I have read the Biblical story of the Exodus more times than I can remember, but recently I did it as we were planning our summer vacation. Reading about the Israelites’ journey in the desert led me to gain a deeper understanding of thisancient story while at the same time a much greater fearof my own upcoming family trip. After years of slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel were finally liberated. Freedom, however, was not an end in itself. It was only a step towards the ultimate climax- settlement in the Promised Land while establishing a nation and conducting life according toa new, Divinely inspired code of ethics and laws. Only that, as often happens, things didn’t work out as intended. The journey from Egypt to Israel, that normally would have lasted a few weeks, went on for 40 years.
The reasons for the delay are important, but here I would like to focus on the outcome: an endless stream of whining, bickering and complaints. The longer the Israelites stayed in the desert, the shorter their memory became. The memories of the hardship and oppression that engulfed their lives as slaves slowly dissipated and werereplaced bynostalgia and longing forthe good life they had in Egypt. When something didn’t turn out the way they expected, a barrage of harsh words was immediately launched at poor Moses. At difficult moments, no one considered Moses’ unparalleled sacrifice and total devotion to his people. Rather, he was personally held responsible foreverything that went wrong, from the quality and quantity of the food, to the weather.
When we return from our family vacations we often remember them as spectacular, full of joyous activities and ample quality time with the kids – and that’s the way it should be. But be honest, how many times during the trip have you felt like Moses, unappreciated and unjustly treated?A family vacation is not easy nor an inexpensive endeavor. We accumulate precious vacation days, save money, plan a trip, deal with the airlines and do the driving. Then, at the end of a long day, when we expect our kids to sing our praises and coronate us as “Parent of the Year”, we instead get the infamous line, “it’s the worst vacation ever”. And why? Because the restaurant didn’t have the ice-cream flavor that they wanted.
So what do we do wrong? We treat our children as if our sole purpose of existence is to appease them and make sure that their time with us is always fun. We plan a vacation around their interests and what they consider as “cool” and at the end of every activity we nervously wait for a nod of approval. With that in mind, my family and I decided to change our vacation format this summer from “we (parents) do it for you (kids)” to “we all own it together”.
To practice the new concept, we tried a pilot in the form of a 24-hour camping trip in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. If my old friends read this post, they probably will think that I have completely lost my mind. I am not known as someone who enjoys spending the night in a tent fighting gigantic mosquitoes, but I did it and it was worth every single bug bite! What made this outing different from all of our other trips (rustic conditions aside) was that we planned our camping as a real family project. My almost 12 years old daughter and my almost 7 years old son worked as hard as my wife and I did. Together we did the planning, shopping, packing and unpacking, pitching the tent and taking it down, cooking, taking care of the baby and most importantly shared the responsibility for what went wrong. Instead of “Mom! You forgot to . . .” it was – we forgot to pack some items, and therefore we had to improvise ways to deal with it. The experience was so powerful that we changed our upcoming trip to North Carolina to add four days camping in the Great Smoky Mountains.
The reason we are sometimes being treated poorly by our children (as Moses was by his people) is that we convey the message that we do things for their benefit because we owe it to them. We put our children in a position in which we do the work, and they are there to evaluate our performance. If we do well, we may get a little “thank you”. But, if we don’t live up to their expectations, the bickering and the whining begin. Camping is not for everyone, but the model of working together and sharing responsibilities is a key for good parent-child relationships. It’s when we start working together as a family that a mutual appreciation takes place. Charles Darwin said that “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” We all, parents and children, need and deserve a vacation. We can take it separately or together. If we choose the second model, the togetherness has to be real and understood as shared ownership of all aspects of the holiday. I strongly believe that not only the trip will be more pleasant for everyone, but it also will improve the family’s dynamics.