Prepare to Come Home

While I’ve talked about preparing for a big trip, the strange thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes coming home from a family vacation is the hardest part.

Naturally everyone is excited to come home to the familiar, including us. But then reality kicks in. The kids struggle with not having their cousins around to play with constantly and revert back to old habits, like fighting over things or not wanting to have showers. Ugh. We adults struggle with unpacking, laundry, getting groceries, going back to work and general life stuff that has to be done straight away. We are usually all tired. And the strange thing is, you can have this incredible experience and the ‘best fun ever’, but then normal life just goes on and you have to move on somehow. It can be really challenging.

How can we avoid this massive ‘come down’ from such a high of an amazing family holiday? Believe it or not, you can even start thinking about it as part of your pre-trip preparation.

Before we go away

Firstly, I make sure there is enough food for the day/evening we get home in the cupboard or freezer. Secondly, I also do a good house clean so I’m not stressed or overwhelmed when I walk in the doors. And thirdly I made sure we had a clean set of school and work uniforms ready so I didn’t have to worry about that either.

While we’re On our Trip

While we’re on a big family holiday or adventure, I try to do the laundry regularly and stay on top of it. This means I can pack (and unpack less) and also have less washing to do the day I get home. Another thing I try to do is keep a connection to home life through conversations. So for example, at dinner each day I might ask, what’s something from today you could tell your teacher about? Or, who else would love to do this? It reminds them of their friends back home and gives them an idea of how to share the experience. I also keep little things like tickets, brochures, etc, that they can take into school for show and tell. On our recent trip to New Zealand we kept a glittery rock the kids found, some tickets, and a gold 1 dollar coin with a kiwi bird on it. Another thing we do is try to keep a rough routine, so their bedtimes are mostly consistent and life feels familiar.

When we get back

We do as much of the responsible stuff as we can while the kids are enjoying the familiarity of coming home (this usually lasts about an hour!). We race to unpack the car and bags. I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but I know that anything still packed after the first day will take weeks to unpack later (no idea why, but it’s 100% guaranteed). We try to be responsive to the kids too, it’s hard for them to go from having people to play with or happy-holiday-mode-parents constantly to being ignored, so we’re aware of stopping the jobs and just taking time to settle back in with them when we need to. We try to go back to our normal routine that first evening, and get the kids to bed so they can get a good sleep and we can finally relax after the huge trip.

We encourage the kids to think of things they could talk about at school – either in their lessons (e.g. story writing) or in show and tell. I sent photos and videos to the kids’ teachers so they could share them in class. We take something in to show everyone, it helps the kids be excited to go to school and see everyone, rather than nervous. The idea with all this is to minimise the separation of holiday from normal life, and help the kids feel like their holiday is coming with them and part of them now.

Honestly, it’s a big adjustment coming home. In some ways it’s harder for the adults because the kids move on so quickly. We grown ups need more time to recover our energy, catch up on sleep, and embrace routine rather than resent it.

So how can us adults enjoy coming home?

Or ending a holiday? We always look forward to being home in our own beds, but honestly I think going straight back into work and life is pretty hard. We spend our drive home talking about our trip, focusing on things that worked and things we could improve for next time. That reflection process is really important. We always jump into dreaming of what’s next, but it’s really important to take time to reflect and relish in the experience you’ve had. And if normal life isn’t worth looking forward to, maybe there’s a chance to consider why, and how things may need to change. Sometimes the best way to know it’s time for a change is to have time away.

Another way I reflect is to journal about our trip and make a photo book. When the book arrives we all sit down and look through it over and over, laughing and remembering the good times. If a photobook is too much work, something else you could do is connect your phone to the TV and have a ‘movie night’, where you look through photos and videos of your trip.

The last thing I’ve done, to help reflect and incorporate the experiences from the trip, is make plans for the future based on what we’ve learned. For example, I noticed my kids refused to carry their own backpacks when we were travelling, so on our next mini-adventure I will get them to take a little bag they have to be responsible for. I also noticed they didn’t want to eat unfamiliar foods, so I’ve got a list of foods I want them to get used to trying. It’s little things like that, which we can work on to make the next trip even better, which give us ideas and things to look forward to.

Your Turn

Now tell me, how do you help make the transition back to normal life go well? Is it possible, or is the emotional downfall just part of the experience?