Tag Archive for: family travel

Finally, a Scientific Explanation for Hating on Family Travelers

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A scene of the crime. Or is it?

A scene of the crime. Or is it?

It always has seemed so irrational; the way ordinary, fun-loving people embark an aircraft and suddenly hate families how Tonya Harding hated (hates?) Nancy Kerrigan.

They stare. They snivel. They seethe. Sometimes, they even sneer.

We encounter these terrible humans just about every time we fly the so-called “friendly” skies, and every time we meet them, we think to ourselves, “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

Now, thankfully, we have an answer: According to researchers from King’s College in London (including the very first UK professor of “aerospace medicine), many mental processes are impaired at altitude. Read between the lines and this discovery means, quite simply, that flying makes people dumb.

Finally, everything is illuminated. The guy who changed his baby’s diaper on flight attendant jump seats. The dude who slapped a crying baby on an airplane’s descent. The couple that bribed fellow passengers on a cross-country flight with goodie bags.

All of these people behaved badly. And all of them were, obviously, “impaired.”

Thanks to David Gradwell, all of this bad behavior makes perfect sense; for better or for worse, the very act of flying has turned our brethren against us.

As the objects of derision and hatred, we family travelers COULD blame the airlines. All this time, we’ve put up with lousy food, rising prices and dwindling benefits for enduring the additional challenge of traveling with kids. Now we find out these companies are sitting back idly while they poison our countrymen (and women) against us. The bastards!

I suppose we also could blame our fellow passengers. They willingly board these planes, tacitly accepting anything and everything that occurs as a result.

Sure, they might end up next to a former wide receiver for the LFL with whom they decide to join the mile-high club. But they also might end up sitting behind a baby who is acting like a baby, and therefore (to them, people) deserves life in a North Korean prison.

Instead, dear readers, I offer a different solution: Forgiveness.

Our fellow passengers know not what they do when they call our daughters “demons.” They aren’t themselves when they encourage us to “get a muzzle.” Instead of taking offense at these types of messages, from now on, I will look at the messengers and feel pity, or just nod and smile.

The way I see it, turning the other cheek like this is the very least we can do. After all, like Gradwell says, life at 30,000 feet makes us all do some pretty crazy stuff.

Exploring San Francisco’s New-and-Improved Exploratorium

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Exploring. At a place made for it.

Exploring. At a place made for it.

It took explorer Sir Edmund Hillary two years of trying before he became the first climber to summit Mount Everest in 1953.

Judging from our family’s recent visit to the Exploratorium in its new digs in San Francisco, it could take us just as long to explore all there is to see at our home city’s most exciting science museum.

I went with the girls and my parents (we usually call them Grammy and Grampy Power). We visited last week, exactly one week after the facility opened in Pier 15 on the Embarcadero. All told, we spent the better part of three hours there. During that time, we didn’t even get to see one third of the museum.

Granted, part of this was because we were moving at toddler speed; that is to say, we lingered at every exhibit for at least five minutes so little R could get a sense of what it was, what it did, and whether it was going to scare the bejeezus out of her.

But, really, our experience proves a much simpler truth: This museum is HUGE.

In other words, if you’re visiting with your kids a) allow a full day and swing by the café for lunch and b) don’t be a Clark Griswold about seeing everything because it’s virtually impossible.

As is the case with most museums, certain exhibits likely will resonate with different kids differently. L, who turns four at the end of May, *loved* all of the magnetic stuff—she spent 20 minutes building washer bridges between two powerful magnets and another 20 at a different magnet exhibit, making afros out of magnetized sand. R, on the other hand, who just celebrated her 19-month birthday, showed little to no interest in the magnets, and preferred getting creative with wooden blocks (see that picture, with Grampy Power, above).

That said, both of my kids loved the “Listening” exhibits; the Villano family went all Von Trapp and spent an extended jam session in the xylophone room that had onlookers (horrified or) in stitches.

