At first thought, a vacation with your family sounds wonderful. It is something we dream about all year long. Then the moment of dreaming stops and the vacation begins.
As the first moments of glee passes, the true feelings that go along with a family vacation begin to set in, too. The bickering begins. The little annoyances start to rear their ugly heads. You want to scream. You want to go home. But wait, you can’t do either of those things. There is still more vacation to share. What do you do? How do you survive this family vacation without killing the family? Here are some tips to help:
Make Time For Your Own Kind Of Fun
The family doesn’t have to spend every moment together. Yes, if the children are young, one parent will have to stay with the kids at every moment. Yet, you can take turns watching the children. When you have a break, do something you enjoy. If this is just lying by the pool reading a book, do it. You don’t have to spend every moment of the vacation doing what the crowd wants. You can take a break from your family and your family can take a break from you. Just make sure you allow others the same opportunity to enjoy this break, as well.
Capture Happy Moments
If your family is the happiest while eating pizza at some corny café along the way, capture that happiness in film. Don’t just capture the pictures while you are posing at some national monuments. Capture the moments when your family is truly happy on the trip.
Know Your Family’s Limits And Your Own
If you know your family can not handle six straight hours in the car riding, without stopping, don’t try it. If you know your little one needs to stop every hour or so to run around a bit, to get rid of energy, try to work this into your schedule. You know your family and you know yourself. Don’t try to push yourselves into doing things that will make anyone, cranky, uncomfortable or unhappy. It will just make the trip unhappy.
Give Yourself Plenty Of Time
Give yourself and your family plenty of time, to get to that plane, or to get to that destination. You should plan an extra half hour or hour into your travel time. You never know what will happen.
Don’t Ban Electronics
You and your kids love the electronics. You are used to having them. Banning them completely from the car or your destination is just asking for disaster. If you want your children to try new things, you can ask them to put them away or to use them less once they each their destination.
Family vacations should be fun. Family vacations should be the highlight of our year. They can be this and more, as long as we don’t expect too much out of our family or ourselves.