My Kid Is a Monster To Travel With

Dear Other Dad —

My kid is such a jerk when we travel and it makes me crazy. What should I do? Ride him till he acts like a decent human or leave him home?

— TravelHell

You are tapping into a subject that will elicit groans and cheers from parents all over the globe, and it is especially well timed as I am newly returned from a trip with my own teenage daughter. The first thing I would say is that you are not alone in feeling this way; the second is that your son probably could have written this same question, substituting the word “parent” for “kid.” That may seem completely unfair, but it’s worth keeping in mind. (And I say that from experience.)

You don’t say what age your child is, but I think that it can help to look at behavior through two distinct frames: the younger child traveling and the older child traveling.

For kids who are preschool age or in elementary school, you have to factor in how changes to routine affect them. Routines offer a sense of safety and stability and many kids don’t adapt quickly or well to big departures from their established patterns. Kids who seem excited by the prospect of a trip to Disneyland may nonetheless end up feeling tired, thrown, or agitated by the altered schedule, not to mention all the new stimuli and, often, lessened sleep.

It is really unlikely that they will understand why they feel off or attribute their unease to the broken routine, even as these feelings come out in poor attitudes, reluctance to participate, or defiant behavior. When they act out, they may be reacting to a lack of control over the situation combined with an inability to self-soothe with the familiar routines of home.

For teens, even though you’d think they should be more adaptable than that, the same may still apply, and all of it is ramped up by hormones and the need for independence. Teens of all genders are going through bodily shifts that still require getting used to; their sleep schedules alone are a work-in-progress and that’s before you get to the hormones related to sex, stress, and growth. And don’t forget that their frontal lobes are miles from being complete — which means they are in short supply of rationale, unselfish thought.

Teens often are difficult because they are in a time of life where independence feels crucial, yet you’re setting their itinerary. If you’re leading them around all day or dogging their footsteps, vacation often means they feel like they can’t get away from you or the rest of the family. Instead of hanging with their friends or having down time alone, their lives are suddenly limited to being part of a package deal — and that, for many, leads to less-than-lovely attitudes.

It’s important to consider this because it can help reframe bad behavior; instead of just thinking your kid really is a jerk, you can think of bad days as jerk periods in your kid’s life. Is it fun that this happens while on vacation? Nope. But it shouldn’t be an existential crisis either.

Trying to find perspective in the heat of the moment is not easy. (I would say I managed this about 50% of the time on my last trip) but it’s a lot better than being as big a jerk as your kid. If you flip your lid on your son, he’s probably going to think you’re overreacting. When adults lose their cool, kids see our issues — sensitivity or anger or need for control — as the real problem.

Trying to imagine how they see a situation can make a huge difference. On our recent trip, my daughter was really rude to a tour guide we’d hired for a special excursion and I was out of my mind; but when I brought it up to her later, she was shocked. Yes, she had refused to answer questions and very noticeably avoided eye contact, but in her mind, that was better than either saying how much she hated the tour guide or asking to be left alone. I didn’t love her actions, but if, in the moment, I could have seen her sullen quietness as an alternative to worse behavior, I might have been less upset and more able to enjoy the experience.

There’s the rub, right? Sometimes our kids’ behaviors make it harder for us to stay in the moment. We worry about how much the trip cost (putting the burden of “was it worth it” on how much everyone enjoys each minute). Or we spend time fretting about how others see us as parents, even though we’ll never again see the strangers in this far-away place.

What we should be doing instead is focusing on the big picture: just as not every moment of a trip will be perfect, not every moment of a trip will be bad. You can have blow-outs or moody spells and still have a vacation that offers your family memories that they will carry for years.

What to do in the rough moments along the way? First off, check yourself. Ask whether you are operating at 100%. Are you tired, thrown by the change in routine, feeling like you’re not in control of the situation, or stressed by the demands of the trip? If so, are you in the best shape to respond thoughtfully and maturely? It’s worth considering whether, like your kid, your resources might be a little too diminished for best behavior.

Before you explode, ask yourself what will be improved if you let fly and, conversely, what might be worsened? Are you really more likely to get a result that you want (better attitude, more participation, etc) by shouting or saying the mean thing? You may be better served by letting the smaller offenses slide and talking through the larger ones in a way that reveals how you’re feeling but doesn’t put the weight of the whole vacation’s success on shoulders smaller than your own.

Three years ago, I took my daughter on a trip to Europe, her first time ever abroad. I had scrimped and saved and planned the trip within an inch of its life. For exactly half of it, she was miserable to be around. Instead of trying to help her be less miserable, I pulled out all the bad tools I’d witnessed in my own childhood, trying to berate her into having a good time and then shaming when that didn’t work. She — and the trip — only recovered when I stopped all that and, in fact, apologized for pushing so hard.

I learned from that experience and I’m still learning. The hardest thing for me (and the great lesson of our most recent vacation) is to let go of plans and expectations. Plans are not results; expectations are not facts. Having both is part of the fun, but pretty much every trip dashes one or the other to some extent. If you can roll with that — ok, so you didn’t ride the Great Flume or you missed the once-in-a-lifetime Burro Rodeo — you can instead be open to fully appreciating the things that do go right, often unexpected, and let those be the moments you bond around and treasure.

If you have an older child, it can be great to give them latitude to say no to things, to let them opt out of activities, as long as they have a safe place to be and you can maintain contact with them while apart. For a younger child, if they’re having a hard time, maybe give up some of your plans entirely to allow for more down time, or find out what they’d actually like to be doing.

For all kids, it can help to frame things with a balance of “I hear what you want to do and we’ll do that” and “here is something I’d like to for me”; it can yield more bonding to make all parties a team in ensuring each other’s needs are met.

If your child really is a monster the rest of the time, that’s a subject for a family therapist. But I suspect he is not, since you have framed your question around vacation. I wouldn’t leave him home on every trip, but it wouldn’t hurt, if you can swing it, to travel without him, too, enjoying some time where the only behavior you deal with is your own.

When do you travel next as a family, simply plan for the monster to reappear; forewarned and forearmed, you’ll feel less threatened by the bad days, and better prepared to enjoy the good days when they come.

Your Other Dad Says is a weekly column offering friendly advice for modern life. Send your questions to yourotherdadsays@gmail.com

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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