Another favorite among the pint-sized members of our family: The “fog bridge” outside the museum, a public sculpture that replicates the sensation of walking through an active fog bank.

My only complaint about the new Exploratorium: The place needs more changing tables.

Yes, every women’s room had at least one. The men’s rooms, however, were another story. I understand the age-old assumptions about traditional gender roles. But, scientists, it’s San Francisco! And in the name of Frank Oppenheimer, we dads like to change a few nappies every once in a while, too.

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 Book That Will Change the Way You Travel With Kids

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bellowsbook

Inspiration, Bellows-style.

As someone who writes about family travel for a living, I understand and appreciate how difficult it is to cover the subject in a way that appeals to an audience comprising diverse perspectives.

That’s why I love Keith Bellows’ new book so much.

The book, titled, “100 Places That Can Change Your Child’s Life: From Your Backyard to the Ends of the Earth” (National Geographic, 2013) takes a look at destinations that offer something for everyone. Most of the destinations (Cape Cod, Berlin, etc.) aren’t new; the format in which the book presents certain information, however, definitely is.

Destinations are organized into geographic regions, and each write-up works like a separate magazine feature. The main attraction: a service-oriented mainbar about the most family-friendly stuff to do.

In addition, peppered throughout each chapter are call-out boxes and sidebars with specific information for which any of us would kill while on the road with our kids.

Some of this marginalia includes:

  • “Buy Worthy,” a box that lists authentic products that express a sense of place.
  • “Fast Facts,” which incorporates nutty trivia that will surprise your kids.
  • “Know Before You Go,” a compendium of books, music, movies and other media to give you the sense of a place before you buy the ticket.
  • “Nest,” which comprises family-friendly hotel recommendations.
  • “Yum!” which chronicles where kids will find food (and atmosphere) they’ll actually like.

Additional sidebars include information about insider tips, neat cultural objects, organizations working in the field that can provide visitors with more in-depth information and data about how you and your kids can help change people’s lives when you travel.

These sidebars are great because they’re digestible, easy-to-find and packed with worthwhile information.

They also work because they contain material that most other family travel offerings do not.

No, the book isn’t perfect. Without question, the work would benefit from more images—the only non-text specimens are icons and drawings or sketches. Also, cost is one data point that is obviously absent from the discussion, leaving one to assume that most of the trips mentioned therein cost a pretty penny. (Believe it or not, many families can’t actually afford a trip to see the Pyramids of Giza.)

Still, if for no other reason than to generate family travel ideas, this book is worth a read. Check it out.

‘National Park Week’ Great for Family Travel

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ltree

L, meet lichen. Lichen, meet L.

This weekend kicks off what is arguably one of my favorite weeks of the year: National Park Week, an 8-day stretch during which admission to all 401 of the parks in our national system is totally free.

For family travelers, this means now is a great time to get out and explore some of our nation’s biggest treasures.

Heck, Monday is Earth Day, so why not celebrate in a national park?

Many parks will be rolling out special programs all week long. Some of these programs are interactive; others are more educational in nature. In previous years my family has participated in art programs and guided hikes. We also have enjoyed storytelling sessions like this one at Buffalo National River in Arkansas.

(My wife, the archaeologist, always has longed to join up with one of the full-moon walks at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico.)

Then, of course, there’s Volunteer Day on April 27, during which your entire family can get elbows dirty and participate in trash pick-up, trail maintenance or other forms of hard labor typically reserved only for rangers and docents.

If you’re part of a family that likes to explore parks independently, take advantage of the free admission and plan an outing all your own. One great resource: National Geographic Secrets of the National Parks: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Experiences Beyond the Tourist Trail, a new book by friend and fellow travel writer, Bob Howells.

As for us, we Villanos will be celebrating National Park Week with a mid-week jaunt from our home in Sonoma County, California down to Muir Woods National Monument, where we’ll have picnic and a morning under the redwoods.

Last time we went, R was so little that I had to carry her in an Ergo. This time, I’m sure she’ll give big sister L quite a race.

