Summer packs high expectations for fun through family vacations. With these plans come great hopes for relaxing times, strengthened family bonds, and memories of both adventure and discovery. Few intend to live out their favorite National Lampoon vacation. My recent debacles with travel have reminded me that even the best-laid plans can turn into infamous memories of the sort we don’t expect. These unexpected deviations from the ideal trip can turn our plan for stress-reduction into an exercise in stress management. When obstacles occur, think of these experiences as deviations from your destinations, rather than vacation spoilers, and challenge yourself manage the stress instead of letting it manage you. Here are a few “unexpected” deviations in my planned family travel for 2011 and reminders of the importance of regrouping:
1. Transportation May Fail You: As I nestled in for my trip to Europe, after waiting for hours on the plane for a repair, I was informed that our family of five would have to deboard as it would be impossible for us to make our connection to Europe. Further, there was not space on any other day to accommodate us for the kids’ spring break. We arrived home at 10pm, held a quick family meeting, and by midnight we had recasted a plan for an alternative destination that we could drive to in the U.S. A few phone calls later, we had lined up a place to stay with friends who we hadn’t seen in years and we can’t imagine having had a better spring break than how we spent it.
2. Illness May Befall You: The day that we arrived on the plane to that rescheduled trip to Europe, my youngest child became violently ill. Prior to becoming ill, his flexibility changed to insistence on having his own way and he was misinterpreting feeling bad for being hungry (although nothing appealed to him to eat and when he did eat what I gave him, he indicated that it tasted funny). While it isn’t unusual for children to behave oddly after being on an overnight flight (with so many fun games on flights abroad, it is difficult to get kids to sleep on a flight), his change of disposition made me suspect that he was sick. Although I gave him this feedback, he insisted that he was just starving and that I just needed to feed him the “right thing” to fix his disposition. I reinterpreted the right thing to be going to the hotel for an early check-in and giving him some bed-rest. Within an hour of check-in, his gastro-intestinal virus greeted us.
Rather than getting pulled into power struggles with exhausted, sick kids about whether or not they are/might be sick or what they think they need, trust your own instincts about what might be going on with them and usher them to a place of rest. Insist on some down time when it is needed. If my son had gotten his way, we would have been sitting in one of the nice restaurants where he wanted to solve his “hunger problem,” instead of the comfort of his own bathroom-away-from home.
3. Costs May Surprise You: If events that you had planned begin eating into your budget, remember that laughing is low-cost and fun can be free. On the nights that we opted out of spending another expensive night out on food and ate in, we had had some fabulous family fun playing cards. Serious smiling is a great alternative to spending.
Virginia M. DeRoma, Ph.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist