a seat for kids to sit down. Which meant they didn’t get squashed between people. I did also notice a couple of adults with autism lanyards and people were very helpful for them ❤️.

• Stories and visual images.

• Backpacks with sensory items in for rest breaks.

• Textured foods

A lot of sensory input can come from textured foods. Such as popcorn, crackers as well as sharp foods such as oranges etc. I packed different snacks which helped give some sensory input, especially with the sensory toys too on our breaks.

Hopefully these tips are helpful, if I have missed anything don’t hesitate to ask. ❤️