Mommy Memoirs: Why Exposing Your Kids to Culture is a Stupid Idea

Posted by Claire | Thursday July 14, 2011

The Plan: a family meet-up in Chicago, starting with a fun and educational road trip through the wilds of America.

The Result: We did meet family in Chicago, and we did drive there (though there are several rest stops on the I-65 to which we probably should never return).

I had this plan to combine a family vacation with some style spying in the Windy City. Chicago's midwestern locale wouldn't necessarily rule out metropolitan flair, I knew. I looked forward to brag-worthy shopping on Magnificent Mile, great local cuisine, and exposing my kids to an enriching vacation that didn't involve sweaty college dudes in Disney character costumes and umpteen trips to the drive-thru.

Perhaps you know where I'm going with this. Apparently my plans had a few flaws.

My first order of business was to stop at Walgreens to pick up a new memory card for my camera, the previous card having been removed for no apparent reason at some point during our inbound journey and lost in the residue of Sun Chips, Double-Stuf Oreos and Uno cards littering the floor of our minivan.

But since I'm a big "pick your battles" kind of parent (which sometimes means Anything Goes), I naively allowed my kids to share in the photo-taking responsibilities. Naively, because this meant I ended up with exactly zero street fashion shots but plenty of pics featuring the back of my head, the floor of the "L", and Disney Channel play-by-plays at the hotel (we don't have premium cable at home because we're mean, vile parents).

The trip to Magnificent Mile was hijacked by my tech loving husband via a mandatory layover at the Garmin store, a whole day's budget blown in 45 minutes on the rides at Navy Pier (as opposed to - call me crazy - actually sightseeing), and an architectural tour by boat was punctuated by loud demands to stop off for McDonalds.

On the plus side, Chicago deep dish pizza was a universally popular dinner choice, and Lake Michigan was just cold enough that the threat of tossing the kids in with all their clothes on was sufficient to curb rascally behaviour... most of the time.

It did turn out to be a very educational trip indeed. My husband and I (re)learned that no answer adequately addresses the question of "Are we there yet?". We also discovered that the angrier we got, the funnier the repeat-after-me game became for our little Munsters (because growly voices are much more fun to imitate). And lastly, we know the location of every single Redbox and Blockbuster Express kiosk along our route.

Now all the kids ask is "When can we go back to Chicago?"

Parents - have you taken your kids on an "enriching" vacation? How did you survive?

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4 Comments

	on July 18, 2011 mamaluv STAFF said: @Bubblybunny - actually we do often drive through the night and it does work. We're just not always up for an all-nighter ourselves which is why we only do it maybe half the time or if we're traveling farther than usual (for us this means more than, say 1100km/750mi). We hate breaking up our travel time into 2 days of 7-8 hours so would rather get a 15 hour trip done all in one shot. If it's only a 10hr trip, we usually get on the road early (like 6am) and power through so we can sleep properly in the hotel. The 2am-7am shift (that's usually my turn) is the hardest and there have been times we've had to stop at a rest station and sleep for an hour in order to be safe on the road.
	on July 16, 2011 Bubblybunny 4,709 said: Hahah...You are just too funny. However, I have learned your lesson well; so hopefully I'll remember it when this happens to me in the future and I know my day will come. Maybe I should print out your story and stick it in the car as a reminder. :P Our solution to insanely long trip with kids is drive through the night. They sleep through most of it. We feel complete $h@# the next day but at least we have our sanity. But my kids are young; I don't think this trick will work with yours. :)
	on July 14, 2011 mamaluv STAFF said: It's true, you might just be the only family in North America who gets through a 12-hour drive without a peep ;)
	on July 14, 2011 takoda 28,648 said: Claire you are just so funny! We must be the only parents in Canada and the U.S. that never had that problem with our kids. We drove all the way from Windsor to Algonquin park way up North when my first son was just under two and my step son was 12 and they never said boo. Witch for those of you that don't know where Windsor is. If you know where the Ambassador bridge is in Michigan, then Windsor is on the Canadian side of that bridge. It took us, if I remember right, 12 hours or more to drive it, only stopping to get gas, eat and change dirty bums. A few years later when our next son was two and the first was five we made another long distance camping trip, along with the little bugger of a Jack Russel that we had at the time. I thought for sure that trip would be nothing but crazy and full of are we there yet's, but not one word came out of either boy. The only one that made any sound was that stupid dog that we had. I thought we were just on some kind of a lucky streak, but every trip we've taken with the boy's has bin a good one. They just sit back and enjoy the ride, or go to sleep. I'm not sure if my husband had a few horse shoes hidden in the van at the time, or if someone was watching out for us, but I know we sure have bin lucky!