A few days ago, we packed up in our minivan, every seat in this eight-capacity vehicle occupied, and went to Family Camp.
Family Camp is a place we have been four years running—a retreat over a three-day weekend where families can take time to reconnect, play together and rest.
We usually are the youngest family there.
It took me a while to figure this out. The camp, with its canoe capabilities and its swimming pool with a slide and its large wooden playground, seemed like it would appeal to parents of kids as young as ours.
And then I remembered the packing and the traveling and all of the logistics must be worked out to successfully road-trip with young children.
It’s exhausting.
The day we left, we had plans to leave right after the baby ate, which was usually around 3 p.m. It was only a 2.5-hour drive, so we should have been able to make it before the baby needed to eat again.
Except my husband didn’t start packing the car until I sat down to feed the baby, and it took a whole hour to fit everything inside the crammed-full car.
Except two minutes down the road one of the bigger boys said he needed to go potty, and we knew he wasn’t joking, and then everyone else, of course, said they needed to go, too, because it meant a break from the car (already).
Except we ran into torrential rain and heavy traffic.
A 2.5-hour road trip turned into a six-hour drive.
By the end of it, our kids were whining, the baby was screaming and I said we would never, ever do this again, because it was just.too.hard.
And it’s true. It was hard. Even the retreat was hard, because 3-year-old twins don’t make anything easy.
But the time spent away was good for us. It was good for our family. The 8-year-old learned how to row a canoe with his daddy. The 6-year-old strung beads and blessed all the mothers at the retreat with a pretty nametag necklace. The 4-year-old found a Batman mask in the treasure box set out the first day and wore it for the entire weekend. The twins painted pictures they never would have painted at home because it was so messy and turned their faces black.
But it was camp, and it was fun, and it was so good to take a weekend to just enjoy each other.
Sometimes the hardest parts are the parts that turn out to be the most life-changing parts.
When we are the parents of young children, it can feel almost impossible to go anywhere, because there is so much to pack and so many unknowns, and the kids will be in the car for so long, and we’ll probably go crazy, and what about the routine?
But sometimes it’s good for us to throw out that routine and accept the unexpected and go a little crazy, because there is little-boy pride in rowing across an entire pond, and there is little-boy excitement at having mastered that humongous twisty slide into water, alone, and there is little-boy joy in having made something beautiful for other people.
Sure, it took an hour to fit all those suitcases around legs and seats and a baby swing. Sure, that trip didn’t turn out exactly the way we planned. Sure, the kids drove us crazy asking every other minute how much longer it would be, but as soon as our car pulled into camp and they read the front sign, they started shaking the back end of the car they were so excited.
It was that minute I felt glad we had braved a road trip with six kids.
To make traveling with young kids a little easier, try this:
1. Bring along some audio books. We checked out some classics: How to Eat Fried Worms, There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, Peter Pan, and listened to them during the trip (Tip: Always bring more than you think you need, in case of torrential rains and heavy traffic). Our boys love listening to stories when we’re traveling, and the parents get to listen, too.
2. Give them a small travel kit that’s only used during trips. When we made the 26-hour trip to Florida to visit family, we got each of the boys a new composition book and a small container of crayons and set them free. The 3-year-olds drew one line on every page. The 6-year-old drew works of art and colored them in. The 8-year-old took notes about each state we passed through and called it his Travel Diary. It still sits in his closet, with the date and time we drove up to his grandpa’s house. It’s a great memory for him.
3. Play car games. We all know the typical ones: I Spy or Shapes in the Clouds or Road Trip Bingo. For variety try this one:
Word Association Game: One person picks a word, another says the first word that comes to mind based on the first person’s word. (Example: Person 1 says “Banana.” Person 2 says “Yellow.” Person 3 says “Taxi.”) This can get hilarious with young ones.
