We need a holiday!

[Tigerlion]

Our DS, aged 4, has SLD and we are hoping to soon get a diagnosis showing that he is on the spectrum. He is very demanding and spends a lot of his day moaning, crying and hitting anything in sight. When he is not having a meltdown he is the sweetest affectionate boy.
We have spent the past two summers on holiday in Turkey but after four hours of his screaming on the plane and running down the aisles continuously we have decided that it is best to avoid long flights. Plus last year we went somewhere with a kid's club but he point-blank refused to attend which meant that we had to entertain him all day, getting very little rest. As a result his younger sister gets very little attention.
We all need a rest and want to holiday somewhere in July or August where we can relax and not worry about his screaming. In other words, a campsite would not be a good idea. We are happy to fly for up to two hours.
Does anyone know of any holiday destinations that are good for children with special needs. There seems to be very little about this on the web. I would love to hear of anyone's experiences.

Have you thought about renting a private villa with a pool? We take my children 4 of whom have special needs 1 suspected asd who sounds very similar to your ds to alicante once a year we rent the house next door to my nan's house and it has a shared pool with the neighbours the kids LOVE IT not to noisy as it residential area, beach down the road and very quiet, pool is next door to a small park and they have paddle pool and proper swimming pool my ds found it very relaxing and we enjoyed ourselves so much not having to worry about crowds,noise etc and it is a real relaxing holiday x

owww would love that but no way could afford that any one fancy sharing lol

Trace i would share but you would leave within a hour with my lot pmsl my friend said last week my house and kids are like conveyour belt one starts a tantrum as he ends the next one starts then the next one pmsl and thats all day/night long xx

we did this a few years ago, we rented a villa with pool in Calpe in Spain, just along the coast from Benidorm, it was fab as although it was one villa it was split into 3 seperate apartments so everyone had their own living space, my mum and dad were in the one bed apt on the top floor, me and glitteryboy had one of the two bed apts on the ground floor and my friend and her son had the other, the villa slept 10 but even though there were only 6 of us it was just over £300 per person including flights

We are thinking (well me, not dh) about going to the south of france, my dads friend has a house/villa in the middle of nowhere , perfect for ASD children,plenty of room to run and shout.

jan lol my oldist dd as moved out for peace, our house is just like by the sound of it only my dh joins in too! where i just sit on here

I second the private villa. We took DS away with some friends last year to Ibiza. Villa in middle of nowhere, pool to ourselves. Bliss. DS loved it. The trick is to wait til the very last minute and you will get a villa at a greatly reduced cost!

lol the dog and dp join in here to x

For france - recommend looking at Chez Nous - you book directly with the owners and it is a lot cheaper.

4 was an exhausting age for holidays and ds - also with LD and ASD. We now go to France - to a quiet spacious rural property surrounded by farms but not too far from walks and rivers (to paddle and fish in)and ruined castles to explore now ds is 10.
There is a small company - called happykids or something similar that rents properties I think in the Dordoyne but is aware of the needs of customers with autism. I have not used them because we found what we needed through family in a similar part of France.
The stress points for me particularly when ds was younger were sharing with others, a pool (although dressing ds in a floatation vest can help with this - it is also harder to escape through the fence padded out), unfenced garden, and trying to do tourist things.

the floatation vest is a god send for my family Lewis wont go into any kind of swimming pool unless he is wearing one ..he thinks he will sink no matter what we have tryed to show him he wont the vest makes him feel safe x