Spanish holiday preparation for Emily

We're heading off to Spain next week for Amanda and Dave's wedding and Emily is going to be a flower girl.

There's so much about that sentence that fills me with dread.

Thankfully, through various workshops and meetings, we've discovered (and had reinforced) that the prepared parent of an ASD child can (hopefully) circumvent most meltdowns and problems by being prepared.

To this end, Sue bought Emily a book about a flower girl a couple of weeks ago that we've been reading. How much she can equate some badly drawn artwork to a task she's never performed is yet to be seen.

To enable to trip to be less stressful for Em, Sue's also put together a small book outlining what we're doing, where we're going and - crucially for ASD kids - that we're coming back home again.

The goal is to read this book like we would a Dr Seuss or Hairy McLairy book, and hopefully the repetition and the familiar photos will make the actual event of the flight to Spain, the wedding (and flower girling) and the trip home almost stress-free.

One thing we have been remiss about is to get Emily in the habit of wearing headphones. This won't be much of an issue going to Spain as EasyJet won't have any in-flight entertainment. It will be quite imperative to have this sorted on the flight to Oz for the girls in August, as Em will need to be entertained by the TV screen.

Fingers crossed the Spanish holiday goes off without a hitch.