Traveling pre-kids was pretty darn simple. Sure, as a child-free traveler I had to deal with the usual long-haul flights, delayed trains, long customs lines, and even really miserable experiences like foodborne illnesses or lost/stolen items. But I only had to look after myself.
Traveling with kids looks different.
Traveling with kids requires a whole new level of energy. As the parent, I can’t show up to a destination grumpy, jet lagged, and not fun to be around. The kids look to me to set the tone. If I am excited, they are more likely to be excited. Plus, I’m the one who dragged my family on the trip!
Traveling with kids also doesn’t look the same as it did pre-kids, especially when the kids are young. Sure, we enjoy some good meals out, see really neat sites, and have a blast exploring new places together. But we aren’t spending hours in art museums or having long-fancy dinners, with multiple glasses of wine and eventually a peaceful stroll back to our accommodations at 10 pm.
During dinners we are managing kids, often juggling them back and forth so we can both eat our own meals. My husband usually eats fast at the beginning and I help the kids with their food. Then I eat my meal while he cleans them up. Sometimes he takes them outside while I am finishing up, paying the bill, and leaving a big, apologetic tip. There is always a constant stream of “thank you”, “thank you so much”, “thank you again” spewing out of my mouth as I brush up as many scraps as I can off the floor and try to make the table look half-decent.
If you are expecting the pre-kids experience, with your cute little ones quietly tagging along, you will almost certainly be disappointed. If, however, you shift your mindset when traveling with your children and manage your expectations before you go on vacation, I think you will find a lot of joy in the experience. I certainly have! Here are some things to consider, followed by a few ways to shift your mindset when traveling with your kids.
You will still need to parent your child on your vacation.
Your child does not have a vacation mode that you can switch on. Just because you are miles away from home, sitting on a beautiful beach or in a charming medieval town square, does not mean your kids will necessarily behave any differently than usual. Emotional outbursts and behavioral issues still occur. Sometimes exhaustion from traveling and big changes to their routine can exaggerate certain behavioral problems that may have been quietly brewing for a while at home.
We adhere to the idea that family rules and expectations don’t change dramatically when we travel (see my blog on maintaining family routines, structure, and rhythms on the go). There is usually some level of leniency or grace given for overtired behavior when we have completely disrupted our young kids’ routine with a long flight or time zone change. Heck, I could use some grace in that moment. But, because we don’t really change how we operate as a family, we end up having to discipline our kids on our trips. Often this is in somewhat public places. One of our young children in particular, hates when consequences are dolled out. It could be as simple as losing dessert for that night and you would think the world is ending.
I remember one time specifically when we were on a couple hour train ride in Europe. I love trains. Trains are our family’s preferred method of transportation. But on this particular train ride, this child was consistently not listening, pushing boundaries, and generally acting out. I vocalized a firm boundary and when that was crossed, I immediately doled out the consequence. My child did not take lightly to the consequence.
Imagine a fairly quiet (thankfully half-empty) sleepy train car, with some passengers dozing off and others reading books or having soft conversations. And then suddenly, a shrieking, irate child. Every single eye was on me as I rushed my child to the corridor at the end of the train. My husband happened to be on a work call in that corridor, so I was getting the “get out!” eyes from him as our child continued to shriek hysterically. I responded with the “I could really use your help!!” eyes because this was not the only kid I was trying to handle on this train ride. Eventually we sorted it out and all was good again, although that train car full of onlooking (and maybe a tad judgy) eyes remains engraved in my memory.
All this is to say, don’t let the perfect Instagram pictures fool you. Yes, we have plenty of sweet moments. We even have had many sweet train rides where the children quietly slept, listened to an audio story, or softly chatted with us while we all stared out at the beautiful European countryside. But we also have a lot of tough moments when traveling, just as we do at home. The parenting does not stop when we are on vacation.
Things can and often do go wrong.
Things may go wrong on your family trip. Our trips have not gone as planned in many ways and on many occasions. For example, we have had some pretty gnarly illnesses on our various trips. For most of those trips, the good outweighed the bad. Maybe we were sick for a handful of days, but we still had several fantastic days and made many wonderful memories.
and then there was that one trip…
The trip that was a complete fail. It started with a majorly delayed flight. Followed by one child getting sick in the car shortly after we arrived. Unsure whether it was motion sickness or a stomach bug, we decided to cautiously push on. Soon it became clear it was a stomach bug. We started dropping like flies.
We canceled plans with friends. One family that was meeting up with us for a couple days decided to turn around and make a very long drive home. We had made plans to stay with another family after visiting with that first family, but when the stomach bug hit, those plans went out the window too.
We threw in the towel.
