S07|19 - Emotional Regulation Tips when Travelling with Kids

AKA The episode where I show you how NOT to freak out when your kids freak out while travelling (which is pretty much inevitable at some point on your journey). Our family is off on a crazy school-year-long adventure of world travel. Travel has always been a big part of our life and journey… but we are now taking it to the NEXT level. We have spent the last couple of years living in several different locations and loving life but have always wanted to travel internationally with our family of 6… and we’re finally doing it!

In this week’s episode we’ll dig into the ins and outs of the travel life, and what we can do to help ourselves be more regulated, grounded and centered as we travel with kids (especially if we’re wordschooling or a full-time travelling family), and this can help our kids also. 

NEW TRAVEL BLOG: HERE
Custom feelings wheel: www.coachcrystal.ca/wheel

What I talk about in this episode: 

• The ups and downs of travel for us in the first 6 weeks
• How I found myself really irritated while we travelled (way more than the norm), and what I did to help improve my mood
• Prediction error and lack of control adding to my frustration
• How a morning practice can change everything (especially when you add thought-work journaling in… check out THIS if you want help getting started)
• What to do when you feel out of sorts, and how to build a sense of community and safety for yourself and your family as you travel

--

Coaching has changed my own life, and the lives of my clients. More connection, more healing, more harmony, and peace in our most important relationships. It increases confidence in any parenting challenges and helps you be the guide to teach your children the family values that are important to you- in clear ways. If you feel called to integrate this work in a deeper way and become a parenting expert, that’s what I’m here for. 

Download the feelings wheel HERE
Get the BOOK HERE: www.coachcrystal.ca/shop
Join the next round of PARENT SCHOOL: www.coachcrystal.ca/group
Find Your Parenting Personality: Quiz Here
IG: @the.parenting.coach
Email me at [email protected]

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school and get taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you, but now you can get that help here.

I believe that your relationship with your children is one of the most important aspects of your life, and the best way that you can make a positive impact on the world and on the future. I've made parental relationships my life study; and I use life coaching tools, emotional wellness tools, and connection-based parenting to build amazing relationships between parents and their children.

If you want an even better relationship with your child, this podcast will help you. Take my Parenting Quiz, the link is in the show notes. Once we know what your parenting style is, we will send some tips tailored to you and a roadmap to help you get the most out of my podcast.

 

Welcome to today's podcast episode, Emotional Regulation Tips when Travelling with Kids. 

Our family is off on a crazy school year-long adventure of world travel. Travel has always been a big part of our life and journey, but we are now taking it to the next level. We have spent the last couple of years living in several different locations and loving life, but have always wanted to travel internationally with our family of six; and we're finally doing it. 

In this week's episode, we'll dig into the ins-and-outs of the travel life – the ups and downs also – and what we can do to help ourselves be more regulated, more grounded and more centered as we travel with kids…especially if we're worldschooling or a full-time traveling family…and how this can help our kids also. 

Hello, welcome to today's podcast. I hope you listened to last week's podcast; I give you a little bit more kind of story and then also tips of kind of how we got everything started, and how we are traveling and how things are going for us so far in just the very beginnings.

 

The ups and downs / ins-and-outs of the travel life

As I'm recording this episode, we've actually been traveling now for a couple of months, maybe like a month-and-a-half. And so, I have a lot to say about the ups and the downs of traveling life. And this episode is going to be great for you if you are a full-time traveler, but also if you just travel with kids and find traveling with kids difficult. Does anybody feel me? I feel like everybody probably does at some point. 

So, I call this Emotional Regulation tips when traveling with kids because it's ways that we can keep ourselves centered. I've noticed that the more that I can center myself…the more I set the tone for my home, for my family, for my kids.

And the more I'm able to keep that peace and keep that centeredness, the more I'm able to hold space for my kids' emotions in a better way and help them kind of come back down to calm as well. 

And this doesn't mean Emotional Regulation, again, I've talked about it a lot on the podcast…doesn't mean just being calm all the time, being neutral all the time; it doesn't mean lack of feelings. 

It means that I'm able to feel the ups and the downs of all the emotions, and I'm able to get myself back down to center again. And I'm able to not have my behavior completely overtaken by a strong temporary emotion. I'm not just reactive with my behavior in regards to my emotions. 

So, that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about Emotional Regulation. If you don't already have my emotion feelings wheel, my custom feelings wheel, make sure that you download that; that should be at the link in the show notes. You can also go to coachcrystal.ca/wheel, W-H-E-E-L, and download that. I will be talking about that a little bit when it comes to Emotional Regulation today. 

