The Long View: On your family holiday, don’t forget to give yourself a break

As soon as we turned the corner after dropping our daughter at the hotel kiddies club, we started running. The sun was shining and we had an hour to ourselves. We felt downright giddy.

Family holidays are great. Away from it all with no timetable and no routine, you can relax… to a point.

With a young child in tow, there’s only so much lounging around you can get away with. If there’s a pool, they want to be in it. And because our daughter is just five, we need to be with her, or at least within easy reach.

So we tag team it. My husband puts in a half-hour shift while I read my book, then I tag in while he dozes off in the sun. Then, when the kiddies club opens and we can drop our daughter off for an hour, we grasp that opportunity with both hands.

On our first family holiday, when our daughter was six months old, we went to Portugal and had a relaxing break. We came home feeling refreshed. “That was easy,” we thought smugly. But holidaying with a baby (who, in fairness, slept like a dream), is a whole different animal to a holiday with an active five-year-old.

Let’s face it: family holidays centre around kids. Happy kids most often means happy parents, but it will probably also mean tired parents. You’re together all the time, and the kids are up later than normal, so the day can feel long.

For the first few holidays when our daughter was all go, we put everything into it. We booked all the activities and experiences, spent hours in the pool or in the sea. Then every night we crashed at 10pm, exhausted, knowing we would be up early in the morning to do it all again. Coming home after a week’s holiday, we felt broken. And then it was straight back to work.

We were so excited to be having family holidays that we’d forgotten it was our time off too. We were determined to take a different approach for our next holiday.

Before jetting off last year, we investigated the different things we could do for ourselves. There was a spa in the hotel, so I pre-booked some treatments. My husband loves craft beer, so he booked in for a tour of a local brewery. And we felt no guilt when leaving our daughter at the kiddies club each day. She had the best time, and we got to switch off. Whether we were just doing a little bit of shopping, taking a dip in the pool, going for a wander, or just enjoying a relaxing drink by the beach. That one hour each day was precious.

The going joke among parents after a summer holidays is, ‘We need another holiday after it!’ We’re only half joking though.

We all work hard during the year and need our downtime too. Sure, it’s a family holiday, and it’s wonderful to spend all that time together having fun, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also have some alone time, or couple time. That way, we might just all coming back from our time away feeling like we’ve actually had a holiday.

Have you come back from a break feeling less than refreshed? Sign up for our Introduction to Meditation on 16 May and learn how to find a sense of calm in your everyday life.