`Are we there yet?”
That eternal question fills the air now as parents pack their stuff and kids into cars, campers and vans and head out for the ritual of the season — summer vacation.
Just as surely as you can hear birds chirping and leaves rustling, you can faintly hear the murmur of children’s whining voices from coast to coast. When the question is asked for the umpteenth time, parents wonder why they pulled out of the driveway for this annual pilgrimage.
The quest to reach a destination reminded author Mary Rodgers Bundren of a cartoon she saw recently. “It had a family getting on a space shuttle. Shortly after blastoff, the youngest child said, `Tommy, how much farther?” The other child said, “Are we there yet?”
“That is so typical of kids and travel,” said Bundren, a mother of three who writes about traveling with children. “They want to be there instantly.”
And if they’re not, watch out.
You always hear horror stories of the families who put a string down the middle of the car to keep siblings from straying across a symbolic border and punching one another, said Bundren.
“The sibling issue is the number one issue that keeps families from traveling,” Bundren added. “I know that parents don’t want to put a bunch of kids in a car because it can be so tiring to listen to them pick at each other for hour after hour after hour.”
But Bundren offers a solution: Keep the kids busy.
To that end, Bundren wrote a book, “Travel Wise with Children: 101 Educational Travel Tips for Families” (Inprint Publishing, $12.95).
“In order to keep them busy,” said Bundren, “you have to plan. You have to be organized as parents to stave off that kind of (obnoxious) behavior. A woman came up to me at a book signing and said, `I could have written your book in one sentence: Bring along duct tape.’ “
Well, Bundren, an ebullient Oklahoma mom whose husband is a physician, takes a different approach. “In my book I tried not to dwell on negatives because I’m trying to show parents that it is possible. But you really do have to plan a trip.”
Among Bundren’s many coping and diversionary tactics, depending upon the age of the children:
– Have set stopping points so children can let off steam.
– Take a stop watch and a compass. Both are fun and good educational tools. Kids can time things. At rest stops you can time them in a 50-yard dash as you let them wear off energy. A compass can provide them with lessons in geography and map reading.
– Pack a treasure bag with inexpensive surprises — crafts, audio tapes, games, toys and the like, and dole them out as needed.
– Instead of having lunch in a restaurant, pick up sandwiches or a pizza and stop in a park to eat and to let kids play.
– Buy each child a disposable camera and let him or her choose a theme subject to photograph — wildlife, flowers, sporting activities. After the trip is over, children can organize their photos in a trip memory book.
– Encourage kids to start a collection — seashells, state flags, pennants, pins, rocks, menus, ticket stubs, charms, snow globes, postcards, educational materials they can use in school for projects.
– Suggest that your children make a newspaper of their trip either on a computer, or cut and pasted on sheets of paper, explaining to them what goes into a newspaper. When completed, it can be copied and sent to family and friends.
From the outset, Bundren encourages parents to give children some ownership of the trip. “From the moment you start planning your trip, give your kids some say in where they’d like to go. Take into consideration the things they want to do on a trip and what a vacation is to them. Mom and dad might want to go to a golf resort and play 18 holes every day, but that may not be what kids have in mind for a vacation.”
Have a family meeting and see what the children have in mind, Bundren suggested. “You may have all kinds of answers, but in the end it’s going to be up to the parents to decide on a destination based on a lot of different factors — certainly financial is a big one.”
If, for example, the choices narrowed to a beach vacation versus Disney World, Bundren said it’s reasonable to ask older children to do some research to see how much each vacation would cost to challenge their math skills and to weigh which would be the most fun. “You can enhance the fun of the trip by getting your kids involved from the moment you start thinking about it,” she said.
While it may be taxing, parents need to look at a trip as a learning experience for their children. Take the “are we there yet” problem. Young children have no conception of time, said Bundren.
“If you say we have eight hours to go, a 3-year-old doesn’t know 8 minutes from 8 hours. They just know they want to get there.
“But you can help kids organize time. For very young children you can put together a distance chain — a series of loops made from construction paper. In the car every time you reach a certain time or mile increment, the child can take off a paper loop. As you get closer to the destination, the child can see the chain is getting much smaller.”
As children get older, Bundren suggested giving them a certain amount of money — or letting them earn it by doing extra chores — so they can pick out books or crafts to keep themselves occupied on the trip.
It should be no surprise, said Bundren, that travel with teens is the toughest. “Adolescents need to feel some ownership of the trip. If mom and dad say there’s a five-star golf resort in Scottsdale and we’re going to go as a family and have a wonderful time, they’re going to say, `What’s in it for me?’ If you want to have a successful trip with an adolescent, you have to make it an adolescent trip — be willing to give the kid some space, some cold hard cash and be willing to do things they want to do. You have to make certain the destination is going to work for them.”
Bundren described how she recently took her 13-year-old daughter to New York City. “It was the very last day and we came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She wanted to watch the kids in Central Park, not go to the Met. We went to the Met and I couldn’t get her out of the place. The point: Don’t let teens call all the shots.”
Said Bundren: “Traveling to me is opening up your child to the world’s largest classroom. That’s the point from which I take it. Every single experience is a learning experience for kids.”
So deal with the “are we there yet” thing. It’s worth it.
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Alfred Borcover’s e-mail address is aborcover@aol.com.
