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An Ode to Solo-Parent Family Travelers

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Happy times, with a tree llama.

Happy times, with a tree llama.

After two-thirds of a mommy-free, 3-day road-trip with my girls, I can tell you this: Solo-parent family travel is a LOT harder than I ever thought it would be.

In my abbreviated experience, challenges generally come in two main flavors: Kid-time and alone-time.

The ones during kid time should come as no surprise. Meals are tough because you’ve got no help to feed or discipline or disrobe crayons or put together a puzzle or cut grilled cheese or chase down that piece of fried fish one of the children just threw across the room. Bedtimes can be rough when the kids are on different schedules and there’s only one parent to wipe butts and brush teeth and read books and sing songs and snuggle.

Alone time presents its own obstacles. Because there’s nobody else to watch the kids for even a moment, you find yourself Instagramming and scribbling story notes while adjudicating a game of “Go Fish,” eating dinner (of unclaimed pasta with butter sauce, natch) at 5 p.m., and engaging in training “runs” of four miles (in circles) around the living room of your rental cabin.

(Yes, I really did that last one. I know: I am a complete and total freak.)

Months from now, I’ll look back on this experience with my girls as difficult but fun. Heck, next week I plan to write about some of the amazing stuff we have done over the last 48 hours.

Right now, however, crashed out on a couch while the gals snooze away in the other room, I see the takeaway as more visceral: nobody—I mean, nobody—deserves more credit in the world of parenting than single moms and dads who vacation with multiple children multiple times a year.

For these parents, solo-parent vacations aren’t a choice.  For these parents, help rarely is even an option. For these parents, this rigmarole is reality, on every single trip.

In my book—especially tonight—that makes them rock stars; parents from whom I’ve got a ton to learn.

A Little Help from Some Friends

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Three of the four musketeers, in a common pose.

Three of the four musketeers, in a common pose.

As much as I despise the word, “staycation,” we’re big fans of family travel to destinations within a 1- or 2-hour drive of our home.

Partly this is because we live in Sonoma County, California, IMHO one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It’s also because Powerwoman and I believe strongly that you don’t have to go far to experience the wonder of something new.

We put this philosophy into practice over the holiday weekend, when good friends from Central California—a family of four with two daughters, ages 5 and 3—came to visit. They arrived Wednesday night. And from that point until late Saturday, we had a Peter Pan-like panoply of adventures without ever leaving the county.

The activities themselves were fun—especially on Friday, when the eight of us took a private tour of Safari West, a private animal park with giraffes, zebras and hundreds of other animals, just down the freeway in Santa Rosa.

But what was even better was watching the girls play and laugh and bond by just being girls.

They shared cookies at a French bakery. They waved flags at a Fourth of July parade. They splished and splashed in an inflatable kiddie pool. They danced to a ragtag folk band at a local farmers’ market.

Sure, my kids had done most of this stuff before. But they’d never done the stuff with friends, and that factor enhanced each experience acutely.

This reality has been true for me, as well.

My fondest memories of that trip in high school to Acadia National Park revolve around hiking solo with a buddy who tagged along for the adventure. And as a younger child, the best parts of summer trips to Cape Cod were the lazy days with a childhood pal (and her brood).

Last night, a few hours after we parted ways, my Big Girl looked at me with sullen eyes and stated, “Doing stuff was more fun with [my buddy’s daughters] around.” In that moment, I was reminded of something we all should remember: Traveling with family can be transcendent, but traveling with family and family friends can be even better.

Lessons in Family Travel Preparedness

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Our recent family road trip along the western side of Oahu certainly was filled with surprises.

Some of them were pleasant—on the way from Disney’s Aulani Resort & Spa to Ka’ena Point State Park, we spotted a pod of dolphins frolicking in the surf and pulled over to watch them for a while.

Others , however, were not. Like the archaeological site that was closed due to vandalism. (Remember, Powerwoman is an archaeologist; ruins are regular stops on our vacations.)

And the flat tire that we picked up outside of Waianae.

Spotting dolphins, before the flat.

Spotting dolphins, before the flat.

I’ll spare you the details of how we got the flat (to be frank, none of us really knows). The important stuff: The rear driver’s side tire on our rented Chevrolet Equinox croaked, we called AAA, and the four of us spent three hours at a roadside McDonald’s waiting for a tow truck to come and pop on the spare.

(At this point, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just fix the flat myself. Let’s just say that I’ve learned the hard way that rental car companies don’t trust you to fix stuff that goes wrong with their cars, and if they find out that you did anything outside of you contract to the vehicle—anything at all—they will charge you. Exhorbitantly.)

