Who wants to take the stress out of traveling with your grandchildren and their parents? In this episode, we talk about all the things to consider when planning a trip with many personalities and ideas of what to do. We hope you enjoy our tips.
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Show Notes
1:59 – Making travel memories with little to no stress
2:47 – Have a discussion with all the other travelers
4:39 – Misconceptions – Problems that may arise
6:08 – Ideas from a Mother-in-law
7:59 – Who pays for what?
8:58 – Our formula for paying
13:03 – Coordinating activities
15:05 – Hotels, resorts, renting houses
19:10 – Renting a car – who’s paying for gas?
25:27 – Paying for everything doesn’t mean making all the decisions
28:38 – Decide on how much babysitting you’ll do before the trip
31:22 – Build an itinerary/agenda together
37:23 – Let your children take vacations without you, too
38:53 – Don’t forget that kids take longer to get ready than you might
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Full Transcript of Podcast
Jim 0:00
Welcome back, everybody. We are on episode 19 of modern grandparenting. And today we are going to be talking about travel. Well, we haven’t been able to travel for a while thanks to the pandemic and a few other things. But it is coming back. And we are super excited. So today we’re going to be covering some really useful tips on traveling with grandchildren. Sit back and enjoy.
Corinne 0:28
Welcome to our weekly podcast, modern grandparenting, where we discuss issues that grandparents must deal with in this changing world, from maintaining the best relationships with both their children and grandchildren to give you all kinds of ideas what to do all year long, and hopefully making memories that will last a lifetime. Well, it’s been a long time since we’ve done a podcast and it’s good to be back isn’t a gym.
Jim 0:55
It really is in here, right? It has been a long time. But there’s been a lot going on a lot more than we expected too much. A little too much. Yeah. Well, you know, the country was, well, the whole world was hit by the omachron variant. And our house was hit too. So that really put a kibosh on things for a good couple of weeks.
Corinne 1:17
Yeah. And then after that, we just got busy with doing things on the house. And then we went on a trip to Hawaii, which is what we’re going to talk about today, basically, well, interweave it with all of our tips about traveling with grandchildren, and traveling with their parents at the same time. That can be a real challenge. But well, well worth it. Traveling with your grandchildren and your children, in my opinion, is probably one of the most rewarding things that you can do, because you’re making memories that will last a lifetime. And that’s one of our key things, we want to make those memories. For whatever years we have left, we want to make the most of them, right?
Jim 1:59
That’s right. And you know, for a lot of people, I’m not sure why but travel means stress. And if that’s something that you’re struggling with, it’s hard to it’s hard to deal with. But somehow you’ve got to change your mindset, travel should not be stressful. Yeah, there’s going to be things that happen while you travel, that might increase your stress level.
Jim 2:23
But the idea of travel should be the idea of just getting away and time to where you get to do the things that you want to do. You’re with other people that are doing the things they want to do, everyone’s kind of working together to have a really good time. And it really shouldn’t be stressful. So if you’re finding a lot of stress, in your travels with family, especially, hopefully this podcast is going to help out.
Corinne 2:47
So I’m probably sure that if you’ve been following us for any length of time at all, you’ll know what our first tip is, have a discussion with your children on what they expect, it doesn’t really matter who you’re traveling with. Because if you’re going to travel with anyone, whether it’s your best friend, your mother, your cousin, going on a sister’s trip, whatever it is that you’re going to do, you need to have some discussions ahead of time about what is expected.
Corinne 3:17
Who’s gonna pay for what, who’s washing the dishes, all those kinds of things that you might encounter, because there’s nothing worse than getting on the trip and start starting to have problems. What I tend to do, if that happens is I’ll clam up the first couple of times, I sort of swallow my pride, they don’t really say anything. And unfortunately, that probably isn’t the best thing either, because then it just builds up.
Corinne 3:44
And then by the time you’re at the end, before you get to the end of the trip, probably, then you might just blow up. I’ve done that a few times, or other people have done it around me. It’s not pretty and it’s not fun. And it’s not something that you want to have on your travels. So what we’ve tried to do is really be upfront with whomever we’re traveling with. And we have traveled with a plethora a multitude groups, singles, families, individuals, our family, other people’s families, you name it, we’ve traveled with them. So I think that we’ve we’ve got a little bit of expertise in this area – just a little bit.
