Making the Most of a Bad Vacation

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By Stacy DeBroff

Often you cannot tell whether your family will enjoy a vacation until you go there. Accidents, illness, lost reservations or luggage can complicate even the most meticulously planned vacation. No matter how many times you’ve reconfirmed your hotel, how healthy your child seemed before you boarded the plane, how well you researched your location, hid your valuables, and anticipated calamities, sometimes reasons for a bad vacation are out of your hands.

Here are some things you can do to survive it all:

• Treat setbacks as all part of the adventure. Your good attitude will encourage your child to respond to challenges with ingenuity and humor.

• Come up with a Plan B. If the site you planned to visit is closed, rained out, or just plain disappointing, look for adventure elsewhere. Again, your flexibility and attitude will be mirrored by your child.

• Pack up and leave. If everyone is miserable and the situation looks like it won’t change for the duration of your trip, relocate, even if that means losing money on hotel reservations or changing flights. Occasionally a trip cannot be salvaged unless you try a new location or just go home again and make the most of your days off by taking day trips.

Stacy, heralded as a “parenting guru” by the Wall Street Journal, authored four best-selling parenting books (Simon & Schuster) and launched Mom Central, Inc. (www.MomCentral.com), a company devoted to providing savvy advice to simplify and enrich the lives of busy Moms and their families. Stacy appears as a regular parenting expert on national TV show, including NBC’s Today Show, CNN, The View, Tyra Banks Show, CBS’ Early Show, The Daily Buzz, Mike And Juliet, Fox & Friends, and the Rachael Ray Show. Stacy also serves as a corporate spokesperson, trendspotting for the media on behalf of over 30 national brands.

In the 1990’s, Stacy founded and ran as an attorney the Public Interest Office at Harvard Law School. Stacy lives with her husband, Ron, and happily engages in imperfect parenting of their two teens, Kyle and Brooks, in Boston, Massachusetts.