So, I'm going to talk about kind of the ups and downs for me. I always-- I've been a pretty optimistic person. I kind of believe that everything's possible. I have big dreams, and I like to go for them and make them a reality. 

And a lot of times when it comes to those big dreams, I often think about just all of the good – how amazing it's going to be, that it's just going to be amazing all the time. I see it just being this like lovely blissful strolling through the woods with kids…and it's amazing. And so, because, lifelong, I've had this dream of travel, traveling full time; I really just imagined all of the goodness.

The same thing happened when we were traveling an RV; I just imagined it was going to be amazing and beautiful all the time. And it was a lot of the time, but it also wasn't a lot of the time too – because life is still just life, whether or not you are here…or whether or not you're living some new dream there. 

And so, I found that to be a really stark contrast here in where I really imagined for so many years, that life on the road was going to be blissful and glorious and happy, and that my kids would just love it…and there would be like, you know, butterflies and birds just floating around and singing to us every morning because it was going to be so wonderful. 

That's kind of how I imagined it, and so much so that I didn't even really plan for it being difficult. I didn't really plan for that it would be harder. And just the regular parenting struggles of like, you know, kids arguing or kids getting sick or kids not wanting to do what the plan is or whatever…just all of the normal ordinary stuff you go through as a parent. 

I feel like it's kind of amplified when you're traveling, do you feel that way? Have you ever been on a vacation where you're just like, 'I don't even know if I should call this a vacation because it doesn't feel vacationy to me…feels like a lot of work.'? 

And it's hard. It's difficult and not that it's not worth it, but it can be really hard. Well, I feel like I reached that (times) X10 because it's like full-time; and we're in different locations with different languages and different foods, and trying to organize and arrange everything has just been a lot.

And honestly, so much more than I thought it was going to be that the first while – I'm going to say the first month – was really hard for me. I found myself irritable, way more irritable than I usually am. I found myself more emotional; I didn't go back to just like being yelling and being triggered all the time or anything, but I definitely felt just a general malaise and a general more irritableness than I have in a lot of years. 

And so, I noticed this; the first step was kind of awareness, like, 'Okay, I'm definitely feeling more irritable.' And I just kind of allowed it. For a few weeks, I was just like, 'Hey, I'm more irritable than normal…this is harder than I thought it was going to be, and that's okay.' 

And all I did was just say that over and over again; I just accepted it. After a few weeks, I did sign up for a coaching call with one of my coaches. I actually got coached a couple of times; and I started journaling again and just kind of writing down like, 'Okay, what's happening with me? What can I do to work on this?' 

I did a hypnotherapy session on myself, and that's really when I started to feel things shift. I released a lot of emotion during that, and I really dug into what was happening behind the scenes; and I really felt things shift during that time. 

So, fast-forward, fast-forward…I'm like feeling pretty good, I'm having these open office hours with past clients of mine and meeting with clients; and one of them was like, 'Can you please do an episode on like, how do you find centeredness when you're traveling, especially when you're traveling full-time?'

She had traveled for a few months with her kids in Europe by herself, and she's planning on doing it again. And so, she was like, 'I would just love some tips. because I just felt a little bit out of sorts.' 

And now that I've been connecting with more worldschool mamas, I've heard this from a few of them, that they're like, 'There's just this lack of ungroundedness about it…there's something about it that just feels different and it almost feels like my nervous system is just like up-and-down so much more than it normally has been.' 

And I wasn't expecting that. I wasn't planning on that. And so, that has been a big shift and a big learning experience for me and it's something I'm still currently dealing with as I'm putting out this podcast episode. 

 

Tips to help us be more emotionally regulated, more grounded and more centered as we travel with kids

And I'm going to talk to you about how I'm dealing with it, and what things have been really helping and what things have been really working for me. And hopefully, it will be helpful to you as well.

 

1. Have a solid morning practice

The first one is to have a really solid morning practice. And what I mean by this is like; before I needed my morning practice and I noticed that the days that I did my morning practice, I would feel better throughout the day and I would feel more regulated and feel more able to deal with the ups-and-downs of parenting. 

But now, it's like a lifeline; it's like the bare minimum, like I have to do that for sure or else. And so, morning practice can be different for different people. I'll tell you what I do on my morning practice, but just carve out whatever works for you for your morning practice. 