(Oh, also, the rental car company could have come to fix the tire. But they estimated a six-hour wait.)

Ultimately, the encounter was nothing but a hiccup in an otherwise fun and fruitful trip. Still, the experience offered lessons in preparedness for family vacation road trips. Here’s a sampling:

  • If you’re planning on doing any major driving with the kids while you’re away, be sure to sign up for AAA Plus or Premier Service (or an equivalent) before you go. No, the three-hour wait time wasn’t ideal, but they did come and fix the flat for free. Had the damage been worse, they would have towed us back to Honolulu for free as well. When traveling with the kiddos (or solo, for that matter), It’s nice to know that you won’t get stranded.
  • Since space isn’t an issue, take the time to pack extra arts and crafts for the kids, just in case. If your children like sports, toss a ball in the vehicle as well. If you find yourself with a few extra hours to kill, these sorts of additional diversions certainly can’t hurt.
  • Triple up on healthy snacks so you’ve got enough to go around in case you end up staying out longer than expected. (We could have ordered just about anything from the McDonald’s at which we were stranded, but, quite frankly, Powerwoman and I don’t like our girls to eat that crap. We gave them blueberries and grain crackers instead.)

Also, if things go wrong, remember to keep your cool in front of the kids. Especially if they’re little (read: under five), the only reason they’ll get stressed by the situation is if they think you’re stressed. This means no panicking. It also means no snipping at your partner, and no yelling at deceitful customer service representatives (unless, of course, you can do so in a private spot).

Years from now, we’ll all be joking about the flat tire on that crazy day in Waianae. Hopefully, if you ever encounter similarly bad luck on the road with the family, you’ll be able to laugh about it someday, too.

What is the most unexpectedly stressful travel situation you’ve endured with your kids?

Baby Steps with Behavior on Planes

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R, during happier times en route.

R, during happier times en route.

The meltdown came with about 75 minutes left in our flight home. Somewhere over the Pacific, thousands of miles east of Honolulu, where the flight began, R, our baby, went berserk.

We weren’t entirely sure what set her off. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was a slight-but-noticeable change in cabin pressure. Perhaps it was the sight of the setting sun from above the clouds, a beautiful-but-blinding spectacle that, to her 20-month-old eyes, must have been bright and shiny and cool and scary all at the same time.

Whatever triggered the freak-out, the poor girl went nuts. I mean, NUTS.

Shrieks. Tears. Kicks. Slaps. At one point, she was crying so hard we thought she might puke. At another point, she “went boneless” in the middle of the aisle like only babies can. (Some of you might call this “pancaking.” If you’re David Stern, perhaps you prefer the term, “flopping.”)

For 15 minutes, we were that family—the one with the wailing kid, the one that family travel-haters love to hate.

In the middle of the insanity, I looked up to count dirty looks. I lost track after 16.

And they were all unjustified. It’s not like we were just sitting there drinking free Mai-Tais, blatantly abrogating our responsibility as parents. I tried shushing R first, and when it became evident she didn’t want Daddy, I handed her to Powerwoman and tended to L (who was having a psychosomatic/jealousy freak-out of her own). My wife took the baby and walked to the rear of the airplane, where she bopped her in the galley until calmness returned.

Yes, my baby was a raving lunatic for 15 minutes during our flight home from Hawaii. You know why? BECAUSE SHE IS A BABY. As I’ve written previously, when you fly with children, it almost a given that, at some point during the flight, they will act like children. This is not a catastrophe. It’s biology. It’s reality.

It’s also a perfect reason to focus on the positives. Little R, the object of 15 minutes of ire, also was a little angel for 4 hours and 15 minutes of that same flight. By my math, this means she cried for 5.5 percent of the trip home.

For any parent, this kind of performance is a resounding success. And until the kiddos are old enough to know better, we’ll take all the forward progress we can get.

What Does ‘Family-Friendly’ Really Mean?

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Daddy and daughters, enjoying the view.

Daddy and daughters, enjoying the view.

One could make the argument that the overall experience of family travel is dramatically different from the sum takeaways of, say, romantic or adventure getaways designed exclusively for grown-ups.

Still, just because you travel with kids doesn’t mean every vacation activity must revolve around them.

After four years of traveling extensively with at least one child (and two years traveling with two of them), Powerwoman and I have become firm believers that every family trip should include at least two or three activities and outings that we would do even if we didn’t have kids in tow. Sometimes, we might hit up a happening hotspot. Other times, we might check out a historic church or archaeological site (my wife is an archaeologist).

