Why a holiday could be your best parenting move
Parents wanting to reconnect with their child or hoping for one last hurrah with their teen before they move into adulthood are taking one-on-one holidays with them. Here’s why it could be your best parenting move yet.
Lifestyle
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For some, it’s a time to tackle the tricky topics — sex, drugs, morality — in a structured, methodical way away from the everyday stresses of family life.
For others, it’s a fun-filled last blast to celebrate the end of primary school or high school with no rules, no agenda and no awkward discussions.
Travel industry insiders have observed a growing trend towards trips for one child with one or both parents, with other siblings left at home.
Whether it’s a jaunt to Paris, a week in Bali or a local bush retreat, the parent-child trip has become a new family tradition for many Aussies and a rite of passage for many teens and pre-teens.
It’s often viewed as a crucial opportunity to renegotiate the evolving relationship between parent and child before a significant new stage, such as puberty or adulthood.
And one-on-one holidays can create a bank of feel-good memories, ready to draw on when riding out the ups and downs of the years to come.
Prominent parenting author Dr Justin Coulson — a father of six daughters — calls it
a “beautiful bonding experience”.
He and wife Kylie recently returned from a trip to New Zealand with their third daughter Ella.
The couple decided some years ago that when each child was 15 or 16, they would take that daughter — leaving her five sisters behind — on one unforgettable trip.
“It’s almost like a ‘last blast’ as parents where we really get to enjoy them as our children before they start to embrace their young adulthood,” Coulson says.
“Because we have six children, they don’t get a huge amount of one-on-one time.”
But Coulson, who has written six books on raising kids and has a PhD in positive psychology, is the first to admit they didn’t get it right the first time.
“With our first child, we made a lot of mistakes,” he says.
“We took her to America because we thought we’re going to do this earth-shattering, life-changing thing.
“Because we made it so big and so extravagant, we didn’t even get the opportunity to have the conversations that mattered the most.
“We found ourselves constantly feeling torn between we’ve spent all this money to be here to do these things, do we sit in a hotel room or on a mountain top and talk, or do we go and do this exciting stuff because we’ve flown halfway around the world for it?
“It was a brilliant trip, but in terms of achieving the outcomes we were seeking to achieve, it was a disaster.”
For their second and third daughters, Coulson and his wife redirected the focus to deep conversations about meaningful topics.
Both times, they followed a schedule with planned conversations — and even prepared notes — on a series of topics on “life, the universe, and everything”.
The set topics covered sex and morality, drugs, boys, education, finance, life plans and faith.
“We actually planned out our conversations to some degree so we weren’t flying blind and making it up. We really did the prep work. And it was delightful,” Coulson says.
“On Thursday morning, we’re going to do the life goals talk, and on Thursday afternoon, we’re going to do the finance and budget talk.
“On Friday morning, we’re going to do the education talk. And on Friday afternoon, Mum’s going to go on a date and Abbie’s going to get her hair done and buy a dress, and on Friday night, Dad’s going to take her out on a date. And once the date’s over, we’re going to have the sex talk.
“And obviously we’ve had all these conversations before many, many times, but it’s an extension and a continuation, and an opportunity to have concentrated time where you get to go deep without interruptions from siblings.”
Coulson acknowledges some families might find planned discussions about sex and drugs rather awkward.
“You lean into the awkwardness,” he advises.
“I say this to my kids all the time, ‘Want to have one of those awkward dad conversations?’ I actually confront it. And when you do that, the kids become ultra-curious.”
It’s a point underlined by Coulson’s research for his most recent book, Miss-Connection, when he quizzed almost 400 teen girls about what they want their parents to know.
“One of the things girls were saying is they desperately want us to talk about this stuff,” he says.
“They want to hear our values. They want to get answers to this stuff. But they’re not going to bring it up.
“Even if the kids cringe and pull faces and give us the silent treatment, inside there is a burning curiosity.”
Other families take a far less structured approach to one-on-one trips.
Rachel Barnett, a senior travel adviser at Helloworld Travel in South Melbourne, says more parents are booking one-on-one trips with a teenager “before they go out into the big wide world”.
“And with schoolies at the end of the year, a lot of parents want to take their kids away one-on-one, instead of them going on schoolies,” she adds.
Barnett has two daughters, the eldest in Year 11, and has promised each a trip “anywhere in the world” when they finish Year 12. Both chose Paris.
“The main motivation is I want to spend time just with her, without my husband and other child, just me and her spending quality time doing fun things,” Barnett says.
“It’s got nothing to do with the meaning of life or anything like that. It’s the last time I guess you could say she belongs to us. Then she’ll be leaving.
“I would hope the trip would make us see each other on different levels, so she would see me more as a friend than a mum, and I hope to see her as an adult, and treat her as an adult.”
While it’s not only daughters who parents are taking on one-on-one trips, sons tend to be taken on different types of trips, often active or rich in adventure.
Intrepid Travel’s family travel manager Dyan McKie believes the growing trend of taking one child on a trip relates to cost and children’s interests.
“Parents are realising as kids get into that teenage range, from a planning perspective it’s quite difficult because most kids have different interests and it’s really hard to please everyone,” she says.
“And the big obvious one is it’s actually cheaper to take one child than taking the entire family. If parents are going to spend the money, they want to be doing something that that child benefits from or wants to do.”
But trips don’t need to be overseas or expensive.
Melissa Jeffcott, a Melbourne life and parent coach, runs mother-daughter weekends away in Victoria for girls aged 11 to 14, with the next planned for May.
The aim is to make memories, strengthen bonds and find new ways of staying connected as they get older.
Jeffcott finds some mums are surprised by what their daughters reveal.
“I get the mums to just sit and listen, without speaking, and the girls share with their mum what they need and want from their relationship as they’re getting older,” Jeffcott says.
“The two main things that come up is they want their mums to just sit and listen to them without always offering advice. Just letting your daughter feel heard and validated is really important.
“Don’t always offer advice: wait until you’re asked or ask if they want it.
“The girls all wanted more quality
one-on-one time together. I remember a couple of mums being surprised that their teenagers actually wanted to spend one-to-one time with them.”
Melbourne mum Lisa Mavraganis took her only child Charlotte on one of Jeffcott’s mother-daughter weekends to Warburton in 2018 when Charlotte was 13.
It’s made a lasting difference to their relationship.
“Although we’ve always been close, being in this environment really made us stop and listen to each other and understand each other a little better,” says Mavraganis, a sales agent who runs baby-gift business McGuire Style.
“The girls and mums really opened up about their feelings and listened to each other.
“Charlotte and I made a commitment that if we were angry at each other, instead of yelling we would say a certain word to calm down. We have used this word a few times since.”
On that weekend, Mavraganis was surprised to learn Charlotte wanted to hear more about her life. “She felt I always asked her about her friends, school, et cetera, but I didn’t talk about my day and what was happening with me,” Mavraganis says.
“It really made me think about how I communicate with her and that I need to focus on other topics, not just school.”
However, Coulson warns parents not to expect a one-on-one trip to fundamentally change the relationship with a child.
“One concentrated experience with your daughter, or for them with their parents, is not enough to change the overall relationship,” he says. “And anyone who goes into this and thinks this is going to be an earth-shattering, life-changing, relationship-building seminal moment in our children’s lives, I think they’re probably going to be disappointed.
“That’s not how it is at all, especially if they’ve been doing it right. It’s just a really delightful, gentle extension and continuation of what you’ve been building for the last 15 or 16 years.
“And it’s a great chance to create some special memories that are just yours, to give them some unique experiences that they don’t share with their siblings.”
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