Do you want to spend months planning and weeks packing for a few days in paradise? Take a beach vacation with kids.
Did you want to sit in hours of traffic on I-65 South with two screaming children for 16 hours? Calls for a beach vacation if you’re from Indiana.
Love getting up before 6 am, finding sand in your bed, experiencing countless meltdowns before 8 am over sand (they’re my meltdowns), and fighting a 1-year-old over eating sand all day? That all sounds like a beach vacation at its finest.
Do you want to rent a three-bedroom condo but squash into a bed with your partner and two children? Then you’re in the right place. Really, any vacation with kids will buy you this.
There are many blogs and reels out there with tips for taking a beach vacation with kids, but none of them tell you the most significant tip: don’t! I kid, I’m joking…kind of. Beach vacations are somehow both magical and terrible memory makers.
Being from Indiana, I can’t help but feel like a kid myself at the beach; it’s an enchanting place. However, there are so many other factors involved when it comes to a beach vacation that the stress almost doesn’t outweigh the positives.
The packing, organizing, and executing it takes for a beach vacation is a different kind of tension. There’s sand. Did I mention there’s a one-year-old eating sand? There’s sunburn of the next level and the stressing about ensuring no one gets sunburnt. Partner arguing over who didn’t reapply the sunscreen to ward off said sunburn is almost guaranteed. Dinner meltdowns because of too much sand, sun, and salt from the day are definitely guaranteed.
Through all of the stress, I found calm during vacations with kids, especially at the beach. My son forgot an iPad existed this week. He’s been up since 6 am looking for shells. He’s chatty and inquisitive, the way a 6-year-old should be. His body is tired and carefree and sunburnt, just a tad. I can imagine he feels some of the stress of life leave his little body with every wave that pulls away from the sand, in the same way that I experience it inch slowly and gradually away. There is a quintessential peace about being so close to the ocean. I am grateful to be able to bring him here. I know it is a privilege.
Vacationing and traveling with kids has been one of the most important parts of my parenting journey. It’s taught me to be humble. It’s taught me to slow down and not to take myself so seriously. To laugh, to breathe, to enjoy nature more. To be thankful for the routine of home but grateful to be able to leave it behind sometimes. It’s taught us all to be flexible, solve problems, and practice coping skills. These are things we could all probably work on more in daily life.
So am I joking about the “don’t”? Yes. Plan a beach vacation with your kids, sand, sunburn, and all.
