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Traveling with your kids doesn’t have to mean an end to the romantic vacation. Some dos and don’ts on how parents can find alone time while on holiday.
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A friend of a friend told me the following story:
A couple went to a romantic foreign city with their 8-month-old. This particular couple was worldly-wise, well traveled and very well educated.
The little one behaved in a most exemplary fashion, enduring the transatlantic flight and the jetlag with unexpected grace. In fact, she even endeavored to sleep through the night in a strange crib in a strange hotel room.
So well did the child behave, so soundly did she slumber, that this smart and savvy couple determined that leaving the baby alone in the room while they went out to dine was a fine idea.
The couple, this well-educated and well-groomed pair, took their baby monitor with them. They dined companionably, all the while listening to the static from the monitor, ears primed for any sound of their child’s cry.
The couple returned back to their room to find the wee babe sound asleep and safe.
If this sounds like a good idea to you, I am here to tell you this: PUT THE BABY MONITOR DOWN AND BACK AWAY FROM THE DOOR.
That static my friend’s friends heard? That means the monitor is no longer receiving a signal. That’s right, this smart and savvy pair left their infant alone in a hotel room in a strange city where very few people speak English (and, supposedly, those who do pretend that they don’t).
I know we all need a night off from being parents—God, do I know!—and traveling with kids is not the same as traveling as a couple. Not by a long shot.
Seeing the sights by moonlight, choosing a restaurant by wine list and spending romantic evenings under the stars are replaced with making trips to the children’s museum, judging the appeal of a restaurant’s kid’s menu (or reputation of its grilled cheese sandwiches) and enforcing 8:30 p.m. bedtimes.
But that doesn’t have to mean the end of the day’s itinerary.
“When you go on vacation, it is important to have time as a couple, even when you have a baby, a toddler who is giving you leg cramps and a five-year-old screaming in the back seat,” says Stacie Cockrell, mother and co-author of Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows (HarperCollins, 2007), who knows what it’s like to spend an entire day looking for her child’s lost tennis shoe at Walt Disney World. “Connecting as a couple makes your vacation smoother.”
It can be hard for women to disconnect from “mommy mode,” Cockrell adds, and dads often end up feeling like the family pack mule. Setting aside time for just the ‘rents is essential if everyone is going to enjoy their time away from home.
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