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.

Take a Seat. (Literally.)

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Our new favorite seat. (No, that's not R.)

Our new favorite seat. (No, that’s not R.)

Because we spend so much time away from home, because little R is one of those kids who would scale the Eiffel Tower if left unattended, we’re always looking for good travel booster seats to bring along.

For most of her toddler life, we’ve used an early-model variation of this one.

Now, however, we’ve got a new hands-down fave: the Go Anywhere Booster Seat with a 5-point harness, a new offering from Polar Gear Baby.

A representative for Polar Gear recently sent me a sample of the seat to try and we gave it a whirl over Easter when we used it for two meals at my mother-in-law’s house. The baby didn’t seem to mind the new digs, which I interpreted as a de facto thumbs’ up. As for Powerwoman and I, we were generally impressed.

The pros:

  • The nylon (they call it PVC) material was easy to wipe clean; a necessity when your little eater is as much of a slob as ours.
  • The 5-point harness really did keep the baby in one place (as opposed to other seats, which allow her to bend at the waist and bonk her head on the table).
  • The seat folds up into a lightweight shoulder bag—a feature that generally is great but (admittedly) didn’t come in too handy on our car trip to see the inlaws.

The biggest con: Because the seat lacked some sort of cushion on the part behind the baby’s head, she bonked her noggin on the back of the chair every time she leaned back.

(It’s also worth noting that the seat doesn’t come with a tray—this is a standard feature on many other models, including our Fisher-Price one—so if you’re looking for that kind of setup, you probably are better off buying something else. FWIW, this omission didn’t bother us.)

The bottom line: We *definitely* will use the Go Anywhere seat again. And for about $40 (click here), it’s worth a try in your traveling family, too.

Parents as Censors: Modern Family Travel Reality?

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Bad TV at 30,000 feet? This is not the answer.

Bad TV at 30,000 feet? This is not the answer.

By now you probably have read about the incident on a United Airlines flight last month in which a pilot misconstrued a father’s request to shut off an inappropriate movie as a security threat.

Details of how things played out are ugly: Inappropriate scene came on, family objected, family asked politely that the movie be turned off, one thing led to another, pilot diverted plane and called the feds. (For a good rundown, read this synopsis/analysis piece by my friend and fellow blogger, Amy Graff.)

Lost in the ridiculousness of this story is an issue with which many of us family travelers grapple frequently: The challenge of protecting our children’s innocence when we fly the supposedly friendly skies.

In the case of this particular family, since the movie was “Alex Cross,” I’m guessing it was a violent scene that they felt crossed the line. During our travels, Powerwoman and I have experienced eerily similar sentiments about equally inappropriate subjects of in-flight films: overt drug use, homophobia and violent sex scenes.

When we are outraged, we do what it sounds like this family did (at least at first): We complain politely to the flight attendants.

Usually, this gets us nowhere.

After that, we take a two-pronged approach. On the plane, we use books, word games and other tactics (including “Sofia the First” on our Kindle Fire) to distract the kids from looking at the television screens. Once we’re back at home, we write letters to the respective airlines to formalize our criticisms that way.

To be honest, this follow-up strategy usually doesn’t work either. Kids are drawn to television like moths to fire, and no matter how hard we try to distract them on the plane, they always seem to figure out a way to watch at least a part of the action.

(Then, of course, they ask incessant questions about what they saw.)

Adding insult to injury, I think the best “response” we’ve gotten from one of our letters was a $250 voucher to fly the same disappointing airline again.

The bottom line: If we, as parents in today’s society, want to wield some sort of influence on the types of material to which our children are exposed while flying, we simply must be more active censors.

I’m not saying I expect all airlines to limit themselves to PG-rated content for the sake of us families—trust me, I’ll never take that kind of entitled perspective. But I am saying that when we parents fly with kids, we never know what kind of images might be on those airplane screens, and we better be ready with more palatable material to divert their attention in a pinch.