Jim 4:22
Yeah, I think we have a lot! Of all those different groups of people you’re talking about traveling with. Yeah, we’ve definitely done that. But we’ve also been the leaders of travel groups and arranging all of the accommodations and food and everything else for larger groups.
Jim 4:39
But really, I mean, you hit the nail on the head, you have got to have that open communication. This is something that that we talk about a lot, especially when it comes to relationships. Even if you think something doesn’t need to be said. It probably still needs to be said out loud, just so everybody hears it. And everybody That way we’ll be on the same page, you can’t really assume that everybody is going to be coming into a situation like travel with the same preconceptions and ideas about, for instance, who’s going to be paying for what, how you’re going to divide up costs, and accommodations and things like that. All of those things really need to be talked about. So that it’s very clear upfront. Now, I don’t think you need to, like spell it out in a contract or anything like that, unless you are, of course, setting up a formal group type thing, but we’re talking family here. So you don’t need to go that far. But you do need to talk about it.
Corinne 5:41
And we’ve traveled as when it comes to family, we’ve traveled, of course, on our own as a couple, we’ve traveled with our kids, and each set of our parents at different times. And we’ve we’ve traveled with our parents setting up huge family reunion type things where we’re traveling with all our siblings and their kids. I mean, it can get kind of crazy, really.
Corinne 6:09
My mother in law, who has really been sort of an anchor as far as being the first one to really go out and do it. Organized travel for the family in a very large way like that, really large scales. Yeah. She, she had some good ideas.
Corinne 6:28
So one of the things they would do, Jim’s father, and my stepmother, and my stepmother in law, actually, what they would do is they would say we’re going to blank, whether it be Yosemite National Park, or Italy or Ireland or wherever they were traveling to.They would say we’re going to blank and you’re invited, your job is to get yourself there. And then when you’re there, we’ll pay for your accommodations, and the meals that we do together, and admission to everything that we do together.
Corinne 7:00
So basically, they were saying as long as you’re with us, we’re paying, if you strike out on your own, which is perfectly acceptable, your pain. I mean, that makes sense, right? If you’re doing your own thing, then you would do it. It didn’t I’m not gonna say this happened. It kind of started out that way. But it got more fine tuned, the more often they did this, and they did probably a yearly trip for many, many, many years for quite a while. And yeah, it was great. It was a wonderful way to get started and helped us a lot as we were going along as well.
Corinne 7:32
Now that we’re in that position, where we’re the grandparents, we first of all, we’ve always traveled with our own children. So they have a really good idea of how do we do that anyway. But just because they know what to expect doesn’t mean they always agree with what we do. Does that make sense?
Jim 7:52
Yeah, it does. And that’s gonna happen. So you have to be ready for it.
Corinne 7:59
So here’s what we suggest. Like Jim said, what are the most important things is deciding who’s going to pay for what? Now when it comes to airfare, you know, if you’re going on a trip together, the way we worked it out is the same as our parents did. We said, you get there. And we get there. So we both paid for our own airfare. Accommodations wise, we all shared one room because it was just easier when we were in a resort. And so we just split that. I think we split it in thirds. How do we do that?
Jim 8:34
So the way we’ve kind of always approached splitting costs as travel, when you’re doing things together as a group, a lot of times, it’s easier to just have one person pay, and then deal with the split up either before
Corinne 8:48
Or afterwards. Keep a good tally. And know that that’s going to happen if
Jim 8:52
Everybody is aware that that’s going to happen. So you agree upfront, what share each person’s gonna have.
Jim 8:58
And you know, with food, sometimes that can get a little tricky. You might have someone who it seems like maybe they’re taking advantage of like if they are paying a quarter share, and they’re always getting the surf and turf and you’re kind of not really that hungry all the time. So you’re only getting a sandwich. Yeah, I mean, those are things that you got to work out. And sometimes if that’s the case, you’ll want to for food alone, you’ll want to just split those costs, but what we like to do is count the number of main travelers. So usually that’s the adults or larger kids, teenagers get older and they’re starting to take up more of an adult share of the resources.
