First Overseas Family Trip: Why I’m Already Stressed (and What I’m Doing About It)
I’m sitting at my kitchen table at 9:17 PM, half-empty oat latte sweating through a paper coaster, four passports fanned out next to a crumpled flight confirmation printout. The table has a sticky splotch from the apple juice Milo spilled at dinner, and Lila’s half-drawn picture of a Portuguese mermaid is tucked under the first aid kit I’ve sorted and resorted four times in three days. Three days out from our first overseas trip as a family of four, and I’m already this close to canceling the whole thing.
We’ve done road trips to the mountains, a week of camping at a state park, even a long weekend to Vancouver to visit my sister, but this is different. Eight hours on a plane, two weeks in a foreign country where I only remember half my high school Portuguese, an Airbnb with no washing machine, no backup plan if something goes wrong. I’ve been saving for this trip for a year, planning it for eight months, and somewhere between checking the baggage allowance for the tenth time and scrolling a Reddit thread about family travel fails, I crossed the line from excited to straight-up stressed. Someone on that thread said their 4-year-old got a stomach bug on day two and they spent the entire trip locked in a hotel room. Now I can’t sleep without running through the worst-case scenarios: what if Milo has a bee sting reaction and we can’t find an urgent care that speaks English? What if I leave a passport in a taxi? What if Lila has a full meltdown mid-flight over ear pain and every other passenger hates us?
My partner says I’m overthinking. He’s already packed his one duffel and has been playing video games every night after the kids go to bed. But he’s not the one who keeps Lila’s tree nut allergy checklist memorized, or who remembers that Milo can’t fall asleep without his specific stuffed lamb that can’t be replaced if it gets lost. Yesterday I spent an hour comparing travel insurance policies, and by the end I had a headache so bad I had to lay down.
This morning, I was cross-referencing my packing list against the airline’s carry-on size requirements when Lila leaned against my leg and tried to show me the mermaid drawing again. I mumbled “that’s nice, honey” without looking up, and after a minute she said, “Mom, why don’t you want to go on vacation with us?”
That stopped me. I’ve worked as a preschool teacher for five years, I know better than this. I see every week how kids pick up on adult stress before we even say a word. A parent hovering and anxious at drop-off? Their kid is 10 times more likely to cry and cling. A teacher stressed about a scheduled observation? The whole class gets wiggly and off-task. I’d spent so much time trying to make this trip perfect for my kids that I’d missed the most obvious thing: my stress was already making them anxious.
That afternoon, I made three small changes that have already taken the edge off, no fancy mindfulness or expensive travel gear required.
First, I cut my packing list in half. I’d initially planned for three outfits per kid per week, extra rain boots, water shoes, four extra pairs of pajamas, and a first aid kit big enough to treat a soccer team. I pulled everything out that wasn’t allergy medication, the kids’ favorite comfort items (one-eyed rabbit, stuffed lamb, Lila’s worn blanket), and one extra layer per person. Everything else can be bought when we get there. I even googled the nearest large grocery store to our Airbnb, saved the address in my maps app, so I know exactly where to go if I forget sunscreen, diapers, or extra socks. It sounds small, but my suitcase is half the size it was, and so is my stress.
Second, I stopped only talking about the fun parts of the trip with the kids. For months, we’ve talked about the beach, the pastries, the castle we’re going to visit. I never mentioned the long lines at security, the 8-hour plane ride where you have to sit still, the fact that sometimes we’ll be hungry and tired and have to wait an hour for dinner. Last night, after I apologized to Lila for snapping, we sat on her bed for 10 minutes and talked through all the boring or hard parts that might happen. I told her her ears might pop and hurt, and that we’d have gummy bears and her tablet to distract her, and we could walk up and down the aisle whenever we needed. Milo asked if the plane would crash, and I didn’t brush him off. I told him planes are very safe, and if he felt scared at any point, he could sit on my lap the whole flight. Naming the hard things didn’t scare them—it just took away the mystery. They both went to bed without asking a dozen follow-up questions, which is a first in two weeks.
Third, I crossed off two big day trips from my packed itinerary. I used to have every hour of every day planned, and now I’ve scheduled 30 minutes of unplanned, slow time every single day. It could be sitting in a park eating ice cream, it could be going back to the Airbnb for a nap, it could be just wandering around a neighborhood looking at cats. I know from working with little kids that new places are overstimulating, even fun new places. Too much running around leads to meltdowns, for kids and for me.
I still check the passports three times before I leave the kitchen. I still wake up at 3 AM running through what-if scenarios. I haven’t packed my own clothes yet, and I still haven’t booked that train from the airport. But Lila stopped asking me 10 times a day when we leave, and she’s back to riding her bike around the block after school like normal. We leave the day after tomorrow. There will almost definitely be a meltdown in the airport, I’ll almost definitely forget something important, and we’ll almost definitely pay five euros for a bottle of sunscreen because I didn’t pack enough. That’s okay. We’ve got the passports, we’ve got the allergy meds, we’ve got the stuffed animals. We’ll figure the rest out when we get there.
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