My husband and I have always loved traveling the world together. And I was just hitting my stride as a working travel writer when our twins were born in 2014. But when we found ourselves new parents of two newborns at once, we were completely overwhelmed.
Shell-shocked and woefully inexperienced, it took all of our concentration and determination just to go to the local farmer’s market as a foursome. For this reason, we hardly did any travel by air while the kids were toddlers under 2. That is, we grounded ourselves for the entire fleeting period in time when we wouldn’t have been required to buy the kids their own seats.
When the twins were young, we were just trying to get through each day
We definitely didn’t do any air travel when our twins were infants. We thought parenting was so hard back then — and in some ways, it truly was. But looking back on it, those early months, before they could even crawl and were thus naturally more self-contained, now seem like the perfect time to take them on long flights.
Of course, it didn’t seem that way at the time. Frankly, just keeping them and ourselves alive was a tall enough order; flying somewhere with our kids — especially somewhere far — seemed like advanced-level parenting that we were nowhere near ready for as bleary-eyed newbies with our hands and brains overfull. Nevermind all the gear that would have been required to make that happen, the thought alone of which was so exhausting.
Back in those days, we frequently took them to a nearby park to watch the planes’ thunderous landings at our home airport of LAX to get them excited about air travel. Happy as those memories are (and I think our strategy worked), it wasn’t the same as fanning out around the globe.
I wish we’d started flying with them earlier
Flash forward a decade. Now that my kids are 10 and will soon wrap up elementary school, we’ve got the travel thing down like pros. They’re seasoned travelers with fully stamped passports who know their way around a long-haul flight, a customs counter, and a subway map in another language. We are now living the exciting, rewarding, far-flung travel life I dreamed for us as a family, which had seemed so out of reach back then.
I’m also acutely aware of how fast it all goes now that I am the experienced parent looking wistfully at the littles wherever we go. I see those parents’ challenges; I lived those toy-flinging, bottle-feeding, and diaper-changing experiences and know them well. But I also wish I had been clear-headed enough back then to just push through.
We could have saved tons of money on kids’ plane tickets when they were under 2 and permitted to share our seats. Moreover, we could have absorbed more of the world’s adult sightseeing opportunities, with infants strapped to our chests — back in the days before they required their own age-appropriate entertainment (and a souvenir at every stop).
I may be looking at things through rose-colored glasses, but that’s OK
Am I looking back on this through the unrealistic lens that can only come from forgetting the true grit and physicality of early parenthood — with years of distance from being in the trenches? Absolutely, yes.
But now that I have more confidence as a mom, it is nevertheless fun — and triggers some pangs of regret — to fantasize about what our travel life could have been like with pre-crawling babies had we felt more nimble then.
People often ask me: Isn’t it hard to travel with kids? I sum up my philosophy on it this way: Yes, it is, of course. But for me, it feels harder to live a life deprived of travel. Pushing through the inconveniences, stresses, and costs feels far less onerous to me — and much more rewarding — than accepting that I have to miss out on all of it, kicking the can years down the road into some unknown future that can never be guaranteed.
So if I had it to do again, I’d start our family adventures earlier, seizing every opportunity to experience the world together at every stage.
The post I didn’t fly with my twins until they were 2. I wish we’d started when their plane tickets would’ve been free. appeared first on Business Insider.