Jim 9:42
You know, they’ve got their own bed, they’re eating a full meal, that sort of thing, then you might want to treat them as an adult to and count them up and then split the cost that many ways. For instance, on our last trip to Hawaii, it was created myself, Erica and AJ Well, AJ is not even two yet. He’s really close. But he’s not there yet. So we don’t count him in the shares.
Jim 10:08
Yeah, later, we’ll have to do with that. But so upfront, we all knew that we were going to pay a third of the shared costs. And so that’s what we did with the hotel price, we split into thirds. And we paid, of course, two thirds, and she paid 1/3. And you know, that really works good.
Jim 10:29
Again, you really have to have that conversation, just don’t go into it, assuming that everybody thinks the same way. You know, this is kind of something we learned once, traveling with friends, where we used to, we had live been living in Germany, and we used to have this like, maybe a monthly Night Out where a bunch of us friends, couples would all go out to a Chinese restaurant, right? In Luxembourg, Luxembourg City, which
Corinne 10:56
is about Germany, 30 minutes away from where we lived in Germany on the western edge.
Jim 11:00
So just a really cool night out, it wasn’t too far away, it was a different country, a lot of different things on the menu. And we would just order a whole bunch of stuff. And they put it all in the middle of the table on the Lazy Susan. And everybody would just dig into all the different dishes and just have a great time.
Corinne 11:17
We just divided by the number of people that exactly.
Jim 11:21
And we all love doing that. And it worked great.
Corinne 11:26
Until one day One day,
Jim 11:29
We invited a new couple along. And we did tell them. We did. I’m sure that we said upfront that this is how we do it. But somehow the message didn’t get across.
Corinne 11:42
I think the message got across to the guy because he worked with us. Yeah, but it to his girlfriend or wife or whatever she was. It didn’t. He didn’t convey that to her. And so Dun dun dun, you can imagine, yeah, drama ensued.
Jim 11:59
Her feelings were very hurt when people want to try her food. She didn’t want to try anybody else’s food. And she didn’t want to have to pay for anything more than what she had bought. So it was a little bit awkward, I guess, for a little bit. But you know, we were all adults. And we dealt with it. And we said, okay, well, that’s your food. But yeah, she was very upset. And so those things can be avoided, just by making sure everybody is aware of everything upfront.
Corinne 12:27
So I guess in this particular case, what we should have done is reiterated when everyone was there together what we would do, but that was just a one night out thing. This was not a trip, if we had gone on a trip, I mean, I highly suggest that you either do a zoom call, or you get together and have lunch and work these things out.
Corinne 12:47
But it has to be everybody who’s going on the trip. Because for example, in our family, if Michael who was our son in law had decided to come along, even though he’s traveled with us many, many times, and probably has a very good idea of what to expect.
Corinne 13:03
However, it’s not fair to assume that he’s going to know everything. And even when it was just Erica and us, when Erica is our child, she knows really what to expect. We still kind of said this is what we’re gonna do. Is that okay with you? I mean, a couple things we came up with, to do. We email back and forth. Erica said she’s interested in going on a whale watching tour, were we interested in going as well? And we said we were and she said, Well, she found a Groupon for it. And that was great. But we needed to coordinate that we needed to make sure that everybody was going on the activities that we were signing up for separately. And it works out as long as you’ve got that open communication.
Jim 13:48
And that’s really important. And you bring up a good point, we’re not just talking about the conversation about how things are going to be paid for. But you need to have that conversation about who wants to do what, and then even then, so that you can coordinate everything.
Jim 14:05
And if you don’t have that, if you just do everyone’s going to do everything together, then you’re either making all the decisions for everybody and someone’s not going to be happy. Or you’re going to be letting somebody else make the decisions and you’ll be missing out on something that you want to do. So that is definitely the time to start the conversation about, you know, what is there to do where we’re going? Who’s interested in doing what are we going to do it together? Is it something everybody’s interested in or something only one person is interested in? You don’t have to do everything together. That’s really the key to removing a lot of that stress.
Corinne 14:43
We’re jumping tips here, but I’m sorry, big time that kind of work together. I do. Of course they do. But the the thing here is make sure that it’s okay to do things on your own. Yeah. And we learned that again. Well, I have lots of stories lots little anecdotes to throw in here to, to illustrate what we’re talking about.