Saturday, here on Oahu, we dragged the kids on a 2-mile round-trip hike along the paved Makapu’u Lighthouse Trail.

The girls did fine for the first half-mile or so. Then the heat got to L. Upon her request, I carried her for about a quarter-mile. From there, we put her in the stroller and I carried R. This meant that one of us was carrying a child for the duration of the hike.

For some, the additional burden of schlepping 25-45 extra pounds might have detracted from the overall experience.

But for us, having the kids with us while we took in sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean and the windward side of Oahu made the hike even more epic. We watched waves. We spotted little red-headed birds. We marveled at turquoise waters. At one point, we even spied Molokai and Maui in the distance (this was particularly exciting for L, who is fascinated by Hawaiian geography).

Sure, by the time we got back to the trailhead, the girls were ready for a big lunch and long naps. And, yes, they might have been a bit more tired than they would have been otherwise. But considering L was still raving about the views at dinner, I’d say the experience made quite an impression.

These impressions, this sense of wonder, is the main reason Powerwoman and I travel with our kids. We know they can get these experiences doing typical family stuff; we also know they can get them doing certain grown-up stuff. Working to achieve a balance between these two approaches makes vacations more memorable for all of us.

Vacationing with the Spawn of Satan

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Calm, after one of the storms.

Calm, after one of the storms.

When everyone in the family is behaving relatively well, family travel can be one of the most fulfilling experiences as a parent. But when one of your children is in perpetual meltdown mode, a family trip can be downright awful.

Powerwoman and I lived this nightmare for the first three days of our current trip to Oahu. From the moment we landed until almost exactly three days into our trip, L’s “spirit of Aloha” included prolonged temper-tantrums, hitting, biting and more hideousness.

In short, my older daughter was a demon.

As you can imagine, managing her during this dark period was challenging to say the least. We had plenty of the typical traveling-with-a-4-year-old negotiations (“If you eat three spoonfuls of corn, you can color in the giant coloring pad”). We also grappled with yelling, mood swings and paranoia. Minding our little spawn of Satan even had physical ramifications; because the child loves to scratch limbs when she’s frustrated, my biceps look like I’ve been attacked by a small mountain lion.

Thankfully, Powerwoman and I persevered through the misery until L’s behavior improved.  Here are some of the secrets to our (recent) success.

  1. Ignore. It’s tempting to be excessively hands-on while traveling, but the best way to handle freak-outs still is to ignore them. Yes, this meant that my child was the one screaming like a banshee outside the Ali’I Luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center earlier in the week. It also meant that each of her major tantrums passed quickly, like tropical squalls.
  2. Be stern (when necessary). There’s a time and place for discipline on the road, and that time and place is different for every family. For us, it all came down to being kind; we raised our voices when L was being intentionally hurtful (usually to her sister), but otherwise kept an even-keeled, almost saccharine tone.
  3. Communicate. When one of the kids is having trouble behaving on the road, Powerwoman and I make a concerted effort to talk with each other about parenting strategies. I admit—I tend to analyze stuff too much (um, hello, I’m a blogger). Nevertheless, it’s always a good idea to remind your spouse that you two are teammates. Then, of course, you must play like them.
  4. Remember the big picture. There were times in the early part of this week during which I contemplated flying home early with our offending daughter. Then my wife reminded me: We have two kids. From that point on, for R’s sake, I redoubled my commitment to engineering a FUN vacation, knowing that, eventually, L would come around. Sure enough, she did.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass along the stuff that *doesn’t* work. No. 1 on my list: Sarcasm. The few times we applied it with L, she neither understood nor appreciated it as a concept. The use of sarcasm also can be debilitating for the grownups. Yes, in the heat of the moment, Powerwoman and I would ask rhetorically, “Is this really happening right now?” Looking back, though, the question itself was just hot air; the truth is that L’s bad behavior was happening, and the only way we could get past those hiccups was just to continue exploring.

Another no-no for me (and I’ve mentioned this before): The screen as a babysitter. In our family, we believe in disconnecting when away, which means minimal screen time of all kinds. Believe it or not, old-school alternatives such as crayons and paper, books and stuffed animals are just as good today as they have been for generations. Even for kids acting like the spawn of Satan himself.

What types of strategies do you implement when our child acts like the spawn of satan on family trips?

Waging War on Meltdowns in Mid-Air

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The cache; Hawaii or bust.

Part of the cache; Hawaii or bust.

From now until Sunday morning, y’all can refer to me as the General George S. Patton of family travel.

