Joyce Paige
English 090
Reflective Essay

The realization of being a parent on vacation

After my first experience travelling with children, I learned the difference between and vacation and a trip. When a vacation includes children it generates more work than I expected and more stress than I wanted. I had no experience in being on a family vacation and being the one responsible for others. I was nervous and excited about the outcome of my first experience as an adult our first family vacation. The time put into planning a vacation before was minimal compared to the time it took to prepare a vacation with children. I soon comprehended there are more people involved, which leads to more opinions and more opportunity for disagreements and disappointments. My idea of a vacation was going away to enjoy myself, have some fun and relax. This is the story of how my idea of a vacation as a parent was going to be challenged.
Vacation could be defined as a break from regular home or business routines and includes relaxation. It could take place anywhere; some consider a night in a hotel a vacation while others might include traveling miles away. My experience included both and I was the person in charge making it happen. Timing is difficult when planning a vacation with children, they might be in school and they could have extra circular activities. When I previously had planned vacations I just had to look at one calendar, mine. Now I was adding 4 more people to a vacation and it was already proving to be more challenging than I anticipated. I was spinning around in circles for weeks not knowing if one month was better than the other. Little did I know this was just the beginning of my lesson between learning the difference between a vacation and a trip.
My lesson included learning more than I ever could have read in a self-help book. We were taking a camper and that meant packing supplies for food, entertainment and sleeping arrangements. Planning for food... [continues]

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