Corinne 15:05
Okay, so we’re talking money, we’ve talked about accommodations a little bit. If you’re in a hotel room, the four of us all fit into one. So that was fine. And we’re fine with sleeping together because she’s our kid. But I mean, maybe you would have two hotel rooms that isn’t a problem, they pay for their and you pay for yours.
Corinne 15:22
But if you do a rental house, that gets a little trickier. One of the things we did with my other mother in law, and Jim’s family, which is large, he has seven siblings. And most of those are at least half of them have children of their own. So we’re talking a lot of people, and some of those children have children. In fact, it’s a big extended family, huge extended family, and they invited everyone and they got this huge house in at Lake Tahoe.
Jim 15:50
We even had a cousin with her family.
Corinne 15:53
So when we’re talking extended, we’re talking to extended extended extended family and lots of people. So what happened was one of the sisters, of course, takes charge. I mean, there’s always someone else to you has to be the leader, and make sure everything’s working out.
Corinne 16:09
Well, taking charge, also meant paying for the rental. And she just simply said, because we didn’t have a discussion about it really beforehand, that anybody who wants to contribute may contribute. Well, of course we did. But I think we were the only ones who did.
Corinne 16:25
Yeah, I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure I tried to help out as much as we could that try. Well, that was okay. Well, then when Jim and I arrived with our family. I think we were first. We got there pretty early.
Corinne 16:39
And maybe, maybe one of your sisters was already there. Well, anyway, we were pretty close to the beginning. So we picked out our rooms, and we had six adults with us and our family. We had our two daughters and their two husbands, as well as Jim and myself. And so we picked rooms.
Corinne 16:55
We picked for them for the for the kids, we picked a room with two bunks, which come on, I thought that was pretty nice. And they were all adults in there. They were in their 20s, late 20s, I guess. And then we picked a room that was a single. Not a single but a one bedroom. Yeah, a double bed.
Corinne 17:13
And there were still plenty of bedrooms left. I mean, this is a very large house. But needless to say, there was grumbling. Why did we get to have those rooms? Maybe this room should have gone to someone else? Why couldn’t the kids, my kids sleep on the floor? Well, why should my adult kids sleep on the floor when we contributed to this price? I was not happy about this. Needless to say, it was a lesson learned.
Corinne 17:38
Of course, that’s what everything ends up being right? Hindsight- 2020. And that’s one of the things that we do now is we if we’re renting a house together with other people, and we’ve done this multiple times, we discuss what kind of bedrooms and beds are acceptable. Is a pullout couch acceptable? Some people don’t like to sleep on them, because they’re pretty uncomfortable. I mean, I put myself in that category. If I’m paying for anything, I want a bed. So if you can’t get me a bed, then maybe I didn’t get my own place. And I’m willing to pay for my own place.
Corinne 18:11
So you really have to have that discussion on who gets a bed who doesn’t get a bed? What kind of bedrooms do we need? How many bedrooms do we really need? What does that include? And I think that that becomes pretty important. And then if you’re paying for it, well, then you’re in charge. But if you’re going to split the money, you need to tell people ahead of time, about how much that’s gonna cost.
Corinne 18:29
So renting a house can get a little bit tricky. It takes a little bit more organization beforehand, and money wise. But I also think it’s well worth it in the long run, usually, especially if you have that larger group, you’re going to be spending less on hotels, and you can get wonderful places like we’ve stayed on the beach, we’ve stayed on a lake, we’ve stayed in a cabin in the mountains, we’ve stayed in so many wonderful places that you really aren’t going to be able to access with hotels all the time. So it’s something to really think about. The other thing that gets tricky, and Jim can talk a little bit more about this because he’s the driver is renting the car and paying for gas.
Jim 19:10
Oh, yeah. And we’ve done this a few ways. We’ve tried it where? Well, first of all, of course, you’re going to make the rental agreement upfront. And then so you’ll have a good idea of what that cost is going to be. But you also have to think about the add on costs when you actually go to pick up the car.
Jim 19:29
For instance, if you’re going to add on insurance. If you’re like if your own insurance doesn’t cover a rental car, it’s always a good idea. And sometimes you don’t see that when you first make the reservation. So you have to keep track of all of those expenses. And again, decide upfront, how are you going to split the cost now, we usually split the cost for rentals, just right down the middle for the different parties. So if you’ve got two in a couple and single person, you’re still splitting the cost three ways, we usually split in half that way. If you have three different parties, then we’d split in three ways. But a couple we count in a car as one party. And that works out really good.