The now-legendary military leader, who fought in the European theater of World War II, was renowned for his strategy, his tactical precision, and the way he prepared his troops for battle. As we Villanos get ready for a five-hour flight en route to (two weeks on) Oahu, I’m attempting to pull a page from The Old Man’s book.

My task: To orchestrate a sufficient number of in-flight diversions/distractions for our uber-active and constantly-in-motion toddler, who has not flown since she learned how to walk.

Generally speaking, I believe family travel is best experienced when adventures happen organically. On airplanes, however, especially when you know your kid is going to have a rough time, a little bit of planning goes a long way.

I’ve decided to break down the four hours of cruising time (that is, everything but the 30 minutes during take-off and landing) into eight 30-minute segments. I like this strategy because the notion of spending 30 minutes on one task before moving to something else seems to match R’s attention span pretty well. What’s more, this same strategy worked with our older daughter on (much longer) flights to and from Europe.

Also, it allows for a certain degree of flexibility, because R undoubtedly will sleep for at least an hour or 90 minutes of the jaunt.

Here are some of the segment activities in my Plan A:

  • Pipe-cleaners and Cheerios for edible bracelet-making.
  • (Washable) Crayons and paper for coloring.
  • Books (that I and Powerwoman will read, of course).
  • Snacks (such as blueberries, pretzels, raisins, and more).
  • Easily removable stickers (for sticking anywhere and everywhere).

Plan B includes similar-but-different ideas: Dozens of Wikki Stix, Play-Doh (in small quantities), a dry-erase activity mat with dry-erase crayons, and glowy bracelets and necklaces, to name a few.

You might notice the absence of videos on this list. It’s because we’re sort of psycho about minimizing screen time for our girls. We’ll be ready with “Baby Einstein” programs and the PBS Parents Play & Learn app if we need them, but we really only plan to use those tactics as a last resort.

If all goes well, we’ll have one or two activities to spare by the time we touch down in Honolulu.

If the trip is a struggle—which, we understand, it could be—we’ll take in stride those dirty looks from fellow passengers and work together to get R through the experience quickly and quietly.

Either way, I’ll stand by my Patton-esque approach. In mid-air, you can never be too prepared to avert a meltdown. Beside, all of the diversions we don’t roll out en route we can save for the hotel room—or the trip home.

 What are some of the tactics you use to distract and/or entertain your kids when you fly?

Learning about Learning on the Road

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Who needs classrooms when you have this?

Who needs school when you have this?

Nothing embodies my perspective on education quite like the line from Springsteen’s “No Surrender” (off Born in the U.S.A., of course): “We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, then we ever learned in school.”

I certainly held this philosophy in journalism school; even then, I knew my parents were paying to hook me up with an alumni network, and that the real education would come on internships along the way.

Now, as a parent, my wife and I embrace the same sentiment with regard to family travel.

Yes, we regret pulling our kids out of their respective schools (click here for some tips). Yes, we recognize that, in terms of our nation’s standards-based curriculum, these absences create additional challenges (both for our girls and for the teachers). We even acknowledge that there are some social ramifications of our girls being “those girls” who jet off to Yosemite or New York or the Cotswolds.

Despite all of these issues, we still think exploring through travel is the best way to teach our kids about their world.

I’ve been pondering this subject a lot lately.

My wife and I are moving the girls to London for four months this fall, and, this week, we signed a lease on a fabulous two-story flat (it’s in Maida Vale, for those of you scoring at home).

Then, earlier this week, my buddy, Rainer Jenss, wrote this thought-provoking story for AFAR magazine about his experiences on a one-year round-the-world journey with his wife and sons (who were 8 and 11, respectively, at the time).

In the story, Rainer explains his rationale for pulling his kids out of school for the trip like this: “One of the primary reasons we chose to take a yearlong sabbatical with our kids was to enhance their education; to help them learn things no [school] could ever teach them.” Then, he offers this:

    “We all want our children to excel academically. One surefire way to improve their chances for success is to get them more engaged and interested in what they’re being taught. Science: Check out the glaciers at Yellowstone, hike a volcano in Hawaii, or snorkel in the Caribbean or the Great Barrier Reef. History: Visit Colonial Williamsburg, vacation in Rome, or tour Egypt. Social Studies: How about China, India, or, of course, Washington, D.C.”

To be clear: Turning family vacations into learning experiences takes hard work.

You can’t just sloth by the pool all day; you need to be engaged with your kids for pretty much all of their waking hours. You also often need to be engaged well after they’ve gone to bed. The day before I introduced L to Muir Woods National Monument near our home, I was up until 2 a.m. studying stuff to tell her about redwoods. I’m sure I wasn’t the first dad to play that game.

