Tag Archive for: advice

Wandering Pod in The Washington Post

/in ,

Tip No. 1: Have potty will road trip.

Despite this very blog, despite the fact that I’ve now parented THREE human children, I often forget I’m an “expert” on the subject of family travel. To me, a lot of this stuff is just life. It’s how we roll.

Every now and again, however, I’m reminded that people actually look to me for perspective. Such as earlier this week, when a reporter for The Washington Post featured me in her “On Parenting” article about tips for surviving summer road trips with kids.

The piece, titled, “How to conquer 4 common road trip challenges to have less chaos and more fun,” appeared online yesterday. I believe it will appear in print this coming weekend.

When I did the interview, I thought I might be one of 10 or 12 “experts” she was interviewing for the piece. Turns out I ended up being one of two central voices in the story. The other source: a super-smart woman named Lynne Ticknor, education director of the Parenting Education Program in Kensington, Maryland.

Overall, the story provides a cornucopia of tips for making family road trips easier. I share a bunch of tidbits I previously have offered here. It’s pretty neat to see them all organized into one single piece.

Please read the story. Please pass it along. And please heed my advice. I know I’ll be reviewing the pointers next month as the girls and I gear up for an 8-day SoCal down-and-back without Mom. Who knows? Maybe reading my own insights even will inspire me to try something new.

Three’s a charm for family travel coverage

/in , ,
Disco-dancing in Yosemite
Disco-dancing in Yosemite

Our not-so-little-anymore pod got some nice ink this week, with three separate family travel stories in two different outlets.

The first of the stories, a service piece, appeared in our local metro daily, The (Santa Rosa, Calif.) Press-Democrat, and spotlighted 10 tips for easier holiday travel with the kids. In addition to the tips themselves, the story included six pictures of the girls from various adventures over the last few years. Oh, and if you can think of any tips that I left out, please share them in the comment field.

The second and third of the stories, both of which appeared on the Expedia Viewfinder blog, comprised photos (and related captions) from our multigenerational trip to Yosemite National Park this spring.

To read the better of the two Expedia stories, click here.

For more pieces like these three, please stay tuned. Over the next few months I’ll have family travel articles in Family Fun magazine, USA Today’s Go Escape, the Expedia Viewfinder, Alaska Beyond magazine (that’s the in-flight for Alaska), and others.

Wandering Pod hits BBVA Compass blog

/in ,

This trip was cheap!

This trip was cheap!

I never shy away from acting as a family travel expert—it’s a title in which I take great pride. That’s precisely why I was eager to help friend and fellow freelance writer Katie Morell when she called me asking for input on an article.

That article, titled, “Affordable Wanderlust: Traveling with Children,” was published on a BBVA Compass blog earlier this week.

The story takes the format of a Q&A, with Katie asking me a series of questions about how families can travel as families on a budget. My favorite tips: Bundle air and hotel through an OTA (such as Expedia!) to save money, consider vacation rentals so you can prepare your own food, leverage the “lapchild” distinction as long as you possibly can.

I also really appreciated her question about how families should handle incidental spending on mementos such as souvenirs. Here’s my response:

This type of spending can really add up. We will set a limit for each child. We might tell our oldest child (the one that can do math) that she gets $50 per trip and then allow her to make choices on how she spends that money. For our middle child, we will tell her she can get three things within the same dollar amount but that we will track how much she spends. We try to make it fun and tie it into a math lesson.

What are your tips for family travel on a budget? Please share them in the comment field below.

Confessions of a 3-year-old cruiser

/in , , ,

Aunt Sherri and Tennyson.

Aunt Sherri and Tennyson.

We family travel writers can pen article after article about how we think our kids enjoy family trips. Nothing, however, beats getting insight from the kids themselves.