Corinne 20:18
Just because I mean, you have to decide what works for sure.
Jim 20:21
Of course, that’s how we do it. But how other people do it, it’s up to them. And you might even well stick with the car. So you have the rental cost, of course and insurance if that’s included. Sometimes you need to add on a What’s the little machine? Yeah, well, the GPS is one thing. Don’t need that as often anymore. Everybody’s got phones with with a good map system on it. No, I was thinking more the toll the toll cards.
Corinne 20:49
Which are good to have.
Jim 20:50
How are you going to do tolls, because a lot of places you’re driving, you’re gonna have tolls. Oftentimes, it’s built into the car, and you turn it on. And once you go through the first toll you’re paying tolls, sometimes you’re paying just the toll. Sometimes you’re paying a flat amount for having an on each day or for having it each day. So you need to be aware of that, that’s also a cost that you’re not gonna see until the end.
Jim 21:14
So really, what we do for a rental car is we keep a really good record of what everything costs. And one way you can do that is always use your credit card to make payments for the car. So you have the record that way, or just keep a note in your phone, about the expenses that you’ve made. save receipts, if you’re getting receipts for gas,
Corinne 21:37
and also importantly, gas parking and tolls.
Jim 21:41
Those are the little things that you don’t usually think about. And then at the end, we’ll just split that cost however, you decided to cut up the shares of the costs. But you have to be aware of that as you go, because you can’t think about at the end and say, oh, wait a minute, but we put gas and how much gas did we put in? And where do we park?
Corinne 22:01
And if someone’s not ready for that? I mean, gas, as you well know, is expensive. Yeah, you know, we were just saying why it was over $4 a gallon everywhere we were, which was probably one of the most types highest I’ve seen all over the states lately. And so you’re definitely not going to be ready for it. Unless you know, ahead of time that we were splitting the gas by whatever we did, because I don’t know what Jim and Erica had decided.
Corinne 22:10
We’re splitting in half that I kept track of it.
Corinne 22:29
This is what happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean much. But if you don’t discuss it ahead of time costs, like gas and who’s paying for it at the end. And people aren’t expecting that they get their feelings hurt when you ask them for $50 or $25, or whatever that gas cost, because it’s something that really adds up. And it’s really only fair, that whoever is riding with you is paying for part of that. So again, it’s just really imperative that you have that discussion ahead of time.
Jim 23:02
The other thing to think about with rentals is if you’re in a larger group, maybe one car is not enough. And if you’re just too if, say you’re traveling with another family, and you each want to it’s going to be traveling in your own car, you know, that’s obvious, each person’s gonna pay for their own car and whatever expenses that incurs. But let’s say you’ve got three couples, and you’re gonna have two cars, then you really got to figure out, you know, how this is going to work?
Jim 23:29
Are you going to get a larger car, that, you know, a lot of times, like, we’ll be traveling with six or seven of us, and we can all fit in a nice big van or a big a large SUV, and everybody has a seat and everybody’s comfortable and safe. That’s the critical thing. But is it less expensive to do that than it is to get two small cars? You know, you really have to think about what that’s going to entail? Do you want to be in different cars? Or do you want to be together?
Corinne 24:01
A lot of times, not only can two cars be cheaper, but it gives you options that if you’re not going to do everything together, then you’re you just don’t have to do everything together. That’s because if you have one van, and someone doesn’t want to go to the movie, say or to swimming that day, then you know, they’re stuck in wherever the accommodation is.
Jim 24:22
Right? So, yeah, so then they’re incurring another cost on like an Uber if they do want to go somewhere else, which if they’re already paying for part of the car, though, is that really a fair burden to place on somebody else to pay for another transportation that they don’t really need to do? But they want to? Well, I mean, that’s those are the things that you really have to talk about. So yeah, a lot of times having two smaller cars, even if it’s about the same price might be your better option. But you got to really think about these things up front.
Corinne 24:56
Well, and okay, so we’re the grandparent generation. We’re the grandparents, that a lot of times, have the money to do the travel, right? And a lot of times, it’s sort of almost expected that we’re paying for everything.
