You Are On Your Way
As we all know travel decisions don’t just end at picking the destination. There are a myriad of other in-trip conflicts that inevitably could arise: Who gets to sit on the window seat? Does the family go to the beach or sightseeing? And everyone’s favorite difficult decision, where should we go to dinner? Again the conflict resolution solutions I garnered from the experts were varied and clever.
Carol Margolis of www.smartwomentravelers.com, a wife, mom and well-traveled businesswoman who spends 50 weeks out of the year on the road told me that when her two children were small any choice that needed to be made was decided via a small cloth drawstring bag (about the size of a sandwich baggie). “Inside {the bag} would be slips of paper that each child would draw from (wide enough mouth so that they could each select a slip of paper at the same time).
The slips of paper might say:
- Your choice of airplane seat
- Your choice of restaurant for lunch on Monday
- Your choice of restaurant for dinner on Saturday
- Your choice of television show at 8pm
- Your choice of radio station in the car
This way, each child had some choice in what to do – kids love to be the decision makers and it was a fun way to take turns. Another great taking turns strategy is playing a few rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
