As my hubby noted, we vacationed in San Diego last week.  It was a fun time together as a family, but it wasn’t without meltdowns, complaints, bad attitudes, etc.  There were a few moments where I wondered, “How is this a vacation when I’m trying to give the kids lots of fun but they respond with meltdowns and complaints?”

I learned long ago that family vacation doesn’t really mean a complete vacation because we still have to wear our parenting caps, even on vacation.  So, how can one have a nice family vacation without having to deal with continuous meltdowns and complaints?

From experience we know what works for our family and how much the children can handle life outside of their home routines.  When we’re on vacation, we don’t pack our schedule with back-to-back activities because that’s a recipe for disaster.  Rather, we have one “on” day and one “off” day schedule.  We spent an entire day at Legoland and the following day, we took it easy and hung out at the hotel pool.  After a long full day at Legoland, the kids need a break whether they know it or not.  They need to catch up on sleep in order to maintain their homeostasis.

Legoland was an all-day affair.  On our second visit there, in spite of having taken two days of “downtime” at the hotel, the kids were nevertheless beginning to show signs of missing their regular routine.  By mid-day, two of the kids had a conniption over nothing.  We knew their behavior was due to having missed their naps.  But their behavior was still unacceptable.  They were disciplined for their behavior and afterward we had them sit in the stroller to sleep.  Unsurprisingly, they went to sleep almost immediately.  For some, putting the kids in a stroller to sleep seem waste of money because after all, they just spent lots of moeny on a theme park.  To have the kids miss out on rides and activities seem a waste of money and time.  As for us, we’d rather have sane kids over over-stimulated or over-tired kids.  How much fun are they truly having if they’re exhausted?  I doubt they’re having that much fun.  And neither are we.

I believe that parents exasperate their kids — in disobedience to God’s Word — if they keep on pressing on to give their children as much fun as possible even though they know their children are exhausted and melting down.  We have to consider our children’s needs first.  Even though we may feel compelled to get the biggest bang for the buck at an expensive theme park, our children’s needs come first.  Even when the children acted out, we shouldn’t make excuses for them.  We need to deal with their behavior immediately and appropriately.  Of course, there’s a fine tender balance.  They are tired so their self-control is out of the window, and we need to be especially tender and careful in addressing their issues.

Another nugget of wisdom we found was that the right amount of time to be on vacation is approximately one week.  Any time longer than that, the kids get antsy and start to act out more than usual.  One week is just right because it gives us enough time to do what we want to do, but not too long so that we feel we’re simply tired of our vacation destination.