Big travels with small children
Since three years, Thomas and Evelyn seized a unique opportunity to make their dream come true. Every year they leave with their three small children on a month-long trip. A dream shared by many, but how do you put something like that into practice? Traveling with children, at their pace and according to their routine? Thomas and Evelyn are happy to share their experience.
LARGE AMOUNT OF FANTASY
We think the most fantastic thing about traveling with children is that you (re)discover everything through their eyes. They look at everything with amazement and endless fascination. When choosing the picture of the day, they do not choose that beautiful view on top of the mountain, but the dead frog along the way. And with a good dose of imagination you can really involve them in everything or motivate them for everything. We always try to create context before we go anywhere. This year Greece was on the agenda and so we brought comics and stories about the Greek Gods. Once the children are involved in the stories, every visit becomes a great experience for them: for example, they recognize the Greek Gods at the archaeological sites. We choose a direction in advance, but otherwise we live from day to day. There's no point in planning a lot in advance if you're taking three small children with you, because you never know where you'll be the next day.
DRIVE A LITTLE, DO A LOT
We always travel under the motto 'drive as little as possible and do as much as possible'. This trip amounted to (once on site) an average of 33km/day and a total distance of 7642km (car) + 1308km (ferry). We mainly go for a lot of walking and cycling locally. But climbing, supping and tennis are also activities that we like to do and for which we have all the equipment in the camper. During the trip itself we like to try out new things, for example we learned how to snorkel and kite on this trip. Of course, we also provide a lot of time to play. As standard, we bring toys such as Lego and coloring books. In addition, each child can fill a suitcase with their favorite things. And we also see that they like to go back to it when they want some time for themselves. Despite all these options, nature offers many play opportunities for our children. They can lose themselves endlessly in what they find and see around them. For example, they completed the climb of Mount Olympus (17 km, 1300 meters of altitude) with the prospect of seeing snow and in the company of two sweet street dogs who like to walk along the route with tourists. In museums we make a photo search with the brochure or when visiting a “boring” village we add geocaching. Every other month we also have a “Children's Day”. Then the children can decide what we eat (usually spaghetti) and what activities we do that day (usually swimming, tree trail or roller skating).
EDUCATION
During a walk among the waterfalls in Croatia we saw a mother duck with her offspring. The ducklings fled from us, with one of the chicks drifting away from the rest of the family. The incident kept the children busy all day and in the evening we read in the children's encyclopedia about “Charles Darwin's Survival of the Fittest”. When you hear them talk about it among themselves later... that's just fantastic to see. This way the children continuously learn. But now that Arno has turned seven, he has compulsory education in Belgium. Please note: compulsory education is different from compulsory schooling. In principle we can teach our children ourselves, but we didn't really like that. Being a full-time mom and dad is one thing, but also being a teacher is a completely different story. But education is important so we found a good system at D-teach, in accordance with their school. Every week Arno receives Dutch and mathematics lessons via Teams. At the end of the school year he is given a test to see whether he is up to standard according to the curriculum. Previously it was quite a search, but since Covid this way of taking lessons has almost become the new normal. We also continue these lessons in the summer, but then Arno takes English at his own request. He blossoms completely when he can immediately use that new language while on the road.
BIGGEST CHALLENGE = SLEEP
The most important thing on the road for our family is sleep. We carefully ensure that everyone gets enough sleep. With a baby, two toddlers and two adults, this is one of the biggest challenges on long trips. Our sleep patterns differ greatly, so routine is important. The first trip took us a month to find that routine, but now there is quite a lot of structure in our lives, despite the fact that we move around every day. We sleep at the back, our sons in the fold-down bed above the cabin and we convert the salon into a park for the baby. During our last trip, Anouk, our baby who is now almost 3 years old, had some trouble sleeping. That messed up all our sleep patterns, ultimately causing us to end our trip earlier than planned. We all became overtired.
FULL TIME MOM & DAD
During those months on the road, we are actually full-time mom and dad. A division of roles quickly developed between us, but we discovered that we both also need some time for ourselves. Thomas can completely lose himself in photography and planning and reporting the trip. Evelyn loves crafts, but also takes online courses. In this way we manage to challenge ourselves every day and achieve satisfaction. Each child receives their own travel diary. At the end of the day we look at the photos together and they can each choose their favorite. We then print them out with a portable printer and stick them in their diary. They then make drawings or write down short memories. We hope that, despite their young age, they will be able to cherish wonderful memories of the trips in the future.
COMING HOME
Once you get home, you have to adjust again, the children always get a little bit lost. Boredom is something we only experience at home, never when traveling. But the time we spend at home is also indispensable in this story, the children learn to maintain social contacts and enjoy going to school. It is a happy reunion with friends and family. And we immediately start planning the next trip. Anouk has to learn to swim and we are preparing for our next trip to Scandinavia.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story with the Vanomobil Community!
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