Plan a vacation your kids will actually enjoy
and you'll enjoy it more too.
Parenting Matters #61
By: Catherine Lynch and Glenn Collins
Dear Awesome Parent,
Want to have a great vacation this summer? Get the kids involved in the planning. They’ll have more fun and so will you because you won’t have to work so hard to get them to be engaged, like we did on a trip to the mountains with our boys. In the spirit of full transparency, we published this piece last year but most of you didn’t see it because we published on a different platform, ie not Substack. Please enjoy!
How to plan a vacation your kids will actually enjoy
It’s vacation planning time! The ideal vacation is one that has something for everyone and everybody has a good time. That’s not always the case though. We had a less than ideal vacation many years ago. (We made some assumptions that turned out to be wrong.) Since then we’ve talked to other parents, hopefully become a wee bit wiser, and we made ourselves a little guide on How to do it better next time. Here’s the glorious, painful details, and the guide we wish we’d had.
Has this happened to your family?
“We are never taking the boys on vacation again! Next time, we’ll just leave them home with a case of chips, a case of soda, and a Netflix account. They’ll have more fun, and frankly so will we.”
We were only half way through a summer vacation with 3 of our teens when Glenn made this announcement.
The backstory: We flew to Colorado for a two-week vacation in the front range - Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas. Beautiful, spectacular scenery. We had decided it would be a great idea for the boys to experience the spectacular views and mountain ranges of the west, as we live on the flat East Coast of the US. (“We had decided” should be your first clue this wouldn’t go well…)
Our Ideal Vacation
To make a long story short: They begged to stay in the hotel. It was work to wake them up and it was work to drag them out for the day. They were frequently miserable, with 2 notable exceptions: when Glenn did a header over the handlebars of his mountain bike and they got to laugh at him, and when I was experiencing altered mental status due to lack of oxygen on Pike’s Peak (a 14 thousand foot mountain, notorious for causing problems for flat landers) and they got to laugh at me. Other than that, it was a grind. Unhappy teen attitude and energy x3.
Our Kids’ Ideal Vacation
We’ve talked to lots of other parents about this. Here’s our new vacation strategy, and the consensus of how to make it more likely that everyone will have a great time:
Ask questions, give agency, then make the reservations.
Ask questions:
Who’s it for? Have open and honest conversations about who the vacation is for. Usually the answer is “All of us,” but sometimes it’s not. Is it for the parents, because you’ve always wanted to go to '*name some cool place*, or is it specifically for the kids because they want to to see or experience X?
What’s it for? Is it for relaxing, because you’re all stressed out? Or is for fun and adventure because you’re bored or you love the adrenaline rush? Is it for spending time with the kids because you work too much? Is it for learning a new skill? Or doing charity work? And perhaps most importantly, does everyone agree on what’s it for?
Give agency:
Let your kids be part of the discussion about where you go and what you do on vacation. Better yet, give them a budget and a geographic area and let them plan part of the vacation. Destinations, activities, food, and lodging are all open for discussion. Or give each kid a day where they get to choose all of the above. Again, with a budget.
Consider this:
Expectations. Vacation means something different to everyone. Are you looking for peace and quiet at the beach with a book? Are your kids looking for fun and adventure at a water park? The closer your expectations are, the more fun everyone will have. Make that happen by having lots of conversations, which ironically, means more listening than talking.
Togetherness. Family vacations usually means a lot of togetherness. Be sure to plan ways for everyone to get some alone time. Just because you want to spend more time with your kids doesn't mean they want to spend all day with you.
Tablet/Phone time. Devices are a fact of life. Have discussions about everyone's use of electronics during the vacation. Their expectations might be different than yours. It might go against some parents’ idea of what vacation is for (it sure did for us!), but budgeting in a certain amount of tablet time for the kids can make the experience better for everyone.
Moms often do more work. Vacations are supposed to be fun, but all the planning and organizing is work. How can you make sure Mom has just as much fun as everyone else? How can you make sure everyone does (and expects to do) some of the heavy lifting?
How do you want to feel when you get home? Relaxed and refreshed? Or exhausted from all the fun you’ve had and needing a vacation to recover from your vacation?
What do you do to ensure everyone has a good time, instead of just feeling like they’re being dragged along on someone else’s idea of a good time?
Giving back:
Our kids are adopted from Guatemala, and we celebrate being a Multicultural family! There’s a non-profit we love - it’s called Multicultural Children’s Book Day. Their mission is to raise awareness around kid’s books that celebrate diversity and get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries. We’ve donated our Parent Coaching, Adoptive Parent Coaching and Eldercare Coaching to their auction - it’s live now through May 14. Check it out and consider supporting them by buying a children’s book, a service or an experience. Our friend Amanda Hsiung-Blodgett (Miss Panda) has generously donated her bilingual children’s books! Go Here to see the auction items or scan the QR code on the photo below.
Full Moon Rising
The clouds cleared just in time for us to catch the full moon coming up as it cleared the trees across the lake.