Most of us won’t spend our less-than-perfect vacations in government quarantine, but even when fear isn’t a factor, children can put up with a lot more than we think they can. They don’t really have to be entertained every minute; they don’t have to love every meal; they can spend some time—hours, or even days—doing something they don’t enjoy for the sake of someone they love, or possibly because the people in the hazmat suits have already taken Daddy and might come back for Mommy, too. Nothing is going to make a six-hour delay on the tarmac with a two-year-old easy, but you can expect more than we usually do from older children in the way of tolerating both the less-than-ideal and the outright disastrous. Talk ahead of time about how you’ll handle tough situations (or difficult extended family members, if that’s a common problem). Come up with coping tools and plans, pack snacks, and try to agree not to make things worse.
GET HELP FROM YOUR KIDS
One of the reasons vacations don’t contribute to our happiness as parents is that they’re so much work. If only someone else would do just one thing, we think, this would be easier. Planning, packing for, and masterminding a vacation can feel like a job, not a joy. If you’re traveling with a partner or a spouse, your workload is lessened, but still, it is work.
Our children can take some of this on. You can give a very young child a list: five pairs of underwear, three shirts, and three pairs of shorts, even if you’re planning to edit his selections. You can ask them to choose a book and put crayons in a baggie to bring along. Children that young may not be much help, but they’re learning to expect to help later. A six-year-old with a general list of what she needs should be able to get out her clothes for a trip, subject to your approval. A nine-year-old with the same list should be able to pack his side of the suitcase, although you’ll probably still need to check to be sure he didn’t choose his favorite holey sweats as “pants.” At twelve, a child should be thinking through how many days you’ll be there and what you’ll do and making his own list.
If your destination allows for it (for example, a trip to a family member’s house), don’t check their work. Let them forget a swimsuit and borrow from a cousin, or forget underwear and end up at a chain store with the whole family impatiently waiting to head to the beach. Don’t be too hard on them about it. Packing is a valuable life skill.
Bruce Feiler, author of The Secrets of Happy Families, recommends getting children involved in the planning piece as well. Have them choose somewhere to go or do, he suggests, and map out the details and even, as they get older, make any calls or arrangements. Younger kids could be put in charge of how to get to the airplane gate or searching for something specific, like nearby mini-golf. Show them where to start (here is the big map of the airport; those are what the signs we follow look like) or help them with search terms, and then step aside.
Getting your children involved in the work as well as the play that goes into family travel makes the whole thing more of a team effort, and it can also help a child who is anxious around travel feel some control over it. As their “help” becomes real help, their participation becomes a piece of the joy of the family trip, both because it adds to the feeling that you’re all in this together and because you really didn’t have to pack for five.
TAKE TURNS AT EVERYTHING, INCLUDING GRUMPINESS
It’s a good idea to take everyone’s interests into account as much as you can when planning a trip—to “take turns” doing something that’s more important to one family member than to others. I like bookstores. My youngest daughter likes candy stores. There’s room in our trip for both, and it’s fair to ask that I don’t whine and demand to know if we’re done yet while she’s watching someone pull taffy.
Activities shouldn’t be the only place where happy vacationing families make trade-offs. “Let’s face it,” says Claudia Luiz, a New York psychoanalyst and author with two daughters of her own, “it is not realistically possible for all family members to feel happy or even behave calmly and maturely throughout the whole vacation.” She includes parents in that one, and here’s her suggestion: take turns being unhappy, and by unhappy she means grumpy, angry, sad, frustrated, annoyed, and everything else.
How does that work? Picture a daughter begging for pigtails, and a mother engaged in a frustrated search for the hairbrush with just three minutes to go before the family is supposed to meet her own parents in the lobby for breakfast. I won’t spend my whole vacation looking for things! She’s banging things around in the bathroom, and everybody else has a choice: join in (It’s not my fault! Geez, don’t make such a big deal of it!) or let her take her turn while saying nothing, or maybe helping look for the brush.
You don’t have to go in there applies to the moods and tempers that periodically take over us on vacation and during holidays, too. When one child is having a meltdown over a dropped Popsicle, her siblings can choose to let her accusations (You pushed me!) go, and her parents can decide not to enter into a shouting match over her desire for a replacement. Vacations and holidays can be stressful, even if we do manage not to pack them with expectations. Parents are worried about keeping the trains running; children are out of their element (especially children who really thrive on a schedule).
“The hardest part is that tensions and frustrations are so contagious,” says Luiz. Parents have a hard time seeing a child unhappy when vacations are supposed to be fun. “If everyone is tired, it’s not uncommon for everyone to become simultaneously disgruntled.” If that happens, and you’ve planned for taking turns, it’s possible—with a big effort and the putting on of the big-kid pants—to declare that you’re going to let others have a turn at being grumpy right now. If you can stay calm and cheerful while allowing a child or your partner to feel something else, your emotions might catch on with a child or two as well.
