Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Hot, Hungry, and Away from Home: The Party and Vacation Survival Guide
Playback episode!! I've shared this episode on Kids These Days, but it seems like so perfect to include it again this week!
The perfect family vacation often exists only in our minds. As one friend wisely told me, "Vacation with kids isn't really a vacation—it's just life somewhere else." This distinction forms the foundation of our exploration into making family gatherings genuinely enjoyable rather than merely survivable.
Success begins with clarity about your true priorities. Are you seeking relaxation, memory-making, quality time, new experiences, or simple fun? Each goal demands different planning approaches. If relaxation tops your list, avoid overscheduling every moment. For memorable experiences, create special moments distinct from everyday life—whether through matching family shirts, unique dining experiences, or photo journals capturing your adventures. When prioritizing quality time, consider technology boundaries that allow genuine connection. And if exposing your children to new experiences drives your planning, recognize that their enthusiasm might not match yours—and that's perfectly okay. The magic happens when you align your expectations with reality while communicating openly with everyone involved.
Summer gatherings present their own challenges—disrupted routines, heat that reduces everyone's tolerance levels, unfamiliar foods, and complex social dynamics. Children thrive on predictability, so parties naturally create stress when normal patterns disappear. Prepare by ensuring kids are well-fed before events, pack backup options for picky eaters, and remember that both you and your children become less patient in hot weather. Perhaps most importantly, balance your "visit mode" (adult conversation) with attentiveness to your children's needs. Often, they require just a few minutes of connection before happily returning to independent play. By approaching these moments with curiosity rather than frustration, you transform potential conflicts into opportunities for teaching and bonding. Ready to make your next family experience truly meaningful? Start by defining what matters most, then build your plans around that vision.
www.bethtrammell.com
Hello, dear listener, thank you for joining today on our podcast. Kids these days need us to make words matter for good. Today we are going to talk about vacations, holidays and parties. We are here in the middle of summer and feels like this might be a good topic to tackle, as some of us may be approaching some holidays or parties or headed out on vacation. So I'm your host, dr Beth Trammell.
Speaker 1:I'm a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at IU East in Richmond, indiana, where I'm also the director of the Masters in Mental Health Counseling Program. My focus is to make words matter for good. So I focus on behavior and communication strategies to increase connection between parents and kids, or teachers and kids to, yeah, strengthen our relationship with our kids and get them to do the things we need them to do. And so today I want to talk about vacations. Right? So vacations are amazing, and I have a very dear friend who told me a long time ago vacation with kids isn't really a vacation, it's really just life somewhere else. And that part always sticks with me, right? Because I think, as I think about vacation with my four kids, you know, it's not necessarily relaxing. It doesn't mean that my kids aren't amazing. But I think sometimes we get kind of disillusioned by this picture of what vacation is. You know, we see pictures and we read about it in our amazing novels or watch it on movies or whatever. And you know, vacation in real life isn't necessarily that. Maybe it is for you, maybe it is for you that and for some of us maybe it's not. And so I want to talk today about how we can maximize the likelihood that we get what we want out of our vacation. And so that's really where we start right. We start by deciding what do we want this vacation to be? What is it going to be about? What is our goal for this vacation? Is it about making memories? Is it about spending quality time together? Is it about seeing and experiencing new things? Is it about having fun? Is it about relaxing? Figure out what your top priority is for this vacation you have coming up and then you have to think about what are the strategic things I have to do to try to maximize the likelihood I'm going to meet that priority.
Speaker 1:So, for example, if you are a person who says my top priority on vacation is to relax, then you probably shouldn't schedule every amusement park you can find you shouldn't overschedule every day to be kind of a scheduled itinerary right, we have to be here at 10 and we have to be there at 11 and we have to be there at 1.30. When you have that kind of schedule, you're more likely to not feel relaxed, right? But it doesn't mean that, if your goal is relaxation, that you have nothing on the itinerary unless you're going without kids. If you're going without kids and you have nothing on the itinerary, that might be the most relaxing thing for you. But I'll tell you, if you have nothing on the itinerary and you're bringing a kid or a few kids with you, you're probably not going to be relaxed either, because they're going to either be bored or whining or complaining.
