What Travelling With Children Teaches Us
About the Author
Moina Memon, Mom & Blogger
Apart from being a blogger at Mommy Mojo, Moina is a full time mom to her two girls. She enjoys their childhood and her roller coaster ride of motherhood through creative activities like arts and crafts, movement, cooking, travelling and gardening. If she isn't doing this, you will find her hanging out with her friends, painting or cooking a delicious meal for her family.Â
Blog URL: www.mommymojo.in
Travelling with children can be a nightmare or a dream come true depending on how things go. In October 2017 my husband and I decided to travel to the US and Canada for a month with our two girls. Being the super paranoid mother that I am, leaving my children behind was not even an option. Although, what worried me the most was that it was my younger daughter's (who recently turned a year old) first long-distance trip and my elder daughter is just 4 years old; which meant that there would be situations where I would lose my sanity.
BUT, travelling with your family has a lot of positives too. In this post, I want to shed some light on some of the positives we experienced.
Quality time : The BIGGEST positive for us as a family is time well spent with each other. I am a sucker for quality time with my family and I believe that there no better experience for a child than having a good time with his/her parents. At home, we are busy in our lives. There is school for the children, work for us parents and many other social commitments. A vacation together is just 'us', locked in for 24 hours with each other every single day - a very good way of filling the love tanks to the brim.
Memories for life : Very often, young parents avoid trips with a baby because the baby won't remember anything. Well, I agree that the baby won't remember anything but I do think that they absorb like sponges and giving them experiences is what matters at this stage. As a mother of two, I have struggled to give my 100% to my younger daughter  and this trip was a great chance for me to make up for all the time I have missed with her. We also celebrated her 11 month birthday in NYC, which I think is the most beautiful memory to look back at.
Team Work : My husband, older daughter, Duaa and I had our work cut out for us. We were out the entire day, sometimes up to 12 hours and our friends were surprised about the amount of time we were spending outside with two little girls in tow. In fact, friends and family also messaged us saying, " You guys are brave" Haha! Coming back to the division of work, my husband's responsibilities were to handle the back pack and make sure everything is in there; diapers, a change of clothes, food, wipes, creams, hats, socks, milk bottles and so on. Let's not forget the responsibility of carrying that back pack where ever we went. His work also included loading, closing and opening two strollers in and out of the car, loading and managing weights in our suitcases at the airports during our domestic travel while I would be manning two children, updating Instagram and touching up my lipstick. Poor guy! On the other hand, I was in charge of taking the children to the bathroom wherever we went. Getting them ready to carrying them around while he managed Uber bookings and google maps, all of this was my job. And yes, of course one of my priorities was shopping too. That's real work by the way! My elder daughter would participate by being a little watch dog, keeping an eye on her baby sister. My baby girl would fling her milk bottles after she would finish. Lucky us!  So, Duaa helped us keep tab on her bottles.
Managing each other : I can be as bad as the children sometimes, when I throw a tantrum or when it gets very stressful. So, to keep our emotions in check, we have a '2 minute rule' where none of us are allowed to remain upset, angry, grumpy, glum for more than 2 minutes. One of us would remind the other who is grumpy that 2 minutes were up and that it was time to bounce back. In our case, my husband had to say that more than any one else.Â
Caring for each other : A couple that travels together create a bond. Back home, it is understood that things are on track when school is going well and  I am holding fort while my husband goes to work. We tend to take each other for granted in the hustle-bustle of our daily lives. But when we travel, we see a different side of each other. We go out of the way to help each other, making sure we both are comfortable, planning surprises like getting a room with a view or finding the best cheesecake to relish when the kids are asleep in their strollers. Small gestures that go a long way :) These certainly make the best memories don't they?
Once we returned home, we noticed that our daughter had grown and there were positive changes in her. For example, she wanted to show us the smallest thing she had drawn or wanted to talk to us about school events on her own. For us, the positives listed above certainly outweigh the negatives with little bit of hard work! The way I look at it is that we are young and we are strong enough to push the strollers, carry our kids and have the most amazing time with them.  I would always recommend to travel with children and come back with unforgettable memories :)
