David Campbell: ‘I’d love a family holiday — without the kids’
“There’s something so exciting about planning the summer family vacation,” writes David Campbell. “But then I remember the reality. Cue the frightening flashbacks.”
Stellar
Don't miss out on the headlines from Stellar. Followed categories will be added to My News.
WE can all agree, I think, that there is something pretty darn exciting about planning the summer family vacation.
The world is your oyster. You can get some great deals online on flights nowadays or even try to get the kids excited about hitting the open road and reliving the car trips we all took as kids.
We spent last weekend dreaming as a family, searching online for options and having meetings with the kids about what Griswold-style adventure may lie ahead for us all.
But something changes once they go to bed and I stop looking through rose-coloured glasses with the great Instagram filter of vacays gone by.
I have frightening flashbacks.
The reality of travelling with more than one child is... the hell of actually leaving the house with them.
MORE STELLAR:
Carrie Bickmore: Why losing is good for kids
Graham Norton: ‘A guest wanted nine dressing rooms’
I remember so much, I wake at night screaming from the post-parental travelling trauma.
I have stood at Immigration trying to get my family into South-East Asia with my daughter in a BabyBjörn on my chest, screaming at the official at 11.30 at night. It really was touch or go for a while there as to whether he would let us all in.
There was the delightful time I caught my son’s vomit at 35,000 feet in a bowl of food I was eating at the time and had to apologise profusely to the lovely staff as I handed it, full to the brim, back to them, as I silently prayed for no turbulence. Also... it was their last meal.
How great are car trips in the summer, when your baby son doesn’t want to be in the car anymore and decides to make a break for it on the highway to Grandad’s house by opening the back door? (The twins love to tamper with the child locks because they are basically criminal masterminds.)
Or the time not long ago when my kids pinched my phone while I was driving to the airport and started pressing all the buttons. I had no idea until emergency services came through the speakers. The kids screaming in the background didn’t help my case in explaining to them that “all was OK”.
Most recently there was darling Betty, who started to speak early in life, but speak REALLY LOUDLY. She went through a phase last Christmas when we were shopping in a very busy mall in Melbourne, and she wasn’t getting her way. Her catchphrase was, “Help! Help me! Put me DOWN,” like I had just kidnapped her.
And, of course, I was very sweaty — because it was summer — so I looked guilty as all get-out.
I could go on about hospital visits we’ve made in faraway lands for matters of hand and foot and mouth. Or gastro by the bistro. But we have all been there, right?
Still, I really need a holiday and travel broadens the minds of children.
I just wonder if we can do it separately.
(Apologies if you were eating brunch while reading this.)
David co-hosts Today Extra, 9am weekdays, on the Nine Network.