Speaker 1:Now, if your goal is to make memories, then you can't just do life somewhere else. You have to do things that make it memorable. So what are the things that your family can do to make it memorable? That might mean you have special t-shirts you're going to wear one day. Maybe that means you're going to go to a restaurant where they're going to have some experience they're going to be able to remember. It has to be something a little bit different. It doesn't have to cost more money. It just means it has to be different than regular life. Maybe you teach them how to make something, maybe you take a cooking class somewhere. Maybe you go to visit a really memorable place I don't know what it is but if you're there to make memories and you're doing nothing new, it's going to be just like life somewhere else. I think if you are there to make memories, the best thing you can do is to take pictures and then, while you're there, plan to create a photo album for your kids, for yourself there. Plan to create a photo album for your kids for yourself, right? Maybe you have them bring a journal and every day they draw a picture. At the end of the day, maybe they write down three things that they're thankful for. Somehow, if your goal is to make memories, you have to make sure that you're actually creating experiences that are imprinting things on their brain that will let them remember it later, and so that might mean doing something different. It might mean having them take pictures, or it might mean journaling or drawing about it.
Speaker 1:If your goal is just to spend quality time together, think about what that might look like For some of us. It might mean setting some technology boundaries, right. So maybe you're going to have some tech-free time together, and talking about it ahead of time is always better. Now, I guess I shouldn't say always. I'm always really leery of those blanket words. Always never right, because some of you might have a kid at home. That's going to be really Never Right, because some of you might have a kid at home, that's like going to be really really grumpy. If you say there's going to be tech boundaries, so maybe you are the particular exception to that rule. But for the most part, I usually tell folks to talk about it ahead of time so you can set those expectations ahead of time. Hey, every day from six to nine, everyone, parents included, are going to put their phones in the kitchen drawer and there's going to be a timeout for everybody's phones or tablets or video games and we're going to spend some time together.
Speaker 1:If your goal is about seeing or experiencing new things, again, you might have to get your kids to buy into that. Say, hey, I want you to see the world. I didn't get to see the world when I was your age. Or this is a place that's really meaningful to me and I want for you to experience it. Come into that conversation or these experiences, realizing this may be your dream for them to experience new things, but it may not be theirs. It may not be their dream to see and experience new things, and some of that's because they don't know right, they don't know better, and some of it's because for them, new things may be uncomfortable, maybe anxiety provoking, and so it doesn't mean that you can't push your kids to do new things. You can't dream for them to experience new things about the world. It just means if you go into this like, oh, I want my kids to see and experience and love everything in the world, and then your kid is sort of like, yeah, it's just bricks, you know, it's okay, right? Don't let their lack of enthusiasm thwart your excitement, right? Don't let their lack of enthusiasm ruin it, for you Know that it's okay. It's okay that they don't love it as much as you do.
Speaker 1:And if you really are like man, you're just really a buzzkill right now, maybe it's okay for you to say we're going to try this new thing today and what I expect from you is that you will smile. Seriously, it's okay. Especially if you have teenagers, you can say this. You can tell them exactly what your expectations are. I know this isn't what you want to do, but this is what I want to do, and so my expectations are that you're going to try a little bit harder, you're going to try a little bit harder to laugh, and after this we can go to the restaurant you like, or after this, I'll give you an hour of time on your phone and I won't bother you. Right, like it's fair for you to say first we're going to do this and then you get to do something that you enjoy. And it doesn't mean your kid is being a stick in the mud or that they're being a pain, right, it's okay. But you can have some conversation with them about it and your expectations around it.
Speaker 1:If your goal is to have fun, oh man, here we go. Okay, if your goal is to have fun, if your goal is to have fun, then you have to kind of be fun. Truthfully, you know, like sometimes I think we as parents I know this for me especially, you know, for me when I go on vacation with my kids I really do have a tendency to just kind of approach it as like task oriented things like okay, well, when's the next meal? What are we going to eat, how much is it going to cost if we go here, and how much is it going to cost here, and who slept well or who isn't feeling well, and I take on all these things that are going on in my family and I forget just to have fun. And so fun is contagious. And so if they're trying to have fun and I'm sort of not, or vice versa, right, if I'm trying to have fun and they're like not really into it, or if I'm having fun and they're having fun, then everyone's having fun. If your goal is to have fun, you have to kind of be fun. And that doesn't mean you have to be fun 24 hours a day. It doesn't mean you have to be fun for the 10 hours that you're driving in the car across the country. It means for certain parts of it, we're going to have fun even amidst change, even amidst when things don't go exactly the way we want them to go right.