 

(a) Listen to music

I love to listen to music that's really soothing and peaceful. 

 

(b) Breath

I love to add breath to my morning practice. So, breathing deeply in through my nose, double exhale through my mouth is one of my go-to breaths; and just doing that several times. 

 

(c) Mindfulness

I love mindfulness. Mindfulness is just getting really mindful about feelings in my body or how I'm feeling at that time or how it feels to be sitting on the ground – how it feels to have clothes on my skin, my hair on my body…like just really getting into that micro level of, what are the tiniest little things that I can see, hear, feel?

 

(d) Meditation

Another thing that I like to add is meditation. I don't do all of these things every morning. I'm going to-- I'm going to give you a lot of ideas, but I would just pick out-- Can I pick out a few and just add them, and see what works for me? 

I would definitely choose meditation. If you're going to choose like one of all the things, I would choose meditation because that amount of stillness, I find really helps tone that vagus nerve and really helps just increase my ability to regulate my nervous system in a more powerful way.

And meditation, I've heard from a lot of clients is kind of like scary and out there and, I don't know how to do it. And this client that I just finished with, this couple-- I was asking her about meditation and how she felt, and she was like, 'It's been getting a lot better since how you explained it to me.' 

And this is how I explained it. I explained it as, it doesn't mean I have to clear my mind of all thoughts all the time permanently, and I don't have to sit there for 20 minutes in stillness. So, I suggest you start for 30 seconds or one minute. If stillness is not that hard for you, then maybe go to 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes. 

I wouldn't go beyond five minutes if you haven't really been practicing meditation regularly; just start small because we don't want it to be this big huge thing that our brain's going to fight us on every morning.

We're just like, 'Okay, I'm just going to sit here in stillness.' And I just allow the breath just to, or just allow the thoughts just to flow out of my mind. And I just have my breath go in, my breath go out…and I'm just focusing on that breath coming in and that breath going out and these thoughts come in. 

I'm not like mad that a thought is coming in. I'm not feeling anxious or worried or stressed out about it; I'm just letting it come in, and then just gently flow out again. And that's all I do; that's literally all my meditation practice.

 

(e) Visualization

I'll sometimes add a visualization at the end where I kind of visualize like, what do I want to feel? What's an emotion that I would love to feel? So, this can be really powerful when traveling if you're like, 'I know I'm going to be out-and-about all day today or all day tomorrow or something, what emotion do I want to have?'

If I could feel anything, if anything was possible, what emotion would I bring into my body? 

And then visualize that; in my body, where do I feel that? 

Describe it; what does it feel like? Like with words, like; does it feel open, expansive, closed, constricted, hot, cold? Does it have a color, texture, temperature? 

See if you can really describe it to yourself, and just sit with that and just kind of spread the feeling of like, what is my intention? What do I want to feel? How do I want to show up? And if I was showing up that way in the world today, what would that feel like? 

 

(f) Prayer & Devotion

Another thing that I add because I have a great relationship with God, I love to have some prayer and some devotional within that too. So, if that resonates with you, you can do that as well. Or whatever spiritual practice you feel like you can add on to that, that can be helpful for you.

 

So, that's kind of what my morning practice looks like; and obviously, it's going to be a little bit different than when I'm at home…because when I'm at home, I have this like lovely space where I have like candles or essential oils or beautiful music or this nice little corner with my yoga mat. But I can bring those with me as well, at least in some parts. 

So, I actually brought a couple of my favorite stones with me, a couple of my favorite crystals; and I have them in my purse and then I like will take them out and just kind of put them in a little corner of my room, set up a little corner. I always bring at least a couple essential oils with me when I'm traveling also because I just don't know how to not have them because I love them.

So, I always bring something kind of soothing like a lavender…or something cleansing like a pepper-- or a lemon, something grounding like a peppermint; and I'll have that in my space as well. 

And I always have some really awesome playlists on Spotify. I love to have awesome playlists on Spotify, I find that really helpful as well. 

So, I kind of like get into my space and I organize everything, especially if I'm going to be here for like a while – like a full week or a full month – I'm going to unpack my things so I don't feel so disconnected there, and then I'm going to have a little space.

I always bring like a journal, and so I can have at least a few of those things. Now you can modify this however works for you, but have something that sets your day up in a way that's helpful and healing for you, whatever that is.

Whether or not it's just journaling or just breathing, but giving yourself something in the morning that's just you-time is really going to help set you up for success. 