Stuck in an Airbnb miles and miles away from home, we kept incurring costs and experiencing no joy. There were a couple holdouts in the family and we did not know if/when they would succumb to the bug. This made flying home early not an option and even waiting for our scheduled flight fairly iffy. So when it seemed the worst of the bug had run it’s course in those who were ill, we returned our rental car, rented a different car, and made the multi-state drive home so that we could recover in our own beds and put a stop to the pointless draining of our wallets.
If this had been my first trip with my kids, I might have sworn off traveling with kids for eternity. But it was not. It was not even the first stomach bug we had experienced while traveling with our kids. We had so many wonderful travel experiences to reflect on and be thankful for, which allowed this massive failure of a family vacation to become something we laughed about.
But we bounced back!
Two weeks later the kids and I were back on the road, feeling healthy and optimistic. We visited both my grandmas who live in other states and had the most heart-warming time with them.
Family trips are not always going to go as planned, and that is life. I have learned that the best you can do is push through the tough moments and try again. I’m sure glad we got back out there. On that next trip to visit their great-grandmas, my kids and I made memories that we will cherish forever.
There is no magic trick that makes traveling with kids easy.
As I said above, your kids will be their full selves (angels, challenging, charming, frustrating, sweet, exhausting – all of it!) even on your dream vacation. There is no magic way to make them behave perfectly every moment of the trip or to prevent anything from going wrong.
Sure, there are many things you can do to set you and your kids up for success as best as you can. Over the years, my kids and I have become so much more adept at traveling together! But long plane rides with young kids will be challenging. There is no way to change the fact that you are flying for hours in a metal cylinder at 30,000 feet in the air with a toddler who wants to move or a baby whose ears may hurt from the pressure change.
What I find so empowering is that it does get easier with practice. You will get better at helping your kids through long travel days and your kids will start to know what to expect. The more I prove to myself that I can do it, the easier it feels! So let’s treat travel as a learning experience and let’s take a little pressure off ourselves.
Outside of that, the only real “trick” I know is to trick myself. If I shift my mindset when traveling with my kids and tell myself that the trip with my family is going to be a different kind of experience than it would be by myself, I am able to manage my own expectations. When I have more realistic expectations, I am able to appreciate the joyful moments and still make wonderful memories in the midst of the tougher moments.
How to Shift Your Mindset when Traveling with Kids.
1. View traveling with your kids as an adventure, not a relaxing vacation.
There is really nothing about parenting young kids that is relaxing, except maybe nap time. I do try to capitalize on naps when I am traveling. During nap time, I may push my sleeping children through a museum and listen to an audio guide, take a long walk with my husband, or even sneak in a meal for myself (although usually they prefer to be moving when they are napping in the stroller). But outside of nap time, it just isn’t realistic to think I am going to be relaxing while taking care of my young kids, even if we are on a tropical beach. By setting realistic expectations for the trip ahead of time, I don’t experience the disappointment when I come home more tired than when I left. Instead, I focus on the adventures we had together and the memories we created.
2. Treat a family vacation as a learning experience and something challenging that you are going to do together.
When you take something that is hard, like flying alone with young kids, and then you go out and do it for the first time, you may come back feeling empowered. You did a hard thing, you gained new skills, and now you know you can do it again. My confidence has grown tremendously over the years that I have traveled with my kids. Each time I push my limits a little further and prove to myself that I can do it.
3. Plan your trip with your kids top of mind, not just as sidekicks to your adventures.
When we spent a month in Europe, I said that every day we will go to at least one playground. And that’s what we did. Because it was planned that way, I didn’t feel like I was wasting my precious time in Europe pushing my kids on the swings. Instead, I was able to be pleasantly surprised by how wonderful European playgrounds are and enjoy our interactions with local families.
4. Approach family travel as a gift that you are giving your children, rather than something you are giving yourself.
My husband and I have learned that if mom and dad “need a vacation”, maybe it’s time to call in the grandparents and get away for a bit, just the two of us. If you are going on a vacation with your kids in the hope that you will come back rested and refreshed, you may just come back frustrated. But if you see the trip as a wonderful gift you are giving your kids, it is very possible you will come back feeling fulfilled and thinking that it was rewarding.
5. Understand that traveling with kids requires you to be on your A-game.
I remind myself of this ahead of every trip with my kids, especially when I am traveling without another adult. I prep myself ahead of time and get in the right headspace. Being on your A-game as a parent does not mean being perfect. It looks like patience, smiles, warmth, presence, or whatever else your family values. Try your best to go into the trip feeling rested and organized. I know that is not easy. But being rested allows me to show up as my best self. I think it is really cool for my kids AND myself to see me on my A-game. My kids feel security knowing that Mom has things under control, and having the right posture can be a confidence boost for me. Confidence fuels confidence.
Shifting my mindset when traveling with my kids gives me an opportunity to be my best self: fun, curious, patient, excited, and inspired. I get to step away from the day-to-day distractions and focus on my family. I have so much fun showing my kids the world!
