A driving partner, a couple of kids, the family car, and an endless stream of road ahead of you: It’s either Dante’s Inferno or the best thing ever.
Me?
I love a road trip. Where we are going never matters; and the longer it
takes to get there the better. As a kid my brothers and I (and
sometimes a gaggle of cousins, too) were piled into cars and vans to see
Canada and the United States. In university, I’d escape Ottawa winters
with trips to Florida or Georgia knowing I could rent a car for a few
days and see a new-to-me part of the world. It’s a love affair I’m
happily passing down to my two boys, but I know not all families feel
the same way.
I’ve
heard the horror stories: Hours on end spent in a stuffy car
desperately trying to get to some specific event (a wedding, a theme
park) on time with a constant chorus of “Are we there yet?” emanating
from the backseat.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
There are some key things you can do to make your next family road trip your best ever. Here are five to get you started:
1. Give yourself time:
Need to get somewhere in a hurry? Take a plane. The very act of driving
means you have to slow down–and that’s a good thing. Road trips are
like a good book; if ever the journey was more important than the
destination, this is it. Take the time you need to enjoy it.
2. Let your kids see the trip through their own eyes: One
of the things I remember most about the family road trips of my youth
is my parents constantly telling us to look out the window.“Are you kids seeing this?!” I didn’t make much of it until I caught myself doing the same thing as we made our way across the constantly changing landscape of New Zealand a
few summers ago. The déjà vu moment caused a light bulb to go off: Kids
don’t appreciate the same things as adults (nor should they). Their
focus, as mine once was, is likely to center on what’s happeninginside
the car. I can’t remember the route we took on a Connecticut vacation
when I was a kid, but I remember how happy and relaxed my parents
seemed, the way my dad seemed to control the traffic lights (a trick I
play with my own kids), and my parents grooving along to Earth Wind and
Fire in the front seat. Your kids will have plenty of time to admire the
scenery; let them make their own memories.
3. Embrace the chance to share: My
favorite thing about a family road trip is all the together time.
Unlike a plane or train, a car is like a traveling cocoon, creating the
opportunity for families to bond in a way we rarely do in our everyday
lives. There’s more hand-holding, more story-telling, more mid-day naps.
There’s something about all that time in an enclosed space that gets
kids to open up, too. Even when we aren’t traveling, some of our best
parent-kid conversations happen in the car. A road trip allows those
exchanges to turn into run-on conversations that can go from happy and
light to deep and dark and back again between rest stops. Weeks ago as
we drove to Myrtle Beach, passing cotton fields led to a discussion
about slavery in the U.S. On that same trip we shared knock-knock jokes
and favorite memories from past trips. Big, important conversations and
silly, giggly, trite ones–way too much for the five-minute drive to
music lessons at home.