Corinne 25:10
But you know, and nowadays, that gets kind of pricey. And I don’t know about you, but Jim and I both been retired. It’s not that we don’t have money, but we’re sort of on a limited budget now much more limited than it was a few years ago, when we were paying for everything, and not really thinking anything about it.
Corinne 25:27
Nowadays is much more important for us to pay attention to where we’re, we’re spending that money. So I think it’s important that if you’re going to travel with your children, and their children, don’t have that discussion ahead of time, and kind of make the point, if that applies to you, if you can pay for it on you’re willing to do that. And hey, bully for you. That’s right.
Corinne 25:47
But also just make it clear that on a limited budget, it’s not quite the same as it was a few years ago. I think your kids will understand. But it’s again, worth saying ahead of time. The other thing is, if you are paying for everything, that doesn’t mean you get to make all the decisions. Yeah. I mean, that’s just a recipe for disaster. Really it’s the way people will get upset quickly. And this is your family. So they’re gonna tell you that, and it will get uncomfortable.
Jim 26:13
We’ve always, from the earliest ages of our children, we’ve always tried to include them in that decision making process about what are the things we all want to do? And, you know, you’d have to have those conversations, you just have to.
Corinne 26:29
So another thing that you want to think about how we have covered paying for things I think we have oh, yeah, the bottom line is figure it out ahead of time, stick to what you say. And if you if something comes up that you’re not sure about, maybe the car breaks down or something, maybe that’s something that you need to have a discussion about right then and there undecided about it. Yeah, but for the most part, try and have it things taken the decisions made beforehand.
Jim 26:56
Yeah. And then like you said, just keep the that line of communication, open, so that you’re ready for, for being for making changes and being flexible.
Corinne 27:05
So other things that you might want to discuss before you go, or even on the way but that’s not quite as, as optimal, is who’s going to do what. Let’s say you are renting a house. If you rent a house, typically, you’re not going to go out to breakfast every day, or dinner every night, you might go out to lunch, if you’re out and about. And you might go to dinner a couple of times, and you might go to brunch or something. But one of the reasons that you would rent a house is that you can sit there and you can make breakfast and coffee and not have to spend outrageous amounts of money for everyone with their kids run and here and there.
Corinne 27:47
And always eating out, right. I mean, that’s one of the main benefits, right, so who’s going to cook? Who’s gonna buy the food? Who’s going to do the washing up?Especially we start talking about food, and meals, there’s a lot going on there. The same thing goes with sweeping out the house, let’s say you get a beach house, I mean, you’re gonna get sand in that beach house every day, especially if there’s kids and telling them they have to go take a shower beforehand and not check it in is fruitless.
Corinne 28:18
No matter if they do take a shower, they’re still gonna track some of it, it’s just the nature of the beast. Who’s gonna hang the towels to dry? Who’s going to, I mean, you don’t have to get maybe too too specific. But really kind of having an idea before you go is a good idea, especially if you’re going to share the cooking. It’s just a really good idea.
Corinne 28:38
The next thing about that is babysitting. Let’s face it, one of the reasons that you’re going as grandparents with your grandchildren is to be with them. And maybe you’re not the type people – like Jim and I are not – that want to go out every night. And, you know, go to a bar, or go to I don’t know, dancing, dancing or what have you.
Corinne 29:00
But your children want to do that. They’re still young, they and they have probably not had a chance to have too many nights where they can actually have a good date night. So babysitting comes into the picture.
Corinne 29:11
And maybe same thing goes with activities. Maybe they want to go off and do scuba diving, for example that their kids are too young to do. Well, someone’s got to watch those kids. There’s a couple of things that you can think about.
Corinne 29:23
If you’re in a resort, a lot of times they’ll have kids clubs, so that can take care of a lot of it. But the evening times, you know, the kids might expect you to babysit. I think babysitting, it’s fine. And my kids could probably go out almost every day and it wouldn’t bother me at all.
Corinne 29:41
However, as far as the activities and during the day goes, I want to have my fun too. So as much as I love being with my grandchildren, I don’t want to be with them at the expense of me not getting to do what I want to do as well. Because that’s your vacation too.
