Holiday travel can be one of those things you never thought you’d second guess, until you do. Long car rides and air travel are logistically challenging with babies and toddlers, no matter how much you otherwise love to travel yourself. Add in things like wintry weather advisories, increased traffic, longer waits, bigger crowds, and easier spread of respiratory illnesses – and a cheerful family visit may begin to feel much less cheerful.
Yet, being a relatively new parent with a baby or toddler can come with heightened social pressure to push forward and take the trip – even if it compromises your core family’s health and well-being. Sometimes, part of this is due to long-held family roles. Your parents, for example, are used to you being “daughter,” or “son,” not “mom” or “dad.” Therefore, they may still expect you to do what you’ve always done, and they may struggle to see how your needs and boundaries have shifted as you settle into parenthood.
So, this leads them to expect you to hop on a plane and just “bring the new baby along.” Even if well-meaning, this can create a stressful clash. While you will always be a daughter or son to them, you are indeed, now, a mom or dad. This comes with different needs, constraints, and priorities, and it’s only natural that you may need to reorient holiday commitments accordingly.
Here are some options to help you navigate family gatherings and holiday travel:
Give yourself time to evaluate: Before responding to the invite, take a pause and try to reflect authentically on whether or not you can and want to go this year. There’s no right or wrong choice; just what is right for you given your specific circumstances.
If the logistics feel like a temporary inconvenience worth the overall experience, then going may be a joyful move for you. This can be especially true for healthy family dynamics, in which getting to your end destination would likely result in extra helping hands!
However, if you catch yourself feeling persistently stressed or uneasy about it—and it’s likely you’ll be greeted with strained relations more than helping hands—then you may be overextending yourself.
Offer to be the hosting home: If getting together with your extended family is culturally important, consider inviting loved ones to your home. This can be a great compromise where large gatherings remain a priority for some, but you are in a season of life where outbound travel is not doable, yet it is doable for others.
Offer to travel during non-holiday dates: Instead of committing to travel during the holiday rush, consider a compromise where you visit on different dates and celebrate together ahead of time or slightly after the fact. This can remove several stressors that make holiday travel notoriously difficult with young children, offering quality time that’s more logistically feasible with young explorers in mind.
You can grow into holiday travel: Sometimes, limiting your capacity, such as declining a holiday trip, can feel heavy because we feel like it’s a permanent decision. In reality, you can give yourself permission to grow into holiday traditions. You can say no this year while re-evaluating the next. It’s okay to do things a little differently each passing year!