WebParenTips - The Online Parenting Newsletter
              vol.7 no.7, July 2006

       SUMMER STRESS?

We tend to think a summer vacation means getting away from it all which 
means less pressure and less stress, right? 

Wrong!

The family vacation can be a surprisingly big source of stress. After all 
we’ve been waiting a whole year to get a vacation. We gotta make it a 
perfect one!

Planning the trip can be exciting unless you are a perfectionist. Travel 
perfectionism is tough to achieve these days. Why? Fewer flights and 
higher gas prices for starters. Pleasing everybody in the family is hard 
enough when deciding where to go out to supper, it gets harder when a 
two-week trip is on the agenda.

A big mistake families make, especially those with young children, is 
planning TOO MUCH. We plan on too many miles, too much to see, and too many 
relatives to visit. Hard to be happy when everybody is tired from the 
too-muches. 

Another problem is having overly high expectations of the vacation trip 
which leads to the inevitable letdown if something goes wrong.

And something is bound to go wrong. A glitch-less trip is almost an oxymoron. 
But just the other week when I was in LA to visit my grown son he told me 
there is a Goddess of Travel that, mysteriously, makes MOST of what we want 
to happen on a trip happen. I started to pooh-pooh this notion as silly but 
then I remembered the miraculous mountains. My husband and I have traveled 
widely and on three occasions we have seen mountains that we thought were 
impossible to see that day. We have watched dense clouds part so we could 
see Mount Fuji from a train in Japan, the snows of Kilimanjaro from an 
airplane in Kenya, and Denali while we were hiking in the National Park in 
Alaska. For all of these mountains we humbly thank the Goddess of Travel and 
we will no longer doubt her supernatural powers.

My advice? Don’t plan more than you can comfortably chew especially if the 
kids are small. Pray to the Goddess of Travel but realize she is not 
infallible.

And have a great time! 

Happy Parenting,
Marilyn Heins, M.D.


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Dr. Marilyn Heins is a Tucson pediatrician, parenting
columnist for the Arizona Daily Star, author of the book,
ParenTips, as well as a mother, stepmother and grandmother.

She is available for workshops and lectures to groups of
parents, teachers, and grandparents. See: Dr. Heins' Lectures
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More parenting information can be found in Dr. Heins' book, ParenTips