Some housekeeping: As the school year gets under way here in NY, I will be publishing this newsletter twice a month, on the first and third Sundays. My goal for now is to alternate between interviews (which I love doing! If you want to be interviewed about something to do with parenting and/or education, please let me know!) and my own writing. The newsletter will remain free, and I continue to appreciate and value your feedback, so keep it coming! Thanks, as always, for reading.
This week my husband, 9yo and I decamped to a lake house a full 30 minutes away from our home. It was the first time the three of us have ever gone away for more than an afternoon. We brought our old nervous dog, and some cards and board games that never got played, way too many changes of underwear, and some optimistic swimsuits (it didn't get above 68 degrees the whole time we were there).
Vacationing so near to our home — close enough that we went home, more than once, to check on our cat and pick up stuff we forgot — really made me reflect on what constitutes a vacation. After all, we still had to do all the things — brew coffee, buy cereal, walk the dog, change the toilet paper roll. True, we got to do it in full view of Otsego Lake, which was absolutely lovely even when it was spitting rain. But what is it exactly about sleeping in a different bed that feels worth paying $150/night for? What is it about driving half an hour from your house and calling it a "vacation" that makes you not bat an eye at buying a paper just because your kid wants to read the funnies, or ordering takeout ravioli that is definitely overpriced and not particularly good?
For me, I have realized that vacation means permission. Permission not to worry. Permission to just do the things I want to do: read the first two chapters of "The Westing Game" and not finish the book, futz around with a Sudoku puzzle, get takeout for lunch and dinner, go in the lake for no reason. It also meant permission not to plan. To just lay around. To not make other people's happiness my responsibility.
True, I failed at this during our vacation. I had several moments of rigidity and frustration when no one else could decide what they wanted to eat or what they wanted to do. But then — I took a few deep breaths and released myself from feeling like it was my job to solve these problems. Because it isn't, and it never has to be.
"From the moment I load up the car or head to the airport, it feels like family vacations benefit everyone... except mom. While my family members are having the time of their lives I'm doing the dirty work to facilitate their joy and, frankly, I'm tired of it. It's time we take family vacations back. It's time they start benefitting everyone."
— Steph Montgomery,
"Can We Finally Admit That Family Vacations Benefit Everyone *Except* Mom?"
I know it's not always that easy to turn off. If you're used to carrying the emotional baggage of your entire household, you probably won't be able to set it all down just because you're in a place that has "Live, Laugh, Love" signs on the walls and sheets you didn't have to wash. But — but! Maybe it's worth a try. Maybe Vacation You has permission to spend 45 minutes on a Sudoko puzzle (which, by the way, I'm convinced was actually impossible) and not worry about what everyone else is going to eat for lunch. Maybe it's an opportunity to be as direct as I was and say things like "I am very tired and would like to take a nap this afternoon. I'm going to walk the dog and then I'm going to lie down on the couch. Why don't you guys find something to do while I'm resting?" and then just see what happens?!?
If this sounds braggy, I apologize, because I am in no way good at doing this, so writing this is partially a reminder to myself that such things are possible. That on the other side of those dreaded questions "What are we having for dinner?" or "What are we doing today?" does not lie total ruin. That my kid's boredom is not, actually, my problem to solve. (This is a hard one, but I am working on it.)
Sometimes if I can just keep my mouth shut for a few minutes and let my kid be bored, things turn out OK. On our vacation, we spent 20 minutes or so playing a dumb game we made up called "T-Rex Catch," where you lie at opposite ends of the couch and throw a cushion back and forth, but the rule is, your elbows have to be touching the couch, so you only have little T-Rex arms. When I was tired and needed a nap, my husband took our kid to a museum. Did they have an amazing time? Did anything go less than perfectly? Guess what, I don't know, because I was asleep. What I do know is that they came back eventually, alive, and we went on with our day.
"This generation's mission is happiness," Richard Weissbourd writes in the 2009 book "The Parents We Mean to Be," but he warns that "Many of us slip into habits in the name of promoting happiness — such as regularly monitoring and seeking to adjust our children's moods, [or] organizing our lives too much around our children," which may actually make them less happy in the end.
What interests me most, of course, is why. What has convinced us that we need to be the ones doing all this work? What do we think would risk if we set down our burdens? I'd love to hear what you think about the emotional labor of vacationing as a parent (or just everyday life) and how you/your family have navigated it.
Thank you for reading Think of the Children and for not mentioning my unplanned hiatus last weekend :| If you are enjoying this newsletter, won't you share it with a friend? Also: I'm doing some research about online grade portals for K-12 schools, so if you have strong feelings on this topic (as a parent or an educator), please be in touch! I hope you are having a restful Labor Day weekend and don't have to check your work email at all.