Dad’s Porsche: Why we go on insanely long road trips with young kids (and what we’ve learned from them)
“Turn around!”
“I want to go back!”
“I want to stay!”
These were just some snippets of the 30 minutes of irrational screaming that our 3-year old subjected us to, about 2 hours into a 12-hour journey. Since we set off at 4am, that meant it was still dark, quiet, and peaceful in the world around us. The dissonance between the inner reality of our car and the outer environment could not be more jarring. Thanks to cruise control, we rolled on with unceasing pace. But the screaming. Oh the screaming. It filled us with a single inescapable question:
“Why were we doing this?”
Children are exceedingly adept at piercing through our rationalizations and layers of abstraction. In those dark and lonely hours of the morning, they were revealing a truth that we work very hard to escape: traveling is hard. The prolonged sitting brings on aches and pains. Physically and mentally, we are discomfited. If the interstate is anything, it is monotonous, offering little distraction. This feeds naturally into boredom. Finally, hundreds (or thousands) of miles from home, and hundreds (or thousands) of miles from our destination, we are physically separated from all the familiar sights, patterns, and routines of everyday life. This uncertainty feeds a background anxiety. While adult, experienced travelers can ignore this fear of the unknown, it is deeply unsettling to young children who developmentally favor order and routine.
Choosing a long-haul road trip over air or rail travel reduces, removes, and exacerbates each of these difficulties. Perhaps we reduce some of the anxiety and uncertainty of travel by setting our own itinerary, but we do so at the cost of speed, or the opportunity to rest. We are all also forced into the same small volume for a long-period of time. Friction, disagreement, and frustration are all but inevitable when four people are forced to cram into the same space for a prolonged interval.
Returning to the central question — why were we doing this? — there is a simple answer: for the unexpected memories. The same features that can make a road trip difficult are also uniquely suited to generating memorable experiences. While we lose the speed of air travel, we gain the opportunity to witness the passing landscape together. We all see the mist over the rural Carolina fields. We all cross the Georgia swamps at sunrise together. We all marvel together at the enormous cruise ships from the Merritt Island causeway at sunset.
The road trip itself becomes the microcosm of the family vacation. When we look back at the photos we took, these are the moments we will remember. Do we have any photos from the sleepless nights with one kid on a neublizer? No. And even that challenging time will be a chuckle and a “can you believe we did that?” kind of memory. Besides, the fun of going to the beach was only possible by embracing and pushing through the frustrations.
When it felt like I had reached my limit on the drive, and we were into our 3rd, 4th, or 12th screaming fit and only 30 minutes from our destination, the sun was getting low over the Banana River. A symphony of oranges, pinks, and the other pastels that you can only get with a sunset by water broke out as we ascended the causeway. My older son, unperturbed by his brothers protestations is transfixed out his window as the miles roll over toward their close. He sighs, unprompted and unasked he says: “It’s beautiful.”
That’s why we were doing this.