One thing to remember, said Luiz, is that this kind of taking turns isn’t necessarily going to be fair play. Some family members will inevitably require more “turns” at grumpiness than others. This has been true for years with our children. My younger daughter does not enjoy traveling, and it does not matter if it’s a theme park or an art museum—there are certain predictable things that are going to go wrong every time. For too long, we fought her, then, for years, we worked around her; now, at eleven, she knows her own foibles and can often be headed off from an angry episode with a reminder that we know this is hard work for her, and we’ll try to make it easier. Her siblings have learned that they don’t want to get on her train, although they do get frustrated with her effect on their fun, which is reasonable. It may be new, but we still bring our old selves along. Wherever you go, there you are.
MAKE DEPOSITS BEFORE YOU MAKE WITHDRAWALS
This brilliant advice comes from Jason Kotecki, a writer, artist, and speaker from Madison, Wisconsin. “Kim [my wife] and I are willing to do some things we aren’t thrilled about (like heading to the hotel pool when we really just want to crash on the bed) so that we can ask our kids to do things that might not be thrilling to them (like waiting patiently for a table at a restaurant). You can’t just keep asking things of your kids and expect it to go well,” he says.
Especially with younger kids, the “before” aspect is key. It’s hard for them to wait for anything, let alone to check out that pool. Your itinerary probably already required them to accept the unfamiliar, to sit still, to nap in strange places, and to use all their patience. Planning activities that meet their needs first sets you up for a more successful longer trip. “By the same token, parents shouldn’t spend their whole time catering to the whims of the kids,” says Kotecki. The withdrawals, too, are part of the deal.
ADULTS GET TO HAVE FUN, TOO
A survey by Hilton International found that well over half of parents who travel with kids make their children’s happiness the first priority on vacation. That’s a mistake. The adults on a vacation deserve to see and do the things they hope to, and if that means children queuing for the M
ona Lisa, then queue they should. Our research found that the happiest parents took both parent and child interests into account when planning a vacation; a trip to London does not need to be all Harry Potter, and not every family vacation should be taken at Disneyland.
FIND YOUR FIVE THINGS
How often do you find your vacation plans dictated by the “Top Ten Things to See” section of the guidebook—or, even more likely, “Top Ten Destinations for Kids”? They’re a great place to start, but most top tens aren’t going to cover your personal top priorities. I grew up traveling with my father, who was and is a serious train buff, and our trips always included the local rail or transport museum (as well as a lot of scenic train rides). We have friends who seek out Roman ruins, fossil-hunting sites, or natural hot springs. My husband likes to bike on every possible trip. On the kid front, we really do seek out candy stores—the kind that make local specialties, or maybe just local fudge—and we always encourage our kids to spend some time with the guidebook and pick something they’re excited about. Sometimes they pick something really special; sometimes it’s some absolutely ordinary thing you could do anywhere (Oh, look, yet another fake outdoor climbing wall). That’s okay.
Take some time to think about what you really like to do on vacations. I like to choose my own top five:
Eat.
Visit grocery stores and farmers’ markets, or take a cooking class.
Go to “time travel”–style exhibits of working houses and farms from the past.
Walk the streets/hike the trails.
Find a local bookstore for local memoirs.
Notably missing from that list? Art museums. Going to the tops of tall buildings to look out at the view, a common human drive that has clearly skipped me, although I know my children enjoy it. Shopping. Theater. Casinos. Bars. That’s not to say I won’t enjoy doing those things, particularly with someone else who’s really excited to go. But if I’m putting them on an agenda from some misguided sense that I “have” to go to the top of the Empire State Building in order to have seen New York City, then I have misunderstood the word “vacation.” You do you.
When you plan ways to fulfill your own vacations wants, it’s easier to appreciate what the family members you travel with really enjoy as well, and vice versa.
SPEND WISELY
Oh, the perils of “getting your money’s worth.” For many of us, a shorter vacation with a few more perks may be a happier trip than one that maximizes money and minutes. “Getting a suite is worth it!” says Ashley Crossman Hakrama, a mother of two and Web designer from Jacksonville, Florida. “Having a second room to put the little ones to sleep and then still hang out is what makes it a vacation. I have spent nights in the bathroom Netflix-ing with my husband because the kids are asleep and we don’t want to wake them. I would much rather leave a day earlier and have a better room.” Keisha Blair, a mother of three from Canada, told me the exact same thing, adding, “No sex on a vacation is no good!”
Think hard about what has value to you. A subway in the morning may be affirmatively entertaining for your family and part of the fun, while the same trip in the other direction at nap time is well worth the splurge on a cab. Our family has tended to resist traveling far unless we have a lot of time, reasoning that we need to spend at least a week somewhere to make a long flight “worth it.” But last year, we grabbed the opportunity to spend a long weekend in England with friends. It seemed foolish. Who buys overseas air tickets and spends twelve hours in the air (total) for just three and half days? But it turned out to be one of our most successful family trips. Our travel lovers adored the idea that we would just pick up and go like that, our travel stress victim could reassure herself that she’d be back home in just a few days, and because it was a short trip, we only tried to do a couple of things. In terms of pleasure gained for money spent, it turned out to be an absolute bargain.
