A vacation with kids is not a vacation, it’s a trip
The Internet
Our kids are good travellers but not good vacationers. Getting to the destination isn’t usually too hard as we have long since weened them off needing constant stimulation from the tablets for shorter trips with them only coming out on longer ones over an hour or so. But once they’re at the destination things start to shift. It used to happen quickly, usually shortly after arrival, but now it’s slower. It starts with small things: a refusal to eat dinner here, maybe an ignored ask there, but inevitably it builds to a crescendo where both my wife and I are at the end of our rope with the kid’s behaviour.
We try our best to tag team so we can share the load somewhat, dealing with the kids at their level rather than resorting to the kid of parenting we’d received at the hands of our boomer generation parents. But there’s only so many spoons you can carry on a particular day and today, it seemed, our kids were hellbent on ensuring we dropped all of them very early on in the day.
The first sign that things were likely to go amiss was that the boy was already yawning on the way to breakfast. Now we didn’t have any signs beforehand that he didn’t sleep well but it was clear we were likely on a shorter timer today than we’d otherwise be. So, we figured, get some breakfast in him, get him in the pool for an hour or so and then bring him back for a nap so that we could then have the rest of the day to do…something. The last straw that brought everything down was when he wanted to get his hair braided like his sister which was done too tight for him and started him down the tantrum train.
My wife then took him away to try and deal with him while I continued to watch our daughter play in the pool with the cousins and any other kid she could recruit. I managed to get maybe 30 mins into a chapter on my book before my wife had to parlay the boy back onto me, which was fine, right up until he started screaming for Mummy whilst I shanghaied him back to our room. What followed was a 15 minute back and forth between me and him about his tiredness and how he needed to sleep. This culminated in a heated gaze and the words “I can’t sleep Dad” before he summarily passed out. Father of the year material right there.
It was then I heard another heated back and forth between my wife and my daughter coming from outside the door. It was clear that our daughter was testing my wife’s patience but to what end I couldn’t tell you. I then sent my wife back to our room since the boy was now out and unable to cause any further damage and I’d take the burden of getting our daughter back into line.
After I’d managed to get her back down to an acceptable level of angry with me we went out for lunch which went well given the circumstances. Of course this was due in no small part that she was expecting ice cream on the other side which usually I wouldn’t relent to but since we’re on vacation I was more OK with the momentary lapse in rules than I’d otherwise be. Once that was all done I brought her back to the room to get ready for whatever we were going to do and found that the boy was still asleep. Some 2 hours later at this point.
My daughter and I then decided to have some quiet time in the room whilst the boy and my wife caught up on lunch. This was chill enough, even if my daughter seems to be able to tun even watching shows into a contact sport. My wife messaged me that there was some leftover pizza if we wanted to head out, so we did, and cue yet another round of bad behaviour from my daughter when she was informed that she couldn’t have yet another round of sweets. That was easy enough to calm down though and thankfully we also got the kids to agree to going to kids club for a few hours so we could find time to decompress.
The sister-in-law with young daughter showed up shortly afterwards for a drink and a chat which was a nice change of pace. By the time she left we had about 20 minutes before we were due to pick the kids up so we figured it’d be best to go grab them, get dinner on the way home and then chuck them into bed closer to the usual time (they had been getting to bed at least an hour late every night so far). Picking them up was easy enough that was, until, the boy decided that the fix I did on his hair braids, which I had just done a couple hours previously, wasn’t good enough and began screaming inconsolably. I took him away from everyone to try and calm him down which was met directly with screams for Mummy so I then took him back to the room via a back route so I didn’t catch the ire of everyone else at the resort.
Those cries for Mummy are an unfortunate ploy to pull on my wife’s heartstrings which was summarily proven right after I had gotten him somewhat calm when my wife entered the room. Either consciously or not he knew that this was the time to ramp the emotions back up again so I had to chase my wife back out of the room so I could try and talk him back down again. I don’t feel great about that but there was an unfortunately clear causation there. It was at this point my wife wanted to take the reigns and hand our daughter over to me who just wanted to go back to the pool to hang with her cousins. Figuring I could probably handle brooding whilst making sure our daughter drowned I followed her out.
And brood I did. At this point I probably should’ve just asked the in-laws to keep an eye on her whilst I found something else to decompress with but I was at that point where getting the next plane home was looking good. My wife picked up on this of course and took the kids from me, leaving me to spend the next hour to try and calm down with YouTube videos and Reddit threads. It didn’t work though and so I headed back out when she messaged me when they were having dinner.
The kids were in better moods when I arrived but I sure as shit wasn’t. I must’ve been staring daggers at anyone who crossed my path as I’ve never had a clearer line to a buffet before. I gave them both a short spiel on how disappointed I was and the consequences of continued behaviour that was similar to todays which seemed to land somewhat but still failed to register at the level I was hoping for. This was somewhat amplified by the boy again refusing to eat dinner for 20 minutes just so he could skip right to desert. He relented in the end, of course, but only after I made it clear that putting half a carrot in his mouth didn’t count as eating everything we’d given him.
After dinner we brought the kids back to the room and I gave them a more direct talking to about it which I’ll admit seemed to land well. The kids knew their behaviour wasn’t what was expected and, because of that, Mum and Dad needed time to recover from it. So they’ll go to kids club first thing tomorrow morning; not as a punishment but as something that we adults needed in order to keep going on. The threats of booking a flight home (which looked real fucking good when I looked them up in the middle of my tantrum) probably had something to do with it too.
I came to the realisation that what was galling me the most was the fact that right there, on my boy’s head, was a symbol of everything I couldn’t stand about the situation I’d put myself in. I’d brought them here, treated them to (most) of their whims and what I get back in return is a demand for more or a scream in the face. Somehow I’d feel in those moments that I’d given too much but also at the same time too little. Like, I could continue spoiling them, it’s not a question of money but at some point I have to stop right? There has to be a line drawn somewhere otherwise I should simply resign to being my kid’s keepers and not their parents.
Which is why I find myself here, at 9PM at night, getting these thoughts out of my head so they hopefully don’t haunt me long into the night. Everyone will have a take on what could/should/would have been done if they were in the situation but the fact is none of that matters; you’re not here, you’re not my kids parents and you haven’t lived our respective lives up until this point. Whatever take you have is informed by so much that has no applicability here so all you can offer is platitudes, anecdotes and commiserations. I don’t need any of that and you don’t need to give it.
The fact is today happened and the family is unfortunately worse for it. Do I hope for better tomorrow? Honestly part of me is, but the majority is keeping my expectations low. Being without the kids will surely do something but like I wrote yesterday I’ll simply be trading one sort of pain for another kind of guilt. Can I still engage my inner Sisyphus and find happiness in the absurdity of this whole situation? Maybe but attempts thus far haven’t been successful.
At least my wife thought it’d be funny to co-write some smutty fiction as she saw me sit down to write this. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