Speaker 1:So if you're heading on vacation, think about what your top priority is. Talk with the other person who's going on vacation with you whether that's your partner, your spouse, your parent, whoever's going with you and say my top priority on this vacation is this. And so here are the things that I've thought about for doing that. Are there things that you can think about? What is your top priority? Because if your top priority is one thing and your partner's top priority is not that thing, you could get kind of your wires could get crossed a little bit and then everybody is just going to be on vacation and who wants to do that? Right? So the first thing is to think about what your goal is. Communicate that with your partner, whoever's going on, and if you're on a solo vacation with your kids, then it really can just be your top priority. And then, if possible, communicate that with your kids and, when possible, if there are things that they want to do that you can ask them like what would you like to do on this vacation? Here are some options. Here are some options Because you know you got to realize your kids don't necessarily realize what options are there. Right, you've been the one studying and planning this whole trip, this whole vacation for them, and so you might have to give them some options when you're asking them what they want to do.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about holiday parties, any kind of social gathering that happens for kids. I kind of I wrote a blog post a couple of summers ago and I am sharing it again here on my website Five tips for how to survive summer parties with kids, and so I'm going to share a couple of those, and then you can check out my blog for more info or a little more detail. So the first tip is know that although parties are fun, it's still a change in the routine. All of us thrive on routine. Summertime, for most of our kids, is already out of the routine. Now, if your kids go to daycare they have some sort of structure that they go to in the summer and it's not really different than the rest of the year then this may not necessarily apply as much to them, but for those of us who have kids who are kind of out of school and out of the structure of most daytime routines, going to a social gathering is even further away from that routine, right, and so when our kids are out of routine, that typically means they're out of structure, and when we're out of structure, it usually causes chaos, and so our goal is to try to stay focused on how do we, yeah, have fun at the party and then get back to the routine, or how can you structure things at the party so that there is still a little bit of that routine as a part of what they typically do? So when it's mealtime, what is kind of their routine around mealtime? When it's playtime, what's their routine about? When they're done playing? What do they need to do? They wash their hands, they put their shoes in the corner somewhere, whatever that might be.
Speaker 1:Tip number two for surviving holidays and parties is to remember that summer heat makes everyone less tolerant. So when the heat goes up, our level of tolerance for any kind of shenanigan goes down. So all of us in especially hotter environments have less tolerance for things. And so when your kid is extra whiny or when your child is struggling to get along with the other peers that are at the party, or if they're just outright refusing to do things that they typically do for you, they're less tolerant, and so are you. And so this is a really friendly reminder that when we are less tolerant, our goal is to focus on breath first. Right, so calm, breathing first before we just react or explode. And so remember that we are just sort of less tolerant, and so are they. And so breathing through, trying to stay regulated and then co-regulating with your child to try to help them breathe, to calm, before you kind of lose your mind, may be just the first thing to remember.
Speaker 1:Summer parties also usually mean bring on the food all sorts of food that your kids bellies aren't used to eating, all sorts of food that your belly isn't used to eating. And look, here's the thing. We can tolerate this change in routine. It's fine, right? I'm not telling you to never go to another holiday party or never go to a summer get together, right? What I am saying is, if you can go prepared for these things to happen, you're more likely to be able to intervene the way you want to intervene, instead of just responding and then everybody getting angry and kind of blowing up and everything being chaotic.
Speaker 1:Right, like, know that before you go to the party, you should get some fruit and vegetables in your kid. You should get them some protein. Maybe you go to the party, you should get some fruit and vegetables in your kid. You should get them some protein. Maybe you need to get your kid something that they you know they're going to eat something good that morning for breakfast, because they're going to eat extra treats when they're at the party, or whatever that might look like right, realize that when your kids are not eating well, their bodies may not be fueled the way we want them to be fueled, and so, again, they may be less tolerant of things, they may be a little whinier, they may just forget to eat altogether because there's so many things going on. And we have to remember that having fuel for their body makes them more likely to behave the way we need them to behave. And so if there's food at the party that they don't necessarily love, maybe you pack them a little lunch just in case, put it in the cooler, leave it in the car if you need it as a backup plan. But if your kids are hungry and hangry, then we have to really pay attention to that. Right, we have to really pay attention to that because if their bodies are sort of out of sync, meaning they're hungry or they need fuel behaviorally, you just can't really get mad at them for behaving or acting out right. So we have to be prepared for that, to have some backup plan if the food is either too much or not enough for them.
