How to Travel with Your Parents (Or Someone Else’s)

Continued from
How to Plan a Trip with Your Parents (Or Someone Else’s)

Some couples we know have never traveled with their parents.  Bizarre, amazing, and yet entirely understandable.  Not everyone likes to travel…and not everyone likes their parents.

But because we love to travel and so do all our beloved folks, occasionally our worlds of leisure mingle/collide.

Here’s how we’ve learned to do it with grace and breathing room for all.

Taking a trip with your parents/his/her parents/your in-laws, long after your sulking teenage years have passed, should be an opportunity to create some great family memories.

Well…it should be, anyway.

But a simple twist on a stress management/substance abuse recovery formula can help explain why traveling as a couple with one or more sets of your parents might not be ideal:

• H.ungry
• A.ngry
• C.rowded
• T.ired

(Normally, “C.rowded” would be “L.onely”…but fat chance of that when you’re traveling en masse.)

Feel free to let yourselves fall prey to any of the above.  Grow murderously quiet and gloomy, or better yet, babble loudly and/or uncontrollably.  Snap at each other, your parents, or his/her parents.  Bask in the mood this creates, and enjoy how long these memories will last.

Or, considering that most travel necessitates mingling different personalities, interests and energy levels for (often) unnaturally long periods of time, you could prepare a positive game plan.

Each morning, spend a minute or two revisiting the day’s itinerary. If one member of the group is thinking they’d rather do something else/differently, now’s the time to state their case.  Whether or not the other members of the group are willing to change the plan, they risk being entirely on someone else’s trip — literally.

Avoid crowding, both physically and schedule-wise; take some quiet time each day. You might want some alone time, away from parents and your partner.  Or a nap.  Or maybe quiet time can mean all of you in the same space, each of you doing your own thing.   Chances are slim that anyone will turn down a chance to simply relax on vacation, and knowing that downtime will happen every day is almost guaranteed to keep stress levels low.

That said, prepare to occasionally lose a member of the group.  Yes, you’re rarely together, and yes, there’s (probably) an itinerary planned for the day, but what if, come time for the plan, not everyone’s into it?  Maybe someone feels a cold coming on, or simply exhausted in the wake of a hard work week.  In case one person needs/wants to sit out the day’s travelin’ plan (or just part of it), don’t take it personally.  Be respectful and bring back treats.

Buy snacks (and extras) before you leave home, and pack them in everything you carry. Not only will you always be able to avoid a low-blood-sugar meltdown, but when you whip out a snack and inspire someone else’s hunger, you can kill two granola bars with one stone.

Research area restaurants ahead of time. Either you or your partner should keep this information handy during your trip, and share it with your folks before anyone’s hungry.

**Cell phone restaurant-search apps like Yelp! and OpenTable are an equally good alternative.  As long as you have cell service, you can quickly locate nearby food.

Make sure you all have water with you. Thirsty people make bad choices, too.

Take a deep breath, trite as it sounds, when you feel like you’re gonna blow a gasket for any reason.  This gives you a second to identify the problem and what might (legally) fix it.

Try to spend about an hour of alone time with each parent. This is valuable catching-up time, and if you miss out on it, it’s easy to feel you didn’t really visit with each other at all.  Prioritize your peeps.