Four days on a private two-acre estate in the Sonoma Valley, with ten couples raising young adults in roughly the same place as yours. Mornings around the long table. Afternoons wherever the morning takes us. Dinners out in the valley, and long evenings by the fire pit.
Danny Raede runs the sessions, and they start with your actual questions rather than a syllabus. Somebody puts a real situation on the table, he answers it properly, and the conversation goes where it goes — often for a good deal longer than anybody expected. In between, you are in a house full of people who already know the whole story without being told any of it.
Everybody in the house is raising a young adult in roughly the same place as yours — late teens or twenties, brilliant in patches, stalled in others, and holding on to their autonomy with both hands. Which means nobody starts from the beginning when they talk.
Somebody puts a real situation on the table and Danny works it through in front of everyone — what's actually happening underneath it and why. Fourteen years of that, in plain words.
A question comes up that takes two hours to answer, so that becomes the afternoon. The weekend gets built around the people in the room rather than a plan written before we met you.
Some of the best of it happens between you rather than at the front of the room. The couple two years further down the road have already had the week you're dreading, and they'll tell you about it over dinner.
Two acres, a pool, a hot tub and a fire pit, with plenty of quiet corners for the hours when you'd rather not talk to anybody at all.
We eat out together most evenings, somewhere good, twenty minutes from the house. Nobody cooks and nobody clears up, and for once you are not the person who booked it.
January in the Sonoma Valley is mustard season — the vines bare, the hills yellow, the tasting rooms half empty. We take an afternoon out in it.
For years, most of the parents coming to me have felt like they're living on an island. They love a kid who protects their autonomy with everything they've got. A kid who would rather let the world burn than hand over one inch of control. A kid who isn't defiant or careless, just exhausted from too many years of being managed or misunderstood. And every one of these parents has asked, in some form, the same quiet question: is anyone else going through this?
This weekend exists because the answer is yes. You are not the only one raising a young adult who shuts down, avoids, resists, or retreats when pressure shows up. You are not the only one caught in loops that make no sense to anybody watching from outside. You are not the only one carrying fear, frustration, love and confusion in the same breath.
So here is the other thing I've noticed. When these parents finally get in a room together, they don't want sympathy. They've had sympathy. What they want is an answer — a straight explanation of why their kid does the thing they do, from somebody who has been that kid and has spent fourteen years working out the mechanism underneath it. Nobody has ever sat them down and given them two hours on it. Four minutes with a pediatrician, twenty with a therapist, most of that spent explaining their own child from scratch.
So that's what these days are. You bring the real question. I answer it properly, in front of everyone, because the answer is almost never only useful to the person who asked. And then somebody follows it somewhere else, and that's the afternoon gone.
Around all of that there's a house on two acres in the Sonoma Valley in January, with the vines bare and the hills going yellow with mustard flower. Long slow mornings with coffee. Dinners out in the valley. Evenings by the fire with nothing asked of you. Conversations that feel like exhaling, with people who don't need the backstory because they've lived their own version of it.
No judgment. No pressure to perform. No need to defend your parenting. Just people who understand the absurdity and the heartbreak and the brilliance of raising a kid whose agency is the hill they're willing to die on.
Not because they read it in a book. Because they live it too.
Danny Raede
Director of WanderRock
Four days · Ten couples · Kenwood, Sonoma Valley
Cost, per couple
$4,250
Pay a $1,250 deposit to reserve your place, then the balance in 3 monthly payments of $1,000, finishing 60 days before we start.There are ten places for couples and we don't add more. Coming on your own is fine — get in touch and we'll sort the pricing out.
Every day has the same shape and you'll know it over breakfast. What each session is actually about gets decided that morning, out of whatever the room brings.
Arrive through the afternoon, take your room, and find the coffee. There's no session on the first day. We eat together at the house in the evening and people work out who everyone is, which tends to take about forty minutes and then feels like it took no time at all. The fire pit gets lit and stays lit.
A long slow breakfast, then everyone gathers at the long table. Somebody says the thing they came to say, and it turns out six other people have been living the same week. Danny works through what's actually going on underneath it. That usually produces a question big enough to be the afternoon, and the afternoon is where it gets answered properly. Dinner out in the valley.
The morning session, which by the third day tends to go somewhere nobody would have predicted on Thursday. Then we go out — an afternoon in wine country, in the quietest and prettiest month of the Sonoma year, with the mustard flower coming up yellow between bare vines. Dinner out again, and the conversation carries on at a different table.
