Well precious they may
be, but delicate never. Baby’s survive and thrive some of the most
inhospitable places on the planet, and wrapping them up in cotton
wool and tip-toeing around the house when they sleep is doing them
no favours at all.
When our daughter had
reached the ripe old age of four months we popped her into a baby
backpack, bought our nearly three year old son a small backpack of
his own to fill with his ruggie, teddy and a few toy cars and caught
a bus to Perth airport to catch a
flight to Europe.
There was a moment. There
had to be at least one. It wasn’t somewhere exotic, like 35,000 feet
over China
or racing across an impossibly huge Asian airport looking for a
connecting flight. Our moment came on the London Underground a few
days later, sitting next to each other on a rattling train at 10am
local time, still 2am in our Western Australian world, when I
snapped at their mum, or she snapped at me, then we snapped at each
other.
It wasn’t much, but both
children felt the tension and reacted to it. For a moment I wondered
if we’d done the right thing, would this all end in a four-month
tear fest and a quick divorce?
Communication without
recrimination is a powerful thing, and we used it, got over the
trivial piece of annoyance neither of us could remember and vowed
not to let it happen again during the trip. It didn’t, and we had an
extraordinary journey I will never forget.
We landed in
Barcelona after 26 hours and spent the next four hours on
a train going to visit the children’s Nanna, my mum who had moved to
Spain
several years earlier.
Do not think that
children will be phased by new experiences. We forget that
everything is a new experience for them, and it is more likely the
adults will be the ones blinking wide-eyed and wondering what to do
next.
Children have no such
worries. The next four months were a blur of stunning spectacles and
lovely moments.
Gareth our three year old
desperately peeing into the already flooded San Marco’s Square in
Venice, falling asleep at the top of a Swiss mountain after we spent
hours working our way up there for the view, putting tents up and
sleeping on beaches, in railways stations, up mountains and changing
nappies in crowded Italian trains in order to clear our compartment
so we could get a good nights sleep.
We ate the biggest
ice-cream together in
Basel
at the Movenpic Restaurant, Gareth’s eyes boggling at the size of it
and standing on tip-toes to reach. Sian sitting in her backpack
being given money, fruit, sweets and little toys all over
Greece.
Goat bells, donkeys,
guillotines and waxworks. The battle of Trafalgar at Madame Tussauds
which to a three year old is as real as it gets, star gazing at the
Planetarium and mixing it with the tourists picking their way
through ancient ruins of Southern Europe.
We jammed into a train in
Athens
to go and visit the Acropolis, and it broke down. With temperatures
climbing into the high forties the crammed carriage felt like a tomb
and people around us began to panic. The doors and windows were
closed, there was no way out and for 45 minutes we sweated and tried
to control our fear.
We stripped the
children’s clothes off to their underwear and I carried them over
the top of peoples willing shoulders to get them air coming from a
crack in a window. One man suffered a heart attack while others
began ripping the compartment apart looking for something to smash
their way out with.
When the train suddenly
jolted forward it was only just in time, and if it hadn’t been for
the two children there and the care people showed them the situation
would have deteriorated much sooner.
We were scrambling to the
surface looking for water and a couple of quick reviving Ouzo’s,
other passengers were beating up and shouting at the poor train
driver and our two children, none the worse for their adventure,
laughed and giggled and hadn’t a care in the world.
We lived on a secluded
beach in the Greek
Islands, became Greek for
a while and looked after goats, caught fish, learned some of the
language and fell in love again with a country that flows into your
soul while you’re not looking.
A five star hotel,
beaches, trains, buses, taxis, mountain benches, cable cars, a
gondola, two luggage racks, a building site, fishing boat, vineyard
and several camping places – just a few of the ‘bedrooms’ our two
intrepid young travellers fell asleep.
If you haven’t travelled
but always wanted too, but use the children as an excuse now for not
doing so, there’s no excuse.
Children can and will
handle anything, and they love it. Our baby didn’t cry, our two year
old had no tantrums and simply smiled, giggled and played his way
through the entire trip, eyes open, mind alert the whole time.
There will be things as
adults we have to deal with, but don’t mistake these for having
anything to do with what the children need to handle. Go out there
and enjoy this incredible world, and take the children with you.
Seen through their eyes you will see the world anew, everywhere you
go.
Rob Daniel is a
children's author who travels to schools around the world running
workshops in creative writing, memory techniques and self-esteem.
Rob (or Danny as he is called) believes and has evidence for, there
is NOTHING you cannot do if you want it enough.
Danny runs
I’m 29 years old and I live in 
Julian was born in 
