Vacations

Experiments in Collective Living

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Five kids and two adults standing at the edge of the water in the ocean, backs to the camera. The waves are relatively gentle.

“Seriously, they walked seven miles in one day when we were in New York City,” I insisted to my friend, who we were traveling with. She gave me a skeptical look.

Four hours later, my older kid was pulling and my younger kid was pushing a cart that had two of the other kids traveling with us in it, one of them sound asleep. My kids ran / walked the entire length of the boardwalk back to our condo, pushing the cart for most of it.

That was just one example of many conflicting expectations that arose on our recent trip to Ocean City with two other families. With six adults and six kids, there were differences in terms of what to eat, when to eat, bedtime, and screen time. Every family does things differently, but you don’t realize how differently until you live with them for several days. Fortunately, through communication and collaboration, all three families were able to make it work together. It gave us a taste of what it would be like to live more communally.

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Cutting Kids Slack When They Whine About Summer

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
My older son (a white boy in shorts and a t-shirt) bounding up the stone stairs of a hiking trail in Great Smoky Mountain National Park while my younger son (a white boy in a black sweatshirt) looks on at the bottom of the stairs.

Driving home on the second hour of a seven hour drive with the windows down because our air conditioner broke, I wondered how my kids would remember this experience. Would they remember it in the same way I remembered getting stuck in stop and go traffic without air conditioning outside of Washington D.C. when I was 10? (Sorry Mom and Dad – that was *awful.*) Or will they look back on it fondly as “well, we got through that”? After all, people took plenty of road trips before air conditioning was introduced in cars and survived. I’ve read many people say their family road trips were some of their favorite parts of childhood.

In a way, this conundrum extends to all of summer. So often, adults’ memories of childhood summers are full of nostalgia – memories of ice cream, the pool and playing outside until the sun goes down. My older son loves Calvin and Hobbes, with the pages of his four volume collection well-worn and the spines chomped on by our pet rabbit. The comics about summer reflect this perspective. Calvin romps around in the forest all day with Hobbes and turns cardboard boxes into fantastical devices at home. Summer is endless, innocent and free. It’s the epitome of a “simpler time.”

But like all nostalgia, it’s not accurate.

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How To Stay Sane When You Travel With Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Stay Sane When You Travel With Kids. (Photo of white mom holding a blond baby on her shoulders, walking down a path with trees.)

2014: Holding my one-year-old, I stared up at fireworks and started belting out Let It Go. Tears streamed down my face. It was the end of a week-long trip to Walt Disney World, during which I spent most of the time imagining my kid getting trampled. Earlier that week, my hands shook and mind went blank in the Tomorrowland snack bar as I had my first identifiable panic attack. That perfect girl is gone, indeed.

2017: Leaning over my four-year-old in his car seat in a parking lot in Nevada, I thought, “I hope he’s okay.” Right on cue, his cheeks filled, he leaned forward, and spewed out water and pretzel bits all over me. Touching my hand to my hair, it was wet and sticky. We were half-way through a three-hour car ride to Zion National Park. I breathed deep and said, “Hey honey, it’s going to be okay.” Then I got out the baby wipes and went to work cleaning up everything up.

What on earth happened in-between? In that three years, I had a second kid, started dealing with my anxiety, and grew so much as a parent. But I also learned a ton about traveling with kids. In-between the trip in 2014 and the one in 2017, we’ve been to Las Vegas, Cape Cod, multiple camping excursions, and so many day trips. While the anxiety still flairs, adjusting my expectations and my own behavior has helped me stay sane when we travel with kids.

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How Being a Mom Changed My Perspective on Family Vacations

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How Being a Mom Changed My Perspective on Family Vacations (Photo: Man holding a child in his arms and one by the hand in front of a giant mountain)

Nothing makes you feel more like “The Parent” than bringing your kids somewhere your parents brought you as a kid. Last week, we visited Zion National Park with our four-year-old and 18-month-old. The last time I was there, I was 17 years old on a trip with my own parents.

Needless to say, there was a world of difference between the two trips. The last time, the trip had gorgeous scenery, tough hikes, and lots of driving. This time, the scenery was pretty much the only similarity. Here’s what was different then and now:

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