 

2. Finding a community

Second, I would say if you are traveling long-term, like we are, I really find that I'm missing a sense of community. I'm missing being able to speak with people that speak my language because I'm not great at the languages that we're in these countries of. 

And so, finding some sort of sense of community, whether or not that's like a local church congregation you can find or a local homeschooling Facebook group. I joined some of those when we got here to Italy, which is where I am right now as I'm recording this podcast. 

You can even look up community activities. So, we found this one the other day that was like just happening in a little town around Rome; and it was just kind of like put on by the town or whatever, just like some local small thing for kids. 

So, you can look for things like that to kind of go and meet people. You can look for either expat or homeschooling communities in that area, see if you can find people that speak your same language-ish. Whatever you can do to kind of add to that sense of community. 

You can connect with people from back home through things like Marco Polo or Instagram to kind of feel that sense of community. 

I also like to-- I feel like there's a feeling that comes when I feel grounded, when I feel centered, when I feel safe and when I feel secure and when I feel connected to my community. And so, even when you're doing your visualization in the morning, imagine what that would feel like.

So, even if you don't have access to any of these things, if you're like, 'No, I'm in the middle of the wild and I literally cannot join any Facebook groups or do anything,' what would that sense of safety and security and community feel like in your body? And then, how can you spread that feeling throughout your body? 

And maybe there's just little changes or things that you're going to do differently throughout the day because you are feeling that sense of community, anyways, even though you're not maybe physically present with your community. 

 

3. Take breaks

Another one I'm going to add on here is to take breaks. This is really tricky if you're traveling solo. So, you're going to have to look into something like a babysitting service; maybe you have an older child that can stay home and babysit. Maybe you can just give yourself a break by like, 'I'm not going to get any work done tonight when the kids go to bed.'

 

(a) Make time for you each day

'I'm just going to do something for me. I'm just going to sit and watch a movie or I'm going to do something at home.' 

If you have older kids like we do and you're in a area where you feel like it's really safe, you can go out and go on a date together. Or you can take turns; you take a kid and somebody else takes a turn taking a kid, whatever it is that feels fun and feels like a break for you.

 

4. Have down days in-between your busy days

Another one I'm going to going to add that's like so good is to make sure that you have down days in between your really busy days. So, one of the reasons I think I was feeling so irritable when we first started is that we did New York and then England and then Athens, and it was really quick; and every single day, when we were in New York, it was like out-and-about all day long.

Like we were averaging between 18 and 22,000 steps every day – every single day that we were there – except one because there was a crazy flood, and that one day was really needed. But I think we could have added in a lot more just chill, relaxing days. 

Unfortunately, in New York, hotels are really small. There's not really a lot of open space where you can just like hang out and do nothing. And so, it does kind of just lend itself to a lot more hustle and bustle. 

And then by the time we got to England, we had some sick people. So, we spent a lot of time just dealing with like, how do we find ways to help them feel better so that we can get on the flight again? And we were dealing with jet lag and all of that. And so, that was a little bit tricky.

And driving on the opposite side of the road ended up being a lot more tricky than we thought it was going to be. We had this giant like 12-seater van, and the roads there are very small; and so, everything was pretty tricky when we were over there. And then we went straight to Athens; again, just for a few days. 

So, I think it was the speed and intensity with which we were doing things that really added to that dysregulation for me. And now that we're in places for a month at a time, it's easier for me to kind of just slow down and to not feel like, 'Okay, we have to just make the most out of every day. We can just have days that are just down days.'

Like today, we went around, walked around for a couple of hours…we spent some time at the house, we did some homeschooling in the morning for a couple of hours and then now I'm getting a few hours of work done this afternoon. And so, not every day has to be go, go, go. And in fact, I think it helps you enjoy the days that are go, go, go when you have days that aren't.

 

And so, some things that have been helpful for us to have is we got everybody Kindles before we left; and my youngest got a Yoto, which is kind of like a audiobook instead of an e-reader…it like reads books to you – really simple, super cool. And she's been really liking that also. 

So, we always have something we can do, but we are definitely missing our regular library. We love-- We love going to the library. Every week, we do that back home. And so, finding ways to homeschool has been trickier. We've definitely had to do a lot more like just museums and historical sites, and learning about where we're going and what we're doing and where we have been…than book learning that we do more.

 

Okay, so I said take breaks, carve out time for you each day long-term, building that sense of community, having down days in between.

