Why I never want to travel with kids again

Friday, 28 July 2023

Stuff journalist Barnaby Sharp used to be a carefree traveller, then he had children.

OPINION: A light-hearted conversation with a colleague about travelling with kids hid a dark past and uncovered trauma I thought I had buried as deep as the Mariana Trench.

I’ve travelled a lot, throughout New Zealand and overseas. And I loved it.

When I think back to my own sojourns, it’s actually all the bad things that I remember most vividly. Thankfully, nothing terrible happened, more just bad luck like the wheels on the bus falling off – that sort of thing.

But when you have children, your laissez-faire approach gives way to methodical planning, multiple bags and the odd sleepless night before the big day of departure.

I’m personally cursed when it comes to travelling with my kids.

The first time I had an inkling of this was when I was solo parenting and driving home to Auckland through the back roads of the Waikato after visiting nana and grandad. Bless them, all they wanted to do was shower my two with love, affection and way too much confectionery.

Windy roads and one very bubbly tummy resulted in a power chuck a 20-year-old on Orientation Week would have been proud of. It’s amazing the volume – and colours – that can come out of a 2-year-old daughter’s mouth, and nose. That was a fun one to clean up, and a cold drive home with all windows open.

How about the time I suggested we all take a trip from Nelson to French Pass? Two, white-knuckle hours later we got there, only for my boy to slice open his heel on an oyster shell on just his second jump off the wharf. He bled like a stuck pig.

Needless to say, I wasn’t in his mother’s good books for the silent drive home.

But what about when you go overseas with your little ones?

You’ve all got your shots, your bags are packed and you’re off on your adventure. Oorah!

Our trip to the UK, via Hong Kong, with our then 4 and 6-year-old started off well enough. No sniffles, no tantrums and definitely no blood loss. So far, so good.

Less than a week in to a four-week holiday, little red dots starting appearing all over my son’s body. He was itchy and scratchy and pretty fractious. The doctor confirmed our worst fears – chicken pox.

You’d never think so, but he was already over the worst of it. Apparently, the contagious phase is when you can’t see any signs of it at all. Sorry Hong Kong.

We tried everything for his sister to get it, but for three weeks she was as good as gold. Then, a few days before we were due to come home, she went down. And badly.

Airline rules, common sense and parental intuition told us we shouldn’t travel. But we had to get home. We couldn’t change our flight. We were stuck between a rock and hard place.

So we did what any bad parent would do – we lied to our darling daughter, told her she must be allergic to the horse she rode several days earlier.

Covered in spots and looking like an escapee from a leper colony, we wrapped her up and somehow made it through Customs. It was the glaring eye and interrogation of the airline attendant that just about gave us up. I don’t think she believed us, but these days everyone is allergic to something, right?

It turns out there was a chickenpox outbreak at my kids’ school before we left, so we didn’t stand a chance. It’s a mea culpa of sorts.

I guess what I have come to realise is that as much as the good memories stick around, the bad memories are now hardwired into my consciousness. And what have I learnt from all my travel misdemeanours? Common sense is a good one.

Don’t let your kids have a belly full of jelly if you’re about to go all Colin McRae, it’ll never end well. And go with the flow, there’s so much that you can control, and so little that you can’t.

Oh, and you can never have too many wet wipes.