Making Travel Pleasant, Educational

As the holiday season is drawing near, school winter recess is right around the corner. Many will travel to unite with their families or spend a much-deserved vacation at a sun-bathed beach in a remote corner of the world.

While all this sounds wonderful, the hassles parents, particularly parents with young children, encounter are so enormous that they may force traveling parents, young and otherwise, into a nervous breakdown.

But it does not have to be this way. Travelling with kids can be as much fun as is educational. Although it’s not as structured a setting as when kids are in school, train rides can be planned in such a way that they are both enjoyable and educational, providing much-needed quality time among families as related in this personal experience by BTM educational writer Sean McClung who is a young aspiring educator working in Beijing. Although his personal encounter happened on a train ride elsewhere, it could be applied to similar situations anywhere.

Sean McClung has most recently served as the founding director of Ivy Academy.  He has worked as a teacher and administrator here in Beijing, as well as in California and New York.  He holds a master’s of education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Send your comments to Sean.mcclung@post.harvard.edu.

An old woman wearing a sari motioned for me to sit across the aisle from her as I boarded a train departing Toronto for New York. The car was filling up fast, so I accepted her invitation, and in that moment realized that she was traveling with two young children.  She must have decided that I looked like the safest person available to be seated next to her four-year-old grandson for the next 12 hours.

Before I was settling down, she was already off to buy me a coffee, refusing my polite refusal in her grandmotherly way.  Our implicit relationship was clear from the start.  And it was reciprocal; she fed me a steady stream of homemade Indian snacks she had prepared for the trip, along with sandwiches and hotdogs that she bought in the dining car while I kept an eye on my new charge Saman.

Like any young boy Saman was overjoyed about riding on a train.  He immediately commanded me to sit on the aisle so he could see out the window, but Saman’s grandmother did not want him to change seats and told him so from across the aisle where she sat with Saman’s three-year-old sister.  After loudly commanding Saman several times to stay closer to her, I said it was fine and slid across to the aisle seat.  Throughout the exchange, Saman appeared not to have heard a single word his grandmother had said and continued to energetically point out everything he saw through the window.  In order to maintain the appearance of having some control over the boy, the old lady called over for him to at least sit on his seat rather than stand in front of it, but he didn’t hear her this time either.  I could tell it was going to be a long train ride.

It appeared that ever since leaving home Saman had been ignoring his grandmother more and more and had just about reached the point where he was completely deaf, except for when she offered him Pringles potato chips, a can of Coke, cookies or Lifesaver candies.  I had to keep from laughing when I heard the grandmother’s next command, which came after filling up both kids with caffeine and sugar.  Exasperated that Saman hadn’t been obeying her, she finally shouted at him, “Go to sleep!”  She shouted this a few times while Saman continued jumping and pointing out the window.  It was ten o’clock in the morning.

Now, I’m not telling this story to point out what a bad job this poor grandmother was doing; nor to point out how badly behaved these particular kids were.  (Although the siblings were angrily shushed by the family with a sleeping baby seated behind us, and were later reprimanded by the conductor for running up and down the aisle, their behavior was exactly what you would expect from any three or four-year-old with nothing to do for hours on end.)  What the situation illustrated for me-these seemingly unmanageable children with a grandmother who looked like she was in way over her head-was the significance of a generational difference in the expectations and practices of raising children.

At first we might wonder who would be better prepared to care for two children than their own grandmother.  But the grandmother’s difficulties are more understandable when you keep in mind that the world in which we raise children today is different from the world in which we were raised.  Times have changed.  The grandmother, who had grown up in India, was at a loss about how to handle the situation because she wasn’t familiar with the kind of parenting methods and social influences that her grandchildren, raised two generations later in London, were accustomed to.

It’s obvious to most parents (and grandparents) that repeatedly shout at a child to “stop doing that!” or to “stay in your seat!” without providing suggestions for an alternative positive behavior, causes the child to quickly develop an inability to hear such commands, just as Saman did.  But I still see it happen all the time-often when families are traveling, which might be what causes them to temporarily forget that children stop misbehaving when given something interesting to do.  The grandmother brought nothing but food to occupy her young grandchildren during the 12-hour journey.  My pen and a few blank sheets of paper torn from the back of my book kept Saman busy for more than two hours.  Imagine how long he might have spent with a whole sketch pad and a box of eight crayons?

Children are constantly learning-whether they learn how to ignore you or how to solve a puzzle depends on what you provide them.  And though keeping up with this boundless energy can be exhausting and exasperating at times, remember that creating an environment that engages a child in productive play doesn’t need to be complex or difficult.  It can be as simple and obvious as bringing engaging activities on a trip.

A few suggestions to get you started on creating a travel activity kit:

Start simple.  Pick up a plastic zipper pouch for crayons, pencils and pens.  Depending on your child’s age, a few appropriate coloring or activity books are easy to find along with a blank sketchbook, which will give your child more space to create their own drawings and games.

From there, keep your eye out at the toy store and be creative.  An origami book with colored folding papers, a sticker storybook, or paper dolls will all physically engage your child, a definite plus for a long ride.  But don’t forget ordinary picture books too.  Depending on where you’re traveling, finding one related to your destination could prompt some good conversation with your child.

 If it’s possible to bring along an MP3 player or walkman with recordings of books, that’s a great way for your child to pass the time.  Even better if he or she can follow along with the words in the actual book-an excellent literacy activity.

Make assembling the kit an ongoing project, and don’t let your child use it until you’re on the road.  Saving the kit for these special occasions will help maintain your child’s interest.  When it’s time to board the plane your child should be excited to see a favorite book they haven’t read since the last trip, or to discover a brand new game.