Speaker 1:The last two tips I'll share here that you can also find on the blog. You know, when we're around people we love or, frankly, even if we're around people we don't love, when we're at parties with our kids, we're kind of in visit mode. You know visit mode. We're kind of hanging out with other adults, we want to have adult conversation. Maybe we're playing cards or we're, you know, playing a backyard game of some sort or whatever. We're in visit mode, which means we're not necessarily spending quite as much time attending to our child. And again, I'm not saying that you should just sit and look at your child all day and give them all the attention. They can tolerate us doing other things, but in doing so, this is a change from what your child is used to, and so it's okay for them to sometimes be a little clingy because you've been in visit mode for the last hour and now they kind of want some attention from you.
Speaker 1:You might have to learn to sort of modulate, right, like, go from one mode to another, so saying, hey, in 10 minutes I'm going to come over there and I'm going to shoot basketball with you and then I'm going to come back and talk to grandma a little bit more. Right, giving them a little bit of a heads up to say, hey, I want to go, sit and chat with Aunt Kathy. I want to sit and talk with you. Know whoever it is, let them know you're going to be in visit mode and then let them know when you're going to come out of visit mode. And if they need your attention, you might have to then say to Aunt Kathy hey, aunt Kathy, give me a second, I want to just go play for a little bit. What would happen if you chose them in that moment and I'm saying this to me as much as I'm saying this to you, y'all, okay, I think about those moments where I tend to lose sight of what my kids might need for me in that moment and I just say you know what, just like, go, just go. I'm talking to so-and-so, I just need you to go and play and for my kids at least, you know, it's like they don't need me all day In that moment, they just need me for a few minutes. I think, even just in some scenarios where my kids have kind of had a hard time at a get together or gathering or whatever, and I just wonder, thinking back, what would I? What would have happened? You know what would have happened if I would have chosen them in that moment and then come back to Aunt Kathy. You know Aunt Kathy is fine, she's like no, go ahead, do what you got to do and then come back.
Speaker 1:Last tip we're going to talk about here social relationships are different at parties. And you know, if you have a kiddo who kind of struggles just a little bit in social relationships I actually think there are a lot of kiddos that struggle in social relationships, and for a lot of our kids that's a huge portion of their life, and so social relationships may be hard for them to navigate, even in a structured setting like school. But beyond that, when we're at a party or at a holiday, social relationships are different and so sometimes they need help navigating those social things. And so if they come and they're tattling, or if they come and they're talking about how so-and-so isn't being fair, they're not playing the game the right way, or whatever. Pause for a second to hear them. Right, pause for a second to hear them, because they may be telling you that they're struggling with the social relationship at this party and you might be saying to yourself no, no, no, my kid doesn't ever have trouble like that, and out of the blue maybe they are.
Speaker 1:Take a pause and say what do you think you need to do?
Speaker 1:What do you think I can do to help you? What do you think would answer this problem? What if I came over there to help you? Would that be what you want? What would you like me to do? And try not to ask it in a way that is angry. So, instead of well, what would you like me to do about it? Try instead to actually come from a place of curiosity, right? What do you think we need to do about this?
Speaker 1:A lot of kids have a lot of ideas and sometimes kids have great ideas. But, honestly, sometimes kids don't have great ideas and they need us to help them, right? So you might say what do you think we need to do? Well, I think you need to go over and punch them in the face. Okay, all right, so let's have a little teaching moment here, friend. So so asking them and coming from a place of curiosity can tell you kind of where your child is at and what level of intervention you might need to do as the parent to step in and help them.
Speaker 1:So I hope that, thinking through holidays, vacations and parties, I hope there was a nugget here for you today. I know that on Friday we're going to be talking about finding joy in everyday moments in our lives and I am actually not great at that one either and so that conversation will be as much for me as for all of the rest of us as a kind of a friendly reminder that finding joy is really a huge part of kind of walking alongside our kids as they grow up. And then next week we are going to talk about some unhelpful things that we say to our kids and some other ways to communicate. So tune in next Monday for that, and so I hope that you can enjoy your vacation a little bit more, enjoy that summer party just a little bit more, enjoy that holiday just a little bit more, and until next week, friend, thanks for being here. I appreciate you listening and tuning in and, as always, make words matter for good.