All of this effort usually pays huge dividends. My older daughter still talks about the Sequoia sempervirens she saw that day at Muir Woods. Rainer writes about how one of his sons fell in love with photography after being exposed to it on their year-long trip.

Heck, I think even The Boss would agree (that first record led to a few others).

So get out there. And embrace that learning can happen in any place, at any time, about any subject. Recognizing these truths arguably is the most important education your kids ever will get. It’s also not a lesson they’ll ever learn in the traditional classroom environment.

Diaper-Changing on Airplane Seats: Just Plain Gross

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These + floor = Peace. For now.

These + floor = Peace. For now.

I’m the first person to admit the way most airlines treat families these days is atrocious. I’d also be among the first parents to start chanting obscenities at said airlines for denying us basic necessities such as changing tables in the lavatories of commercial flights. Heck, some people have called me a “tiger father” for my in-your-face perspective on the subject.

That said, let me get one thing very clear: Changing diapers full of urine and fecal matter on surfaces where other humans have to sit is just plain wrong.

Perhaps this explains why I’ve had such a hard time digesting a recent essay on The Daily Beast by author Philip Shishkin. I *want* to love the piece. In it, Shiskin recounts a horrific series of events on a flight with his baby daughter from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. (The Twitter version: Father’s outrage over airline’s chronic inability to treat family travelers w/respect ends with flight crew calling the cops. Seriously.)

That the pilot called the po-po on this guy is atrocious. The fact that a flight attendant told the guy to change his kid on the floor is awful (I know; I’ve been there and done that). Heck, I even second Shiskin’s outrage over airlines discontinuing early boarding for families.

But to muster an ounce of sympathy for a guy who brazenly admits to changing his kid on the flight attendant jump seats—then gets all indignant about it? I just can’t.

Why do fellow parents think it’s OK to change dirty diapers in plane seats anyway? It’s not OK for grownups to drop trou to conduct No. 1 or 2 in the middle of the airplane cabin, so why would we think it’s OK to change our kids there?

Put yourself in other people’s shoes. If, in mid-change, your neighbor’s half-naked kid went all Old Faithful on you, don’t you think you’d be—wait for it—pissed? If you were a solo traveler, traveling for business in your best suit, wouldn’t you poo-poo a seat smeared with poop?

On a more basic level, if you were in the middle of a six-hour flight, how would you feel about unintentionally getting up close and personal with (or within smelling distance of) diarrhea?

The bottom line: Seats are for sitting in; bathrooms are for tending to excrement.

As sad as it is that some airlines no longer provide changing tables in on-board lavatories, changing dirty diapers where other people sit should never be an alternative.

If the author of this piece had followed the rules (i.e., changed his kid on the floor) and quietly aired his grievances through appropriate channels, I’m guessing he wouldn’t have had his little run-in with the law.

(He probably also would have gotten some travel vouchers, FWIW.)

Sure, we family travelers want to change the way airlines treat us when we fly, but to accomplish this, we must operate within the confines of the current system—no matter how ridiculous those confines might be. Listen to flight attendants. Respect fellow passengers whenever possible. And please, y’all, don’t be a Shishkin.

The Indomitable Need for Travel

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April 15, 2013.

The more I read about the aftermath of Monday’s horrific bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, I admit it: The more I feel part of me longing for a bubble.

A bubble for my friends, my parents, for Powerwoman, and our girls. A bubble to protect us from the haters, the misunderstood, and those who are just plain evil. A bubble to keep us safe from awfulness we can’t explain.

On many levels, it’s an intoxicating thought: A haven, a real-life Valinor, for everyone I love most. It’s also antithetical to all of the things I love about travel.

I travel for the unknown, the uncertain, the undiscovered. I travel to soak up more about our vast world and the people in it—for better or, in some cases, for worse. I travel to experience different cultural backgrounds, different foods, different perspectives.

Put simply, I travel because there’s too much out there not to see.

This philosophy is such a fundamental component of who I am as a person that it also has become a major part of how my wife and I have chosen to raise our daughters. Together, Powerwoman and I strive constantly to teach L and R that the world is a wonderful and magical place. The only way we truly can back up these claims is to show them.

Which, of course, means that bubble is never an option. As tempting as it is to internalize a tragedy by minimizing (what we perceive to be) risk, now more than ever we must look outward and keep traveling.

I’m not saying we can’t let the assholes win; it’s more fundamental than that.

For me, it comes down to perspective that echoes Patton Oswalt: Yes, evil exists in this world, but it’s a small and ugly part of a planet overflowing with good. We owe it to our children to keep exploring.