Tips for Partner Travel When You’re a Parent
If you’re anything like me, some days I feel like my husband and I have carefully built a “house of cards”, with our children and ourselves, so any change could swiftly knock it off balance. Other days, I feel like we could handle quite a bit of turbulence.
With three young kids and two working parents, a strength of ours that has made life a lot smoother for us is dividing certain responsibilities clearly. We also know that the key to success with children is to be ready for change and be agile - so communicating about each of our responsibilities and understanding the load each other is carrying is key too.
After many opportunities to learn and practice this communication and division of labor, I feel proud of how we handle our approach to a big challenge. In a few weeks, my husband is going away for a few days and this is the perfect opportunity for us to flex the planning muscle yet again as it will certainly come with challenges. This is something I know we can handle and I feel thankful that we have time to prepare!
How We Prepare for Partner Travel with Kids
Call in Supports
When my husband first let me know about this potential trip, the first thing we did was think about who we should call in for support with the kids while he is gone. We reached out to a loving family member who said they would be happy to come sleep over for 1-2 nights and help during the day.
Offload the Traveling Partner’s Biggest Responsibilities
The next big puzzle piece for our family is meals. Meals are a very important item for obvious reasons with three kids aged 7 and under, but specifically for us because my husband is our head cook and primarily handles dinners for our family.
Planning out our food provides more than nourishment. The planning of food supports minimizing housework while caring for the kids on my own, setting my husband up to have a positive experience while he’s away, and allows space for me to meet my individual needs. We’ve learned that when we don’t plan, the odds are higher that the parent who stayed home feels depleted and the parent returning feels guilt for being away.
I picture myself in the future, in charge of everyone’s needs to map out what support best looks like. Ideally, I would like to make breakfast and lunch but only have to heat up and clean up dinners. Looking at the family calendar, we see that one of us has an evening commitment M-Th leading up to his trip. That schedule means we won’t be able to prepare meals for his trip during that week. We look back further and see that the weekend before will provide time for that. My husband will cook a big batch of a family favorite soup that can be eaten or frozen, make waffles to freeze and reheat and do a big grocery shop. The day before he leaves, I’ll shop for whatever perishable items we need for the weekend so that I don’t necessarily have to shop while he’s gone.
Soften the Adjustment Period
Next in our planning is filling the next gap of how to ease back into the school/work week after his trip. We’ll be back to full schedules, and although we’ll have two parents, we won’t have spent much of the weekend preparing meals. After hearing a lot of buzz that Feast and Fettle has been lightening the load for friends of ours, this seemed like the perfect chance to give it a try. We looked through the meals and selected four dinners & eight sides. We booked them to arrive on Monday which will set up the week with a delicious start without much work. Feast and Fettle boasts “meals you’ll love, without the cooking” which is exactly what we’re looking for!
By Thursday or Friday, we’ll pull together take out, pasta or, if we’re feeling really fancy, breakfast for dinner, but it will lighten the load of the week to know we have nutritious, tasty and quick meals when he returns.
How It Would be Different If I’m Traveling
Our planning typically looks much different when I am the one who is away for a stretch. Since I lead on things in other areas of daily life, we would do some planning in some of those areas: laundry, cleaning and coordination of the kids schedules. I typically build time in the week before to get the laundry in a solid place and expect leave time to do some big loads when I return. We discuss a plan to budget for and call in cleaners before or after my time away. And I ask what support he wants around coordination for the kids while I’m away. Sometimes he’s appreciates if I book a sitter or ask for a friend to drive our daughter to a birthday party. Sometimes he prefers that I don’t interfere and let him set up his own details. He tends to still cook, to my amazement, but if he wanted support with that, we would discuss meal planning or revisit Feast and Fettle to supplement.
Take a Pause to Consider Your Options of Support
I can’t promise I’ll be counting down to the next solo parenting stint, but I always feel empowered when I find another resource that makes parenting filled with more ease. Sometimes the difference in the “house of cards” assessment of our lifestyle and the more sturdy one, is the number of options I can pull from depending on what parenting throws my way.
If you are in a season of parenting that feels especially heavy or if you want a break from the mental load of meal planning, I encourage you to check out Feast and Fettle. With code PARENTWELLNESSGROUP, you’ll receive 50% off your first week!