Travel parenting
When we discussed how we were going to handle travelling with our three year old, Irene and I agreed that we were just basically going to have to throw all our rules and routines out the window.
It has taken us some time, as we had a lot of them. But we’ve managed it.
We’re about half way through our little jaunt to Switzerland and Italy so there’s still time for this assessment to change but so far:
- All pasta all the time. We’re well placed for this, to be sure. At home we try to vary her diet, though she would eat pasta every night if she could. Here, she does. So far she lives still.
- Concept of bed time: days are a bit more drawn out. Many things pause between 1pm and 3pm. Restaurants don’t open for dinner much before 7:30pm and Mallory hasn’t gone to bed much before 9pm since we landed. Again, she lives.
- TV before bed: omitted more often than not because we discover that she’s still up at 10pm. She’s gone along with this. And lives still.
- Ice cream addiction: Mallory’s not big on site seeing. So we bribe her. Put up with the grown ups’ dawdling around an old castle and we’ll get you ice cream.
- Naps: Sometimes they happen (usually in the car on the way home around 5pm – way too late) but for the most part they don’t. Mallory was on her way to dropping naps anyway, but I don’t think she’s missed this many before.
- Late afternoon snack: she gets one at day care consistently. Her parents have not been able to duplicate that feat here. And for this we have paid a heavy price with a dinner hour meltdown. This is probably the one bit of routine that we cannot afford to skip. Not if we want to avoid being evicted, anyway.
June 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Late nights, wall-to-wall pasta and bribery.. Good to see what Italy has taught you.. sounds very fun. I am jealous.