April is Autism Acceptance Month. To learn about travel with autistic children, I turned to Dr. Tiffany Brown.

Already a seasoned traveler with a budding platform, Dr. Brown’s travels went down a different path when her young son, Caleb, was diagnosed with autism in 2019. While Dr. Brown had to process, learn and adjust, that diagnosis did not slow down the travel.

Caleb, now 9 and no longer nonverbal, just visited his 50th state. Dr. Brown hopes that feat will be recognized by Guinness Book of World Records as the first documented autistic child to do so. He also visited 46 countries and six continents, with more than 200 flights on his travelogue.

Dr. Brown stressed planning as the most important part of travel with an autistic child. She also mentioned several great services, including TSA Cares and the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower program.

Part of Dr. Brown’s platform are two books: It’s Time to Pack and It’s Time to Fly. Relying on her experiences and utilizing repetition, Dr. Brown’s books help children understand the tasks. Written for autistic children, the books can also be helpful to any child. A third book about reaching the destination is planned for future release. Although that series might end, I see more joint projects from Dr. Brown and Caleb. There certainly is a lot more travel ahead of them.

On the lighter side, Dr. Brown talked about her favorite destinations, travel musts and other travel topics. While Caleb is her main priority when traveling, she has plenty of other travel thoughts.

Neither Dr. Brown nor Caleb allow autism to define them, but it is a part of their lives, and they want to help others. Among other facts, Dr. Brown stated more than 80 percent of parents travel without their autistic child. She aims to reverse that statistic.

Dr. Brown gives a lot of helpful information in our interview and even more on her site. Even if you do not have an autistic person in your life, it is good to learn more about the issues others face, especially during Autism Acceptance Month.

Talking Travel is an interview series on Global Traveler. Subscribe to the GT YouTube channel to be notified of all future interviews and other travel-related videos.

— John Wroblewski, podcaster