It's Holiday Travel Season (Finally!)
How to handle intense family time — especially if you haven’t had any lately.
How to handle intense family time — especially if you haven’t had any lately.
Let’s be honest: holiday travel doesn’t have the greatest rep. There’s the traffic and canceled flights and cramped accommodations and problematic uncles, adding up to a vacation that often isn’t restful at all. Last year, many of us had a taste of a winter without these particular trials and we found that well, we missed it.
There’s something about the collective pilgrimage to the towns of our birth; about eating a meal in which you care far more about the side dishes than you do about the main course; about the unexpected joy of finding yourself at the kids table again and of chilly, windy walks after an enormous meal. Turns out I missed unearthing deeply unflattering adolescent pictures in the family archives and sneaking pie for breakfast before the baby wakes up. Growing up, these trips were the ones where I met my cool teenage cousins and heard juicy stories about my grandparents; now they’re the times when I look around a crowded kitchen and realize how rare and precious it is to all be together in one loud, boisterous group.
In the spirit of eliminating (or at least minimizing) the bad parts so you can focus on the joy, we’ve rounded up a guide to preparing yourself and your children for a return to holiday travel — how to do it safely, what to pack (and why you should let your kids pack themselves), plus a reminder of why travel is one of the most important ways kids learn.
- Elizabeth Angell, Editor-in-Chief
When it comes to packing for a big trip, there is nothing more heartwarming — or more bone chilling — for a parent than a sweet, childish voice declaring, “I can do it all by myself!” Kids’ completely chaotic ideas about what they’ll need are hilarious, and we wanted to know more about why they do this. We asked children ages 3 to 10 to pretend they were going on an overnight trip and gather up what they would need. We reviewed the predictably unpredictable results with child development expert Dr. Bernard Dreyer. Turns out there’s a method to their madness.
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