That’s precisely why I *love* the latest article from a friend and former editor of mine, Sherri Eisenberg. The article, titled “Confessions of a 3-year-old cruiser,” ran today on Yahoo Travel and outlines the travel perspective of Tennyson, Sherri’s 3-year-old niece, with whom Sherri recently took some cruises.

The format of the article is wonderfully simple; Aunt Sherri lists seven different quotes from Tennyson, then expounds on each sentiment with context and thoughts of her own. My favorite of the kid’s quotes: “Bring some of your own toys…you don’t know what they’ll have.” A close second: “When you get onboard, eat something, then go right to the pool.”

(OK, I also really like this one: “You should eat lots of treats.”)

Powerwoman and I haven’t had the opportunity to expose our trio of girls to cruising—yet. It’s on our list for 2017, and we can’t wait. Perhaps we’ll take some of Tennyson’s advice. After all, the little ones always seem to know best.

Conquering fear of potties on the road

/in ,

For a while, this was the only potty L would use.

For a while, this was the only potty L would use.

We certainly have had our fair share of bathroom dramas away from home. Like the time L realized she was terrified of the “magic eye” automatic toilet flushers. Or the trip that R decided hand dryers are the corporeal manifestation of Lucifer. Or, most recently, the day that L followed a prodigious session on the toilet with a, “Look at my turd!” that echoed in the bathroom for what seemed like an eternity.

The list could go on for pages. And, when you’re traveling with little ones, it usually does. So, when a friend and loyal reader texted me last week asking for advice about how to deal with her daughter’s aversion to public toilets on the road, I sympathized completely.

Sadly, I didn’t have much to offer.

I mean, sure, there are all sorts of web sites (here and here, for instance) with formal advice from doctors—people who say things like “work on decreasing fears” and “model appropriate coping.”

My friend didn’t want any of that gobbledy-gook. She just wanted practical tips. She wanted to know what she could do to get her kid to make a @#!&@ pee without (wasting 30 minutes and) enduring a total meltdown.

I started by directing her to stuff I’ve written about the subject before (here and here). Then I told her the situation sucks but it gets better over time. I held back on my third piece of advice, largely because I didn’t want to discourage her. Instead (and now that this reader is back home), I’ll share it here: Pray for an accident.

Allow me to reiterate: I think an accident is the best way for a kid to overcome fear of using toilets in public. Because suffering the consequences of refusal is a powerful tool.

This opinion was forged out of first-hand experience with L, who grappled with this mortifying lesson during our first solo trip together (to Los Angeles).

I knew she had to go from the moment we arrived at LAX, but she simply refused to go. Then, on the plane, the flight attendant sensed what was up and offered to help; my kid refused again. Finally, at about 30,000 feet, somewhere between the animal crackers and the juice box, she couldn’t hold it any longer. I discovered the accident when I spotted a tiny puddle on her seat cushion. And I sprang into action.

Because I was worried about how she’d do with the whole potty-in-public thing, I was prepared, and had stashed a change of clothes in a Ziploc in the overhead bin, ready to go. As soon as I noticed pee on the seat, I grabbed the clothes, picked up L, and whisked her into the forward lavatory.

Yes, she was upset. No, she didn’t sit on that potty without a fight. But eventually, she did it. Somehow we even managed salvage the pee-soaked skirt for a trip to the dry-cleaner at home.

The rest, as they say, is history; since that day, despite minimal hemming and hawing every now and again, L hasn’t suffered the public toilets too much. She doesn’t necessarily like public potties, but she dislikes the embarrassment (and discomfort) of a public accident more. In the name of poetry, L even has started harassing her sister—who is still in diapers—about how it’s time for *her* to get with the potty program.

The lessons: Be prepared. Be patient. And weather an accident. No, this methodology is not ideal. But from personal experience, the only way to go from that situation is up.

How have your children overcome their issues of using the potty in public when traveling?

Non-Tech Options to Pass a Long Flight

/in ,

R's window after 10.5 hours in the air.

R’s window after 10.5 hours in the air.

We’ve been home in the U.S. now for almost two weeks, and we’re just about settled back into the swing of things. We’re (almost) all unpacked. The kids have (just about) gotten over their jet lag. The lot of us has rediscovered our love for the true American pastime: Driving cars.

All of this has helped Powerwoman and I glean some healthy perspective on the logistics of our return. In particular, we can’t believe how easy the flight home really was.

Allow me to reiterate: The flight home was 10.5 hours. And our kids rocked it like pros.

Before I share the secrets to our success, it’s worth noting that we are not raising our children to be technology addicts. Yes, we allowed them to watch a few shows on their Kindle Fire devices over the course of the trip home. But this screen time was by far the exception instead of the norm; generally speaking, we used “Doc McStuffins” and “Peppa Pig” as rewards for good behavior at other times on the flight.

For the most part, our strategy comprised three tenets: Arts-and-crafts, story time and geography.

The arts-and-crafts was a no-brainer; both girls exhibited a true passion for creativity during our time in London, so Powerwoman and I made provisions to indulge this interest on the plane. We started with stickerbooks. We moved on to basic coloring (I pre-packaged two Ziploc bags with crayons and markers for each of them so they wouldn’t fight).

At cruising altitude, I broke out the window clings and let each girl decorate her window (we were sitting window-middle, window-middle in two consecutive rows; an intentional effort to divide and conquer).

Later in the flight, when R took the first of her two brief naps, L and I made paper-chain necklaces for each of the flight attendants—gifts that scored us free wing pins, free drinks (Scotch for Dad; milk for daughter) and enough special treatment to make the Big Girl feel like a VIP.

We interspersed art time with story time. This didn’t only comprise books on those aforementioned Kindles; Powerwoman and I took turns telling stories and encouraging both girls to make up their own. Some of this make-your-own-story play was open-ended; we also mined ideas from Rory’s Story Cubes, a product about which I blogged last fall.

Finally, we passed time on our LHR-SFO flight with interactive geography lessons. Using the real-time map feature on the seatback television screens, we prompted the girls to describe what they saw out the window and match it up to where we were in the arc of our flight.

Through this method, L learned once and for all that Greenland isn’t green, and that Nunavut (one of her favorite words to say) is covered in snow. R was able to distinguish mountains from plains.

Looking back on the flight, perhaps the only hiccup was that L didn’t actually nap until about three minutes before we disembarked. With all of these fun activities to keep her occupied in mid-air, perhaps that partially was our fault.

What are your secrets for surviving a long flight when traveling with young kids?

Great Family Travel Book by a Good Friend

/in ,

Trust me: This book kicks ass.

Trust me: This book kicks ass.

I don’t have a monopoly on great family travel tips; one of the best things about covering this subject is that I am part of a cadre of fellow writers who have helpful tips and do an expert job communicating them on a consistent basis.

One of my faves: Mara Gorman, she of the Mother of all Trips blog.

Mara has been doing the whole family travel thing way longer than I have; her kids are more than twice as old as mine. She was writing about being in London before we even knew we were coming here. Her blog is, IMHO, one of the very best examples of what a blog should be—it’s informative, insightful and, most important, fun.

Naturally, then, when I learned Mara was writing a family travel book, I couldn’t wait to read it. That book, The Family Traveler’s Handbook, came out last month. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Mara quotes me in the book. I also gave her a quote for the back jacket. But I wouldn’t have participated in the project or commented on the project if I wasn’t certain it would kick ass. And it does. Majorly.

Some of her advice is practical. Some of it is logistical. Some it comes across as common sense. And it’s all great.

Perhaps the best part of the book: It’s not too long. When I reviewed it a few months back, I was able to read the thing in one night. For busy parents leading busy lives, that’s a good thing. But don’t take my word for it. Check out Mara’s site, read a sample of the book for yourself, then buy a copy at Amazon. You can thank me for the suggestion anytime.