When you sit back and put your feet up with a lovely cup of tea (let’s pretend that we all do that ok?) and you think back to great vacation moments of your childhood, what are your fondest memories? In your first attempt to answer this question, a lovely imagination bubble may spring forth from your head as you think of beach-combing in Hawaii or marshmallow roasts at the lake. Waterslides in the Okanagan or double-decker busses in England may journey through the bubble.
If you think much longer though, get ready for the dream bubble to POP! What about all those times when you had to share a hotel room bed with your sibling who slept horizontally rather than vertically? Or dying of boredom as you traveled to the Okanagan and waited for hours on the highway while they did road repairs and only let one direction of traffic through at a time? Air-sickness on the way to Lethbridge; car-sickness on the way to Vancouver; being dragged around to see stuff your parents thought was ‘good for you’ when all you wanted to do was swim or read a book. Those parts of childhood vacations are buried just a bit deeper than the ideal memories but they are there.
Both parts of this picture are worth keeping in mind as you being to plan your dream holiday for the summer. Your kids are going to love some of it and hate some of it and that is just the way it is. Knowing this ahead of time can help you to minimize and survive the yucky stuff that’s coming. Here are some tips for you:
1. It’s great to get excited about a holiday – let’s face it, looking forward to a vacation is part of the fun. Be careful not to build an impossible-to-meet-these-expectations-holiday for yourself or your kids. If you build your destination up too much in their minds, you may be creating a monster.
2. Be realistic when talking with your kids about it. Let them know that there will be waiting times (air travel, car travel, line-ups at theme parks) and that it won’t all be a great holiday. Talk about past holidays and things that went wrong as a family – get their suggestions about how to get through these tricky times
a. What happens when each child wants to do something different at the same time?
b. What happens when mom and dad want to do something and the kids just want to go to the pool?
c. How do we handle it when everyone is having their grouchy day?
3. Involve your kids in the planning – get them to research the location you will be visiting so that they can become experts. Assign a morning or afternoon where they are the tour guide. If your children are young, get Mom and one child working on one activity while Dad and the other child plan another.
4. Get the spending money situation sorted out way ahead of time. It’s great if Grandma sends some surprise spending money for the trip at the last minute but what are the rules going to be? Is the ice-cream budget up to Mom and Dad? Should your kids be saving up allowance or will the Bank of Mom and Dad be a source of never-ending $$? How many souvenirs is too many?
5. Prepare now for how you will react when you hear, “This is the worst holiday ever!” out of the mouth of what was your treasured child and has just become THE MOST UNGRATEFUL OFFSPRING ON THE PLANET.
a. Keep in mind that everyone is low on sleep and probably hungry because you have had to wait at a restaurant a lot longer than you expected and then you had a waiter who forgot about your table and took forever to bring pasta with butter which was cooked 3 hours ago.
b. Remember sayings like, “I’m sorry you feel that way;” “It was a bit of a rough day wasn’t it?” instead of launching an hour-long argument about gratitude and the fact that you know he was having fun a few hours ago if he would just open his mind and remember…
c. If the lack of gratitude bothers you and you think it is more than just an emotional moment at the end of a tiring day, talk about it the next morning. Discuss how your child can express honest opinions in a respectful way or can make helpful suggestions about how the rest of the trip can be better.
Hopefully, by starting out with realistic expectations and packing some humiliation-saving scripts to use when the high-sugar/low-sleep/ high constipation/too-much-togetherness time kicks in, you can create a summer vacation that leaves you with many happy memories and dreams of more to come. Good luck! J
This article is reprinted with permission from Julie Freedman Smith and Gail Bell of Parenting Power™.
They believe that there is more than one “Right way to parent.” Using over 40 years of combined experience, Julie and Gail have inspired thousands of parents to Parent with a Plan™. Their toll-free parenting courses, recordings, magazine articles and telephone coaching help to ease the stress and guilt of parents while providing practical solutions to everyday parenting difficulties. Visit www.parentingpower.ca. Contact them today at info@parentingpower.ca to get your free copy of Five Ways to stay Confident, Capable, Calm.
