I remember when my son turned 3 my pediatrician informed me it was time to take him to see a dentist. I had total approach avoidance. In my mind I could think of no place that could possibly be worse on earth. We are socially friendly with our dentist and every time I saw him I told him that I was afraid to bring my son to see him. When I finally gave in and took him he was amazing, a total rockstar. Turns out the dentist is the easiest doctor to take him to. I have no idea why.
It was this same approach avoidance that has been the reason that we have not gone to a hotel with him for almost 7 years. We obviously had no way of knowing how he would do, and truthfully didn't want to risk it. Our friends often hop in their cars for quick family getaways and we are always left waving at the backs of those cars as they drive off in to the sunset. Until now.
This being yeshiva break week, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law are in town. My father-in-law decided that we should all go away to Palm Springs for a few days . My husband was very against the idea saying as always "what is the upside? If it works, ok, but if it doesn't we are two hours from home with a child in full meltdown mode". I usually go with that flow, but this time I really felt that I wanted my other children to have this experience. We thought about leaving our eldest at home with a babysitter, but truthfully, I didn't want to take a family vacation without my entire family. And so, at the last minute we decided to join.
We did not get off to a very good start. It took us 45 minutes to convince our son to get in the car. This has never happened before. It occurred to me, at some point the next day, that the reason he didn't want to go was because he knew that he would miss seeing the mailman that day. After 45 minutes we finally got him in kicking and screaming. At this point, I was already crying and thinking "why can't we ever be normal". Thankfully (and truthfully, thanks to our trusty iPad) he settled down and we were on our way.
As it turns out though, we are morons! You would think, people in our situation would be better prepared. I am apparently an expert at preparing snacks, changes of clothes and technology for the road but not quite so expert at directions. I very diligently went on Mapquest and printed up the directions but did not read them correctly. As a result, of my confusing the words "take" and "towards", we found ourselves near San Diego at which point we finally realized that we had driven 2 hours out of the way. Yes TWO hours out of the way. It should only take two hours to get there! So after some more tears and disbelief we got back on track, turned east and headed on our way again. About 30 minutes into the correct direction, just as we were pulling off the highway to make sure we were in fact going the right way, our daughter, age 21 months, proceeded to vomit everywhere. So yet another 30 minutes later, with her all clean and me now stinking of vomit we got back on the road. Finally, with our destination in sight, just 5 miles from our exit, my husband was pulled over for speeding. SERIOUSLY! And so, as the cop sidled up to my window, I took one look at him, promptly burst in to tears and said to him "would you mind if I told you about my day". Needless to say, with that story, he very kindly let us go, gave us directions to our hotel and suggested we buy a Garmin. Thanks for the suggestion buddy, wish you had given it to us 4 hours ago!
Keep in mind that we hadn't even gotten to the scary part yet, the hotel. The good news is, it wasn't too bad. As far as first experiences go, we did OK. Here is the thing, if we let our son do what he wants, follow him around while he does it and don't force him to do the things we think he should want to do, it can work. It gets a little complicated when our other children want to do regular things and we need to split our attentions (yes the life guard had to jump in the pool and rescue our 4 year old) but overall we survived the experience and even came home smiling. My son even said that next time he is going to sleep in a hotel and go swimming again. Success? I think so...
Lessons to be learned: 1) buy a GPS 2) bring someone to help
With those two things in place, we may even try this again. I hope it won't take another 7 years!
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