In this edition of Voices of Irish Country Magazine, parenting columnist Laurie Morrissey discusses the highs and lows of the ‘family summer holiday’
Having acted the complete maggot over the course of a family lunch excursion, my precious niece emerged from the restaurant – her bedraggled, why-do-we-do-this-to-ourselves parents wrestling out the toddler, baby bag and rice-cake-encrusted buggy in her stormy wake – exclaiming, ‘It’s nice to be out!’.
Ah, the wisdom of three-year-olds.
And indeed, it truly is nice to be out – even better to get away. Quite often, the family summer holiday can be the most anticipated week or two of the entire calendar. However, you will need to accept in advance that a getaway with children can never hope to compare with those pre-baby breaks which largely revolved around deciding where to go for dinner and what to wear for dinner.
Family holidays are more about moving all the work and frazzlement that goes with child rearing to a different location. There might be a little more sun and sangria involved, for sure, but there can also be marathon bedtimes and stressful restaurant outings. In fact, most parents just back from holiday will declare they need a whole other holiday, alone, in order to get some actual rest. The irony.
Last summer saw my best friend and I exchange near-crazed voice notes between respective family holidays in France and Portugal. While Europe sizzled itself through a record-breaking heatwave, we both found ourselves away from the comforts of home dealing with excitement-fuelled children who gave not one fig that Mammy might be on the brink.
My maniacal laughter following a hellish day spent dragging sweaty, uninspired children to a UNESCO world heritage site (why didn’t we just stay by the pool? I still ask myself – the six-year-old told us she wished she was in her grave, doing nothing) was equalled only by my pal’s gnashing of teeth for booking an un-airconditioned cabin in the centre of what appeared to be a 24-hour nightclub masquerading as a campsite.
If we were to be honest, it was our expectations that had gotten the better of us. It will be different this time around, you white-lie to yourself, as you swipe through your rose-tinted social media memories. A neighbour of mine, with much more realistic expectations, declared his one holiday wish was for nobody to spill their drink over dinner.
While that might sound a tad deflating to some, I had to agree that a spillage-free dining experience would indeed be heavenly. Although the invention of a pill that would negate the need for the daily suncream ‘chase ’n slather’ fiasco tops my personal holiday wish list.
Little things help. Like a café in Boyle I once came across on holiday that had a sand pit – genius! That lady who sat in front of us on a flight and immediately surrendered her screen, preloaded with Peppa Pig, to our smallies for the flight’s duration; and that time we went for dinner in one of Listowel’s finest establishments and the knowing waitress sat us at the far end of a quiet ballroom right next to the most glorious heap of crappy plastic toys. That lady truly knew her audience.
Of course, there is something, aside from our decidedly deluded levels of optimism, which keeps parents leaning back into the family holiday. The kids will have a ball. Undoubtedly there will be tantrums and heat rash and hissy fits over their wanting to inspect every bit of tat in every single souvenir shop in order to flitter away the tenner they got from Grandad. But overall, their experience will be a positive one and truly, holidays are all about the memories.
Although it remains too painful for my mother to reminisce about a week we all spent in a caravan in Tragumna in torrential rain in the early 1980s, I can only remember the excitement at having bunk beds and pottering on the beach and our delight at the little table nook that magically turned into my parents’ bed every evening. In the end, nobody really remembers the sand on the sausage rolls or the fact that your Fat Frog kept melting down your arm. You remember the laughs and the way being somewhere different, together, felt nice. And such happy, summery memories are hard to beat.
If you are off on holiday soon, I wish you well. Don’t forget to pack the Calpol, oodles of patience and a dollop of devil-may-care. If it all goes to pot, voice message your friend – it’s therapy for you and a LOL, at the very least, for them. Take it from me – a sense of humour, while on your family holiday, will most certainly not go amiss.
This article first appeared in a previous issue of Irish Country Magazine and you can read more of Laurie’s parenting column in our July|Aug issue, on sale now.
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