DO NOTHING, BUT DO IT OUTSIDE
Many of us make nature and outdoor activities a part of our vacation plans, but too often we focus on doing one thing (a boat ride, a camel ride) or seeing another (a geyser, a canyon). We don’t plan time to simply be present outside, lingering on a beach into the evening, spending four hours poking along a trail we could walk in less than half that time, sitting on a park bench for long enough that our kids can do whatever it is they’re planning to do with all the pinecones and rocks they’ve been gathering.
Being outside and close to the natural world does make us happier. There’s significant research into the subject: staring at a eucalyptus tree for ten minutes makes you more generous, proximity to the ocean correlates with happiness, and a few days spent in nature are associated with improvements in creativity, an increased attention span, and lower hyperactivity and aggression. You can get plenty of benefits by dipping your toe into the woods, but it’s worthwhile to do so much more. Most visitors to Yellowstone National Park never leave the pavement (and some never leave their cars). A short hike can get you away from the crowds, and a willingness to stay a while gives you plenty of time to soak up the green while your children explore.
DECIDE ABOUT THE SCREENS, AND THEN LET IT GO
We take an annual vacation to the same beach hotel every year. While we’re there, we do much the same things in much the same places that we have since our oldest son was three, but with increasingly different children—and increasingly different technology.
Every year, I make the same mistake. Instead of deciding what we’ll do about television and our ever-growing family supply of portable technology, my husband and I try to play every day by ear, which means that too often, we’re reading by the pool and they’re tech-ing by the pool, and we’re nagging.
It would be far better to pick a plan and stick to it. Decide what to do, then do it. Jason Kotecki saves kid tech time for trips, so that videos and video games “are special for road trips and long airplane rides. I also load up their devices with brand-new apps for them to explore. Some are educational, some are just for fun.” Other parents allow tech during travel, but seek out Wi-Fi-free destinations or limit phone use on arrival, fearing that kids will replace family time with the same gaming and texting they do at home. “We’ve taken the kids to Disney and felt like they’d rather have stayed home with their iPads,” one mother complained. It can feel hard to strike the right balance of tech use and family time, and easier to respond by banning it altogether.
Nancy K. Baym, the author of Personal Connections in the Digital Age and a principal researcher at Microsoft, says parents should resist the urge to regulate without discussion just because we don’t like the idea of a teen “glued to her phone.” Her suggestion for finding a happy medium for all? Talk to your child about what she wants from vacation, and how her gadget is or isn’t a good part of that. Sharing photos on social media? You might very well be doing the same, and now is a good time for a discussion about how it feels when our friends post vacation pictures and how much is too much. Texting with friends? Maybe she could prep them for the idea that she’ll be checking in nightly but not available all day.
Teenagers, says Dr. Baym, are often as interested in finding some time to disconnect as we are, “but we can’t assume they want the same experience that we do.” Instead, we should wait to impose limits until we have asked whether they’re interested in limiting themselves. As I’ve said before, though, you take the same child on vacation that you have at home. If tech use is a problem or an ongoing battle when you’re not on vacation, that’s not likely to change with the scenery. Try to find a reasonable compromise before you leave rather than snatching the device away and starting a battle. Tell your teen you’d like to take a vacation from your regular argument and come up with something new together, like tech-free hours for all (including adults) combined with tech-full hours in which you won’t comment on usage. (And, parents of younger children, take heart. This isn’t an inevitable future. Plenty of
teenagers—a majority, even—use tech reasonably and responsibly, on vacation and off.)
DON’T PUSH THE AGE BARRIER
Your children will get older, and when they do, they’ll appreciate those trips you long to take with them that much more. They’ll be able to enjoy the “kids club,” the ropes course, the hike, the boat trip. You will, too, because you won’t be focused on entertaining them or keeping them from falling into the Grand Canyon. The same goes for children’s classes and camps. The age rules are there for a reason, and children too young to meet them usually don’t enjoy the experience, no matter how precocious. Let kids be little before you expect them to be big.
When my oldest son was two, we took him to Disney World. He was too young for the rides and screamed at the site of every costumed character or firework. His favorite thing was an unimpressive playground that could have been anywhere. My biggest memory of the trip is of pacing the hotel grounds, trying to get him to nap so we could return to the park in the evening, cursing and crying while he cheerfully kicked his feet, wide awake. He remembers nothing.
This is not a good way to spend your time or money. Do something you want to do that your child fits into, or spend the money on a babysitter and get away, even if it’s just to a local hotel that offers baby- and toddler-free sleep. Whenever possible, save the family destinations for when you have a family that’s ready to enjoy them.
How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute Page 26