Corinne 29:58
Exactly. So again It’s something to talk about where you’re talking about what kind of activities you want to do, and who’s going to do what and where the kids play in that picture. And if you don’t mind doing the babysitting, say so ahead of time.
Corinne 30:11
I remember when Jim and I had toddlers ourselves, and my mother lived close to us for a couple of years, which was very unusual. We would go and see her about once a month, and she would, every single time say, you to go out, you haven’t had a chance to go out. And I think we did a couple of times, right. But we didn’t normally, because the whole idea is we all wanted to be together and be with her. Have a great meal. And we had a great time being with her. But, but she offered and and it was part of the deal that we knew that if we wanted to go out and have dinner with just the two of us that we could do that. And that was a really nice thing to have happen. But on vacation when everybody is got their expectations of what to expect. Don’t let your children take advantage of you. As far as doing the chores or
Jim 31:05
babysitting. Yeah, right they should be carrying their fair share. And if you are going to be doing the babysitting, then, you know, like you were saying, you want to have that conversation about who wants to do what when, especially if you’re doing things separate.
Jim 31:22
But really, you need to start building an itinerary and knowing what days are going to be, especially those separate things are going to be happening. That way you avoid that situation where, “Oh, I thought you were gonna watch AJ today? as an example. “No, we thought we’re gonna go out and do scuba diving today.” So you have to include that in the planning process. You have to so that you know when things are going to be happening, especially those separate things.
Corinne 31:59
So another little pet peeve that people have. And one of our tips is to be mindful of timing. We’ve had times when we’ve traveled with people who, when they’re in a museum, look at every placard, read every placard and write notes, and take forever. And we’ve had people who have run through a museum and we’ve had people who aren’t even interested in going to this castle or this portrait museum. And they don’t even want to go in, they’ll wait for you outside.
Corinne 32:39
So timing is really important, even with just myself and Jim and our two daughters. When we go to, for example, to an art museum, we go all at four different paces. Because we’re interested in different things; different things catch our eye. And we just know this.
Corinne 33:04
So we I’m usually the fastest because I’m not quite as into art as the rest of them. Maybe Devon’s second, and then who knows when Erica and Jim will get out of there. But what we know this, and so what we do is we’ve done it a couple of different ways where I know I’ll just wait for them downstairs in the museum shop or cafe, or even outside if it’s a nice place or just in the lobby. And I’m okay with that. You know, I’ve got my books, I’ve got notes to write, I’ve got all kinds of things to keep me busy games on my iPhone, I mean, isn’t that what it’s for? And things like that.
Corinne 33:41
So we just know that we’re going to meet X place, sometimes we have a time depending on what we’re planning that day. And sometimes it’s just when you get there, you get there. And that’s fine, because we’ve established that as a routine with us. But it’s something that you should talk about again, and just sort of make a decision ahead of time what you’re going to do.
Corinne 34:01
One of the times we were traveling, was with my mother in law, one of the earlier times maybe I don’t know, we went to an art museum. And we started out I don’t know how many people were in the group, maybe 13 people, in an art museum together, all at the same time. And my mother in law, bless her heart, wanted to keep us all together. So we would go from room to room and she was busy counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. Oh my gosh, we’re missing three people. Who cares? They’re in the building. I did all I could do to not scream those words. But I did say them because quite frankly, you just cannot herd people all at once, no matter what the tour. I mean, I’m using museums as an example. Because you know as well as I do that some people are more interested in others. Itcould be
Jim 34:56
It could be an amusement park, it could be any any type of entertainment venue like that, where there are optional things to do in different places, you really have to just set a time, if there are time limited, like you need to be somewhere else later than set a time limit and say, everybody needs to meet at this point at this time. And be good with that. But you have to have that conversation.
Corinne 35:20
If it’s really open ended. You just say, Well, me back to the hotel for dinner. Sure, you know, or wherever dinner is, or whatever, wherever dinner is.
Jim 35:30
But you have to have the conversation. Yeah, you can’t. Again, you can’t just walk into something assuming that everyone’s on the same page, if that page has never been read.
Corinne 35:39
The bottom line is everybody is completely different no matter what the activity is. So you just want to kind of have clear expectations going in, that’s going to be okay, you can do your thing. I can do my thing. We all want to have fun.