A final long breakfast and a last session — this one usually turns into what everybody is going to do differently on Monday, which is a better conversation than it sounds. Then people leave through the morning and into the afternoon, in their own time. Most groups have a thread going by the time they reach the airport.
Building trips around neurodiverse travelers is the only thing we do. We've been doing it since 2010, and several of our guides are neurodiverse themselves.
Japan, Italy, Switzerland and Thailand across the year. Real places, real decisions, and a group that turns into their group somewhere around the middle of the first week.
See what we run →The same idea pointed at the parents. One house, one long weekend, and a room in which the whole thing can finally be said out loud without a preamble.
Reserve a place →Danny Raede was diagnosed with Asperger's at twelve, spent fourteen years at Autism Experts working with families in exactly your position, and now runs WanderRock and Offmap. He was the kid on the other side of this, and he has spent the years since working out the mechanism underneath it.
That combination is the reason the answers land. Plenty of people have the lived experience and no framework. Plenty have a framework and were never the child. He is in the house for the whole weekend, at every meal and every session.
Ten couples is a small room, and who's in it shapes the whole weekend
The shape of each day is fixed and you'll know it at breakfast. What the sessions are about is chosen that morning, from what the room actually brings, because a weekend planned in October cannot know what ten families will walk in with in January. If you'd rather have the topics in advance, this is the wrong format and we'd sooner say so now.
Everything from the moment you arrive at the estate
The estate is in Kenwood, in the heart of the Sonoma Valley — an hour north of San Francisco and twenty minutes from Santa Rosa.
Sonoma County's own airport and much the easiest arrival — around twenty-five minutes from the house. Direct flights from a growing number of West Coast cities.
About ninety minutes' drive, and the widest choice of flights from anywhere in the country.
Also around ninety minutes, and often the cheaper option out of the Bay Area.
Kenwood is properly rural and the valley is worth driving. Having your own car means arriving and leaving on your own schedule and slipping away for an hour whenever you feel like it. We'll send full directions and arrival instructions once you're booked.
Everything you need to know about the weekend
Parents of neurodiverse young adults, typically in their late teens or twenties. Everyone in the house is raising a young adult in roughly the same place as yours, which means nobody has to start from the beginning when they talk.
Some of both, and that's deliberate. You bring real questions and Danny answers them properly — that's the part most people come for. And ten couples living the same thing produce a great deal for each other over dinner and around the fire that nobody at the front of a room could supply. There's no curriculum, no assessment, no homework, and nobody is being fixed.
No — adults only. The whole point is a few days where you're not the one anticipating, organizing or managing anything. We run separate small-group trips for the young adults themselves.
Only if you want to. Some people arrive ready to say everything and some spend the first day quiet by the fire. Both are entirely normal and neither is a problem.
Each day has the same shape — a session in the morning, hours in the middle of the day with nothing required of you, a session in the afternoon, and dinner out. You'll know the day's plan over breakfast. What the sessions actually cover is decided that morning, out of whatever the room brings.
No. Many of the young adults whose parents come to us are diagnosed, many are not, and several are somewhere in the middle of a long process. It makes no difference here.
A private two-acre estate in Kenwood, in the Sonoma Valley. Roughly an hour north of San Francisco, twenty minutes from Santa Rosa, and about ninety minutes from either San Francisco or Oakland airports. Sonoma County's own airport at Santa Rosa (STS) is closer still.
Every couple has their own private bedroom. The house has ten bedrooms and seven bathrooms across two acres, along with a pool, a hot tub, a fire pit and a good deal of outdoor space.
We'd recommend it. Flights and ground transport aren't included, and having your own car means you can come and go as you please rather than moving as a group.
Cool and green — highs around 15°C / 59°F, nights near 4°C / 39°F, with a fair chance of rain. It's the quietest month in the valley and the prettiest in its own way: bare vines, yellow mustard flower between the rows, and tasting rooms you have largely to yourselves. Bring a coat and something for the evenings outside.
All meals and beverages are included, along with dinners out in the valley. Tell us about any dietary requirements when you book and we'll plan around them. There is wine, this being Sonoma, and absolutely no expectation that you drink it.
Get in touch using the form below or give us a call. A $1,250 deposit holds your place, then the balance goes across three monthly payments finishing 60 days before we start. There are ten places for couples and we don't add more.
Pricing is per couple, but plenty of people are managing this alone or with a partner who can't travel. Get in touch and we'll sort something out.
Questions about the weekend, or ready to reserve a place? Reach us however suits you.
Mailing Address
WanderRock Travel
2443 Fillmore St. #380-2362
San Francisco, CA 94115