Currently on vacation with our almost 3 years old daughter in Costa Rica. I feel like I haven’t really gotten to explore this country as I usually like to on my own terms. The activities that we do find for her, often are a failure resulting in a melt down and she just wants to go back to the hotel. She doesn’t even want to play on the beach or at the pool. This trip in Costa Rica she’s been a complete home body, trips outside have been a melt down. So this leads me to the main question.

Does it get easier as they get older? Please tell me it gets easier…

We’ve done a fair bit of traveling with her already. Cabo when she was 10 months old, visiting family members in NY, MA and SC multiple times per year. She’s a great flyer, so no worries there. But when we’re at the destination, everything is very much centered and catered to her. I get it, she’s a toddler.

Photography is a hobby of mine, but it’s impossible to do any sort of composition with a camera while a wiggling child is hanging off my shoulder. We have grandparents traveling with us this trip, and they’ve sometimes been helpful for an hour or two but…man kids are a lot of work. I may need to work with my partner on building in a solo vacation for myself occasionally because traveling to new places with a kid kind of sucks.

Rant over.

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    5 hours ago

    Easier, yes. That’s honestly not a great age to have taken a kid on that kind of trip. Beginning to test boundaries, yet still too young to really have perspective on why the trip is special or even to really remember it. We made that mistake with my daughter’s first trip to Disney. She had a ton of fun, but does she remember a bit of it? Nope, and there are fuzzy but incredibly positive memories of other days that cost 1/10th the time and cost. 🤣

    Even when they’re older, kids will always have a different take, which isn’t always going to be controlling and which shouldn’t dissuade you from taking them on things that will be meaningful (or even just things where it’s more for you but they might still enjoy), but you do have to account for it. One of my fondest memories as a kid a good bit older than yours was going on a business trip with my dad to a Holiday Inn in Little Rock Arkansas, because it had an indoor mini-golf course and some arcade games. Meanwhile, I mostly recall camping trips as a buggy beat-down.