Corinne 35:55
I think, of course, and this is goes without saying is that you need to take tons and tons and tons of photos and videos. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is a bonding time. It’s for memories. It’s memories that we’re after. That’s what we’re all about. Right. And we did do a podcast on how to use us digital photos. But I don’t know about your grandchildren. But my grandson just loves to look at himself over and over again.
Corinne 36:20
He just loves videos of himself and he will sit there for a good hour or more. I mean, I don’t know, because I’ve never really run. I mean, I usually quit before he does. Yeah, about trying to limited screen time. Exactly. So just use those photos. And maybe afterwards, you can get with your grandchildren, or children depending and make up a travel book or something.
Jim 36:43
Set up a shared a shared album or a shared drive somewhere where you can share all those photos and videos that everybody takes. That’s a good way to do it.
Corinne 36:52
So one thing that I think is hard for being in it might be hard for other people. Is that I I mean, I just love being with my kids, my grandkids. Is it all peaches and roses all the time? I can guarantee you it is not. We get a little snippy at times. But you know, it’s just being part of a family and being together in close quarters. But I always love it. And I want it to be over and over again. You can ask Jim ad nauseum I’ll invite them to anything that we do, because I want them to be there all the time.
Corinne 37:23
But it goes back to they have their own families. And so then if you have a great trip to say, Disneyland this year, they may want to go back next year. I don’t want to come back next year. I mean, everybody needs to have their own vacations. And so you know, just understand that, as grandparents, we can treasure the time you get with your kids and your grandkids, but but also give them that time to be away and have their own memories with their own immediate family as well. And enjoy it for them. I think it’s I think it’s something to remember that we’re not the center of attention anymore. We’d love to be. I mean, I absolutely would love to be.
Jim 38:08
And we’re not necessarily the ones in control of every situation anymore. Exactly.
Corinne 38:14
I think it’s really important. On our trip to Hawaii, we had a blast. Like I said, the four of us all stayed in the same room in a resort on Oahu on Waikiki Beach. And a little grandson was a trooper carried his own backpack and wanted to play with his trucks every day. And we had we had a fantastic time.
Jim 38:39
Yeah, he learned quite a few new words.
Corinne 38:41
I think “beach”
Jim 38:44
he was his favorite word.
Corinne 38:45
I think one thing that we may have forgotten from when our kids were that little was how much time it takes to do things with a toddler.
Jim 38:53
Yeah. Yeah, speaking of timing, you know, you really have to consider that. When it comes time, not just how much time you’re spending someplace, but how much time it’s going to take to get ready to go and how much time everybody’s going to need to transition between one activity and another. And the younger the kids are, the more time that’s going to take and you know, the older the kids are.
Jim 39:20
The ages of the kids are going to bring in some whole new issues. Teenagers have a lot different of I guess, what’s the likes, dislikes opinions? Yeah, definitely. But like circadian rhythms I’m thinking of their high times during the day are different than a toddler’s. High times as far as energy levels go. So you need to be aware of that too. And just keep that in mind and realize it’s going to take some families, some parts of the family longer to get ready to get out the door for instance, and work that in and and maybe have that conversation about how much time do you think you’ll need to get going and be flexible. But, again, make sure everybody knows what’s expected. So there’s no surprises. And that will alleviate a lot of that stress that we were talking about.
Corinne 40:15
We hope that we haven’t really scared you away from traveling with your grandchildren or your children, it’s an up and coming thing. Lots of people are doing it. You’re gonna do more and more of it. There’s also types of travel where you just travel with your grandchildren, and not with their parents. That’s called skip Gen travel. And we’ll talk about that later on in the podcast as well. But the bottom line is we want you to make those memories and really enjoy being with your your grandchildren and your kids.
Corinne 40:43
That’s what that’s what life is about if you asked me. So we hope you’ve enjoyed this podcast, we really thank you for listening. Stay tuned, we’re gonna put some really cool things on the blog as far as how to build an agenda when you’re planning a trip. Maybe some places have a great to travel with both grandchildren and children or to travel ideas, you know, things like that. So please check out our our website at Grannies go digital. And, you know, don’t forget to subscribe.
Jim 41:18
Leave us a like, give us your friends. Join us again next week. Thanks for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai