Going on holiday is horrid

[CountTheStars]

With children under 5. Why do I do it? Why does anyone do it? It’s just stressful, expensive, stuff always goes wrong, the kids fight, get overtired & don’t appreciate any attractions or walks or planned trips out; they’re just as happy playing by a puddle in a fucking car park or throwing stones one by one down a drain.

No-one agrees on what they want to do with the day so you compromise & end up doing something no-one wants at all. For some mysterious reason you think it’d be a great idea to uproot the kids from a nicely established routine & a familiar environment where you’ve got everything under control to an unfamiliar place, where the beds & rooms are different, so bedtimes are a right effing drama & you get little to no sleep. The weather is traditionally shite (looking at you UK holidays) and you spend about 3 days trying to figure out how everything works in the new place. Plus the tortuously long car journeys there & back if you’re crazy like me & booked somewhere too far away.

Everyone breathes an audible sigh of relief to get home. Kids go and play with a puddle/drain, I can watch junk on Netflix in the evening, and everyone is happy.

I don’t think I ABU in thinking this about holidays with preschoolers because all I could hear when out and about where angry/exhausted parents, and pockets of screaming. No-one enjoys holidays with under 5’s, surely?

Always loved holidays with the kids but I think you have to manage your expectations. We've done lots from a caravan Haven type holidays. to the Caribbean. Didn't take the kids abroad until the youngest was 5, it always looked too stressful. I think the best you can hope for is if they are having a good time, you can relax a little. Tag teamed entertaining them. Never ever self catered as thats not a holiday for me, ok for Haven would have cornflakes or maybe croissants or toast for breakfast. Perhaps mine were easy to please. They are all adult now, maybe times were different.

I loved mine when they were too young to talk (very late talkers too, dd1 was 4) great memories and visited places I wanted to go to. Once they could make demands and complain it was harder but I still chose my sort of holidays . They remember them fondly thankfully

We are pretty hardcore when it comes to travelling and holidays with DC. We had to be as we have 4 and since youngest was born, the cost of flights and people carrier car hire was prohibitive so we had driving holidays.

DH’s family live abroad so we’d spend 3/4 weeks in the summer every year, prior to Covid, driving across Europe with 2/3 mini holiday stops to the beach in Italy, Croatia etc, including stopping at DH’s home country for a bit. Round trip would be about 3000 miles. Started that when youngest was 2, car would be rammed and roof rack too. They were nightmares at the time, non synchronised toilet stops etc especially when DC4 was potty training and we’d have poos to get rid off but we all have such lovely memories of them now except the time we all came down with D&V after leaving Montenegro and the state of the car!

Youngest DC is 11, others late teens/young adults now and this year is the first year we have been able to afford a proper flight and AI resort holiday. So relieved that we can leave DC to themselves within the resort and actually relax finally. I think we’ve earned it!

Surely you can't dislike every type of holiday?

Mostly we took road trips but went backpacking once, 3.5 weeks sounds tough with a non verbal asd dd and a toddler but it was a breeze, they loved the ferries, trains and camping

I'm with you OP. I think maybe it depends on the children, mine are not chilled out and are extremely stubborn. We took DD1 to Italy when she was 2, the kind of holiday we would have enjoyed pre-kids. It wasn't great, v little for kids to do so was stressful.

We now have two DDs and I've found the key things are to lower expectations and go on holidays where there is plenty for the kids to do. I would recommend Centreparcs in Europe. Pool and activities to keep kids busy/ entertained. Charming town nearby to get a bit of culture and good food in. Oh and you can get alcohol at the softplay

Also agree that going with another family with kids of similar age helps a lot. I already dream about when they're older and we can go back to self-catering holidays in France/ Italy/ Greece.

I love holidays and particularly enjoyed them when the DC were young as it was fun to be with them all day .Two adults to one, two or three DC rather than just me as DH worked long hours .I have always missed them when I am at work and I loved being neither at work nor doing more than the basic chores.We usually self cater with plenty of meals out and maybe a few nights on the road, at euro Disney or a city break.

Fascinating thread! Firstly having more than one child to cope with is usually going to be more stressful, secondly, the sheer number of people milling around at airports etc is also stressful, thirdly, queues can be dreadful because of school holidays so everyone goes away at the same time ...

Unless you can afford a holiday where you don't have to worry about buying food, cooking it etc and your DH/DP is hands-on with it all, it is no holiday for a mum!

Yes i think a UK holiday with very young children would take a lot of money and work to make it really good, especially when its not even proper summer weather yet.

Holidays dont all mean UK holidays in the spring though, and kids, doesnt necessarily mean preschoolers

We always took ours abroad on A/I holidays from being born.
They were too busy stuffing themselves silly and splashing about in the pool or on the beach to whine and fall out.

Hotel with a kids club or villa with another family with similar aged children, so they can play together and you share the cooking etc. Nothing else is a holiday

For those recommending AI, I would loke to try this but for a family of four during school holidays must cost at least 3k for a week?!

I enjoy holidays. I only have 1 child though.

With small children Its easiest to go somewhere that they’ll entertain themselves. We always just went to the beach in the morning for paddling and sandcastles and took picnic food and drinks. I’d enjoy reading and Rock pooling , they did what kids do at the beach . Once we’d had enough we’d go back to the accommodation for a shower and a baked potato / chinese/ pizza and then off to the amusements or bar with a sensible drinks budget. They usually wondered around with a bag of sweets and other kids and we had a quiet glass of wine . I bought an older kids buggy too so I never once had to listen to a kid moan about walking if we fancied a stroll along the seafront in the evening . I must admit tantrums were rare and DP and I never argued so I guess we just picked the right holidays for us. Posher holidays are crap with kids , restaurants , fancy hotels and structured sight seeing is for kids who are well into their secondary years in my experience.

Which comes back to the "holidays are fun if you can throw thousands at them"

I do agree. It's very hard work.

We're going to a cottage, two hours drive away, on a lake. Bit of swimming, bit of cycling, eat when and what we want, Bob's your uncle.

Holidays with two DDs since they were babies. Now 19 and 21 and we still love our holidays. Always abroad, always hotels, I’m not cooking or cleaning on holiday. A mix of beach, pool, nature, new cities, villages, the odd exciting sight such as the Colosseum. Have also done Novotel etc in Paris. Never tried AI as I think we might get bored. Only bad holiday we had was a rainy week in Cornwall. We love our holidays, and loved seeing tiny DDs enjoy them too. The teens know that they have to behave as they are aware who’s paying!

I preferred UK places when the kids were little, you could pack up the car with all the stuff they needed and there was lots of space.

We always planned a couple of adult nights out - with a baby sitter to a nice restaurant. You can get holiday home baby sitters on sitters.co.uk, but for a lot of places you need to book a month or so in advance.

We had a day out each to ourselves, DH always went fishing and I did a spa, but it meant that we had a DC free day.

Getting prepped the day before. Look at the weather, decide what you want to do and then pack everything up. Take it in turns to get up in the morning and the person who gets up makes the bits of the picnic that you need fresh.

It's always been fun - so much that we still do it, although we now pay much more.

If we did a hotel holiday, we always had an adjoining room and ate without the children a couple of nights.

No, yanbu op. Sadly.

I have dragged my dh, 3 kids (one with a medical disability/other ASD/LD) for years. Eldest, now 14 and dh have joined forces and begged me not to make them go on any more.

I have sort of given in, but not given up. Me and ds8 are off for a Eurodisney three night stay and dh and ds14 are doing two weekend interailing in Europe.

I have also told dh that when we have retired and ds12 has found supported accommodation, we are spending most of the year travelling as far as we can in a camper van.

That's cheered him up no end.

I think honestly if you're poor then holidays are crap for parents. My parents were pretty poor when we were little. We did a weeks camping every year in wales. I have wonderful memories of those holidays but taking to my mom about it now it sounds like hell on earth.

We were all fussy eaters. My mom did it all with all three of us my dad took us in the rock pools a bit but disappeared to the pub about 4pm. She even had to have all three of us try and swap in and out of the showers so we only used one 50p. We ran wild on the beach and loved it but no doing we moaned loads and the weather was shit and we were so fussy no eating out. My mom is a flipping hero.

When they got a bit more wealthy and we rented a villa in Spain we felt like kings!!

Even if we go somewhere that is self catering we literally eat breakfast there and go out or have take always - cooking is not a holiday for us so we just chose to not do it

Just back from Spain and we literally all had cereal in the morning then out all day at the pool with our daughter - sometimes she had her lunch at the apartment - but mostly out!

she enjoyed the kids club and entertainment at night and staying up late.

we managed a few lie ins as a result of staying out late.

we took turns to have solo adult time at the pool reading my book and relaxing

it was absolute bliss tbh

@SleepingStandingUp Not necessarily, there's always bargains to be had if you're not fussy.
I never paid over the odds.
If you've got two or more kids, add up how much it will cost over say two weeks in meals, drinks, snacks and treats if you go self catering, even if you're doing the cooking yourself. Add shit weather into it.
Compared to going A/I with no cooking, no worrying and fab weather so the kids can enjoy the beach or pool.
It doesn't always cost more.

Even with a free kids place, TUI reckons around 3k minimum for full board or £3.5k AI for school holidays. It does not cost me that for a week in Wales and I don't need to either keep crotchety kids up late or go to bed early cos we're all in one or two rooms. Weather doesn't matter, my bank doesn't get fuller if I promise sunshine. If we had 3k+ to spend of course the on site play sessions, pool and sunshine would make it a no-brainer. As it is, Wales here we come.

I just got back from holiday abroad with 4 year old and it was so tiring but she was great! I have read these threads before and been so apprehensive before the trip so I promise I’m not gloating here, just providing the possibility for anyone else feeling similarly that it might not be awful.

Barely even a whinge through all the waiting around travelling, brilliant on the plane, no issues with sleep or food and she made friends with some children at the same accommodation and had a great time playing with them all week.

Maybe the difference is one rather than multiple children?

@SleepingStandingUp TUI have always been expensive.
Hence I said if you're not fussy.
We took two grandchildren away for 2 weeks A/I to Spain last August and it cost just under £1100 for two weeks.
We booked it and flew out two days later
There are always bargains to be had if you look.