Vacationing: Kids, Grandkids, and Guests

We have on numerous occasions had kids or guests join us on vacation. Most of the time we come away with great memories, but sometimes not so great. It’s nobody’s fault, it is more the situation of exhausted parents, kids tired of being yelled at, terrible two’s, different agendas, alcohol, and several more possible answers to short fuses and uncomfortable situations.

One of the things we are blessed with is headstrong, motivated, and exceptionally capable children. One of the things we are cursed with is headstrong, motivated, and exceptionally capable children. I’m laughing at the idea and wondering what I really mean by that. I think it means we have kids that are not needing their parents for anything. I think we struggle with that sometimes. We want to be needed and helpful. This is especially true of Jen, she just wants to help and the more she gets told no thanks, no, and no more sternly, she feels less and less needed. We are fixers and when we see struggles taking place in our kids, we want to nurture and care for them through the hard times.  Parents these days are overwhelmed. They move away or parents move away and they lose the lifeline they depended on for so long. That overwhelmed feeling becomes over frustrated and have two parents of equal self-reliance, and bam, the explosion happens. Doesn’t matter where you are, it just happens. We have all experienced it and have all felt the embarrassment that ensues.

Put that into a vacation and things can become uncomfortable. For who? Well certainly in the moment of falling apart, everyone. After a few minutes, just the parents. It’s funny, all we want for them to do is to feel they have experienced Hawaii, Tahoe, etc. SO much advice could be given, but time and life lessons usually provide all the answers. When you are experiencing things on a day-to-day reality show called your family, we all tend to internalize and we get trapped into only how things affect us personally and we lose sight of the other person as someone we should be trying to put first and understanding that by making sure you are attending to and understanding how things are affecting them, that we become better partners united in an effort to get through just another day. Heck, I was divorced, had kicked out my new fiancé, and had gone on a 14-month sabbatical from women before I was able to reflect on what the hell, I had been doing wrong all my life. Even though I had gone through some new self-discovery, I still almost screwed it up in my third major romance. Once you’re able to really lighten your load and share in the adventure down the road, you become aware that although you thought you were carrying the burden all by yourself, you realize you aren’t and you also realize that it is ok to ask for help and to not get more frustrated in thinking the other should understand you need something without ever asking. Frustration out of ill-fated expectation is a recipe for disaster soup.

Help can come in all kinds of form. Grandma’s watching the kids, taking advantage of a sleepover, or hearing “Hey babe, let me get that for you”. The worse thing in the world is raising kids as a single parent, the second worse thing is being married and thinking you are raising kids as a single parent. I get really concerned about this generation of parents. First of all, they never have time for anything. When they do have time, they rush through things never really experiencing or enjoying anything. It seems you can’t experience it unless you have forty people like and comment on some social media platform. Give me an old-fashioned picture book and someone to sit and look at it with. The other part of my blog is that sometimes we just have to breathe. Because opinions mumbled in the wrong way are pointless and probably damaging as well. Breathing and thinking about what you are getting ready to say will probably save the moment. Being louder than the other never accomplishes anything except that everyone around will judge and label you. They, generally, never side empathetically with the loudest. When I shut down and walk away, Jen gets the same message without me embarrassing her. Jen has screamed at me a few times; on occasion I have screamed back. I can remember one time we both started laughing as we did it. We have certainly gotten better about it, and reluctantly I can say we have removed most of those obstacles that can cause those extreme emotional moments to rise up. But I also understand that we can’t just trade a terrible two-year-old in for a more pleasant model. We might wish we could, but we should also know that this too shall pass.

I really deviated away from the main line of thought. We are on vacation with Theo and Erica, our daughter and son-in-law. They are dealing with a severe case of terrible two’s and rowdy four-year-old that just wants some of the same attention. Isn’t it strange that we are capable of wanting something that we know will ultimately make us unhappy, but that is what jealousy tends to do? More than anything, we want them to do some things as a family unit and not worry about whether Grandma and Pop-Pop are happy. We are great at making ourselves happy, we want them to discover that too. It is just Erica and Theo on this trip, it was JD and Birch last trip. It will be Cort and Logan in a couple years and Troy and Jess next year. Kate and Joshua will be in there somewhere, but for now we just need them to focus on giving us another beautiful grandchild. We’ve had friends and other family members along on trips before and we will take our kids every time. Why, because our kids are an extension of us. We live and breathe through them and they are reflections of us. Good or bad as that may be at times, we wouldn’t trade the moments we get to share them. To hell with what anyone else might think, I’ll take my crying two-year old as much as my smiling three-year old. My mischievous four-year old as much as my goofy and loud six-year-old. They are our children, in-laws, and grandbabies and we will take anything and everything we can get from them all, because in those little moments like Ronan holding my hand so we are ok to cross the street, I wouldn’t trade the opportunity for things like that for the world and I certainly wouldn’t trade a chance to only be the two of us with a week of tranquility to miss out on the chaos of our kids lives. But I only need a week at a time thank you, I only have so many resources at this age.