Books, movies, TV shows, word games, Wikki Stix—we should ALWAYS have this stuff at the ready on a plane.

Amy, my blogger buddy, closes her piece with another great suggestion: Be mindful of the ability to control an airplane’s content when you book. “Look for an airline with individual screens on seatbacks so your kids can watch Nickelodeon throughout the flight,” she writes.

Hear, here, my friends. The more proactive you can be when you fly with kids, the better.

Love Letter to a Champion of Family Travelers

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Don't hate me because she's my traveling partner.

Don’t hate me because she’s my traveling partner.

I’ve never met Susan Reimer, but if and when I do, I’m buying her a beer (or non-alcoholic beverage of her choice).

Earlier this week, she published a piece in The Baltimore Sun imploring airplane passengers to be nicer to solo moms traveling with kids. The story, titled, “Babies on a Plane,” chronicled Reimer’s observations while flying across the country for the Easter/Passover holiday. And those observations weren’t pretty. The two biggies:

  • Solo moms, laden with strollers and other gear, managing unhappy babies and kids.
  • Passengers, laden with judgment, shooting death glares toward the aforementioned moms (and their aforementioned little ones).

For me, these observations are nothing new; I’ve experienced them first-hand when I travel with my kids, and I wrote a ton for Parenting about the larger problem (see here and here). What was different, however, and, to be honest, intoxicatingly wonderful, was Reimer’s tone.

She was firm yet hopeful. Didactic, but not annoyingly so. At one point, she came out and asked, point blank: “How about if we start [changing our ways] with a little sympathy?”

Then, with this snip, she transported herself to family travel-writing nirvana:

    “Why reward mom’s sincere attempt to keep family ties vibrant with your arrogance? Why not praise her endurance and her juggling act and offer to take the baby on your lap for a bit so she can drink her Diet Coke in peace? Or visit the bathroom? Why not turn around and distract the irritated kid kicking your seat with your bracelet, your funny faces or one of your pretzels? Why not offer a few words of praise as a mom grabs up all her stuff and, with a kid by the hand and another on the hip, gamely tries to exit the plane?”

I applaud the author not only for her message, but in the way she delivered it—with humor, humility and a hearty dose of chutzpah. Reimer’s column likely isn’t going to change a lot of minds, but every scintilla of sensibility makes a difference on this issue, and we family travelers need all the help we can get.

Babyproofing Away from Home

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These things save lives.

These things save lives.

Our older daughter never required much in terms of baby-proofing; when she was a toddler, we told her to stay away from stuff like cabinets and oven knobs, and she listened.

R, however, the baby in this family, is another story entirely.

We liken the kid to a two-legged raccoon; if something can be fiddled with in any way, girl will fiddle with it, then fiddle again. This means we’ve got child-proof latches and locks on just about everything here at home.

It also means that when we hit the road for a week at vacation rentals all over the world, we must scramble to make sure the kid doesn’t get herself (or us) into trouble.

That’s why I love the Travel Childproofing Safety Kit from Travel-Tot.

I heard about the kit from a bunch of friends, but didn’t really come to appreciate it until reading about it on Shelly Rivoli’s Travels with Baby blog (which, by the way, kicks major ass).

According to Rivoli, the kit comes in a suitcase the size of a small shoebox and comprises a host of child-proofing tools that traveling families can administer in just about any place on the road. Items requiring application are fastened with non-damaging adhesive strips provided in the kit. Components require no tools and can be installed in about five minutes.

All told, the kit includes a finger pinch guard, electrical outlet plug covers, foam corner guards, a door knob cover, a cord wind-up, a sliding door lock, a cabinet lock, multipurpose straps, water thermometer and bandages.

There’s also a forehead thermometer and this genius little door-hanger that says, “Shhh, Travel-Tot sleeping,” so your neighbors in a hotel know not to crank the Rhianna after 10 p.m.

The price: $34.95. Sure sounds like a good investment to me.