Traveling with Children

Many years back when we had just three children (and one was a baby), we flew from Japan to California, bought a mini-van, loaded up our then three children (the youngest an infant), Granny Tea, an ice-chest and some supplies and drove to the Great Lakes area. Granny Tea flew back to California from there and we continued our journey through Canada and into Fairbanks, Alaska, our next duty station.

We took our time, stopping at museums and historical sites along the way, visiting roadside parks, streams, and lakes as we found them. From CA to the Great Lakes area we stayed in hotels or with friends at night. The journey through Canada and Alaska was an extended camping trip.

Granny Tea was welcome to come with us on the second leg, but she said she had to work. Later she confessed that she'd not taken the time off of work because she was afraid that she would be fed up with us all by the third day and she wanted an escape plan. She was astonished at how well the children traveled. They didn't fight, bicker, whine, or complain for extended periods of time (they were human children, not plaster saints, so there was always some behavior in need of remediation on a daily basis).

That was perhaps our longest road trip, but we've also taken the entire crew (of seven) around the Olympic Peninsula, down the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California and back again, and we've traveled with the Headmaster on some of his Air Force business trips from time to time (on our own expense, dear taxpayers). Our Progeny are good traveling companions, though I say it who shouldn't.

My brothers and I were not such pleasant companions on journeys when we were small. We fought- physically- we whined, cried, tattled, and kept up a constant barrage of 'he's touching/looking at me/ on my side/ looking out my window/ bugging me/ breathing my air.' I'm pretty sure we were intolerable enough that somebody should have tossed one of us out the window. I vote that they should have started with my brothers.

One reason my children are better traveling companions than my brothers and I were is, I believe, because my children are just nicer people (see above).=) But another reason is because their father and I do not tolerate the intolerable. No matter what we say to the contrary, when we do not have a consistent, measurable standard of behavior and a consistent response to unpleasant behavior, we are tolerating it. Repeatedly requesting that this behavior stop and getting louder with each request is tolerating it (and that's my tendency when I'm falling down on the job), not correcting it. I'm not going to tell you how to correct it, whether it's that dreaded and yet oh, so biblical spanking, pulling over and making everybody do push-ups, or making everybody hug each other, or insisting on complete quiet for five minutes every time somebody bickers, or whatever you do, the most important thing is that the response be consistent, and that it be a response to the behavior and not a reaction to how you feel at that moment (not, I'm not as good at this as I would like, but it is my goal).

My father's rule seemed to be that when he was annoyed, we were in trouble. The trouble was that his annoyance level was a constantly shifting target. There was no way to tell what would annoy or when enough was enough. There was also no personal benefit to being pleasant if everybody else wasn't on board, because when his annoyance level peaked, he just reached an arm back over the seat and started swinging. It didn't matter if you were the cause, the victim, or an innocent bystander, you had just as much chance of being in the path of that Arm of Doom as everybody else in the backseat. My father was 6 foot 2 or so in his socks, and he was a large man. When I say the Arm of Doom, I am not indulging in light hyperbole.

So rule number one for traveling is the same rule you'll need for parenting- have consistent rules and consistent responses. If it is against the rules for your offspring to call one another names, then it should be just as much against the rules and merit the same level of response whether the most recent episode has completely driven you out of your gourd or whether it makes you want to write a blog post about it because they were so clever and amusing with their name-calling.

Here is our second rule for making travel more pleasant for all involved. It is against our rules for the children to ask any question resembling, "How much longer, are we there yet, when are we gonna get there?" This may seem mean, but really, when you have numerous small children (remember we had five under nine at one time), this question alone can occupy the entire journey and it is tedious beyond belief. However, this rule of ours has two parts to it. The first half you just read, and it is for The Progeny (at least the younger ones). The second half is about our obligations. When we made this rule we promised our children that we would make it a point to tell them from time to time how long we had been driving and how much longer we though we had to go before stopping. If it is tedious for us to listen to endless questions about how much longer, it is equally tedious to them to sit in the car without any idea how much longer their forced constriction of movement will be. We try to keep up our end of the bargain several times a day. The 'consequence' for any infraction on their part is simply that we don't answer the question. Instead, they get a reminder that 'We're not allowed to ask that question unless we have a very good reason. If you will wait, we will tell you something about how much longer in a little bit.'

Over the next few days (or weeks) I will be posting more interesting ideas about traveling with the kids, games we played, traveling arrangements, and that sort of thing. One thing you will never see in any of those posts is a suggestion to have a DVD player in your vehicle. We have never had one, and I seldom let my younger ones use the one in Granny Tea's van.

One of the best things to do on a trip is to talk to each other. Now, children are in the back seat, watching videos or they have headphones in their ears. They live in a bubble which seals them off from the physical world and are inundated with the electronic media. But kids need the physical world.

I'm not advocating dumping the carseats or letting kids up front where you have airbags, but I do advocate popping that electronic bubble and letting your children's minds out. Truly, they will learn more watching the telephone poles go by than watching a DVD in the car.