Travel with kids with disabilities is a challenge worth the effort

(CNN) -- Twelve-year-old Peter Mance knows every street before he sets foot in a city.

It's not because he's visited before. It's because he's autistic and has an uncanny ability to memorize maps.

"He's actually a big help when traveling," jokes his mother, Kim Mance, founder of women's travel blog Galavanting and the Travel Blog Exchange, a community of travel writers and bloggers.

Mance's other son, 10-year-old son Stephen, has used a wheelchair since surgery to remove a spinal tumor left him paralyzed from the waist down. Mance always has to make extra phone calls to ensure there's an accessible subway or hotel room, but that hasn't stopped her from vacationing with her sons all over the world.

While she mostly travels for work, Mance says taking Peter on trips since he was diagnosed with autism at age 2½ helped him not get "rutted into routine." Some autistic children can't stand to have their schedules disrupted, she explained.

"By [traveling] consistently over time, he's developed ways to cope with being outside his routine," she said. To help comfort Peter, Mance created games -- like hunting to find his pajamas -- that he plays in every new place he visits.

Traveling with children is difficult, but when children have wheelchairs or communication problems, it can be overwhelming for parents to plan even a weekend getaway.

"You cannot pick up and go like everyone else does. You have to plan your trip very carefully," says Jani Nayar, executive coordinator of the Society for Accessible Travel & Hospitality.

About 2.9 million youths ages 17 and younger have a disability, according to the 2009 American Community Survey. Even if it requires extra planning, Nayar says, it's important for children with disabilities -- whether they're blind, deaf, autistic or use a wheelchair -- to "get out of the house and travel like any other child."