 

5. Be flexible

And this is probably going to be number one I would say, is flexibility. I feel like the reason why things were so hard for me-- And this is what I uncovered in my morning journaling practice was like, what's really so hard about this? Like, why do I feel just irritated and agitated and like out of sorts every day? 

And what came up for me was this level of like, I had this idea of how today was going to go. Like I planned this and this and this and this, and then it didn't go that way. A train broke down or we got pickpocketed or a kid was sick, or we went there and it was closed or whatever. Like there were so many things that would go not the way that I thought they were going to. 

There's this concept called prediction error, where a kid freaks out because they really think when they wake up in the morning…something's going to be a certain way and then it's not, and that's really hard for them. That's also really hard for us as adults. 

And I don't think I really realized how difficult it was for me when I had this idea of how I wanted things to go and then it didn't go that way. There's this one area in New York that I've wanted to go to; it's called The Cloisters. It's a museum by The Met, and it's like an hour north of-- It's like super north Manhattan, and we've never been able to make it. 

We go to New York often, and we've just never been able to make it because it's so out of the way. And I was like, this is the trip that I'm going to make it. And every day we would try, but the kids would want to go here or there – or would be too far or whatever; whatever happened, it just did not happen. 

And I felt myself getting more and more agitated every day because I was like, I just want to go to The Cloisters. And then it rained; there was this huge flood. We didn't have time the day that we were traveling, and so it just did not work out. 

And so, then fast-forward, the same thing happened when we were going to Rome. I was like, 'You know what? It's fine. I'm just not going to plan anything…we'll just go into Rome and we'll just have fun and we'll just wander around.' 

Well, even just like we're going to have fun and wander around did not work great either because The Colosseum is super packed and busy and we couldn't get tickets, and it started to rain like crazy torrential rain downpour while we're walking and we don't even know where we're going…and there's people everywhere. 

It's still really busy, even though, it's November; and I didn't think it was going to be so busy when we were traveling here. So, there was still definitely some of that prediction error; and still some of that I thought that this was how it was going to be…it's not this way and I am feeling frustrated about that. 

And so, the more that I allowed myself just to kind of dig into; what about this is frustrating me, what am I actually feeling?...like naming the feeling that I'm feeling and allowing myself just to sit and feel it…the more I've been able to process things and release things.

 

And like I said, that guided hypnotherapy session I did on myself was really powerful. I didn't realize it was going to be so powerful. I'm like, I should have done that like a month ago in helping me just to release things.

 

6. Journaling

But then I did a lot of journaling after that too. Like, what came up during that session, what came up afterwards? Like, what is underneath this? Why do I feel like I need this sense of control? Why do I have to plan everything else out? Like, what am I hoping to achieve here? What do I really want our days to look like? And like, why do I want it to be that way? 

And the more that I asked myself those questions, the more clarity I got around really what I want and how I want to be and how I want to show up. And I felt this huge sense of groundedness. 

And the only way I can explain it is like I felt like a tree; I was like this solid energy going through me and down into the ground…feeling supported by the earth, by everything and all of the connections that we all have with each other and with something greater than ourselves. 

And then also like the leaves rustling in the wind, like the flexibility of that; I felt that also. I felt this kind of like back-and-forth flexibility with the centeredness and this groundedness; and that the centeredness and groundedness didn't come from what we were doing or what my plans were or control…that it came internally, that it came from somewhere deeper than myself. And that that was always there to tap into. 

And that this flexibility, this flowing back-and-forth, like the wind rustling in the trees was what I could lean on and what I could lean towards; and that I could go back-and-forth with whatever was planned and not planned, and that it didn't bother me so much that these big things that came up wouldn't be such a bother.

 

And I've noticed that, in general, I'm just feeling more connected to myself, more connected to my children. I already feel like this last week or two has been so much better; and I really prioritized doing things in the morning – doing that morning practice for myself – and then trying to get out of the house at least once a day, especially on those down days because I think it's really helpful for my own emotional health and for my kids as well just to be out-and-about. 

And I love that the weather is good enough here, that we can do that. Even when it's like drizzly and gray, it's still a lot warmer than what I'm used to back home in November. So, that has been really lovely also. 

 

I hope that is helpful for you. I hope that you found something supportive that can help you on your travels, either short-term or long-term.

 

7. Feel, Breathe, and ask yourself…what do I need?

And the last little tip that I'm going to leave you before I go is this three steps. Number one, feel. Number two, breathe. Number three, what do I need? 

So, number one is; what do I feel? I want you to print off the feelings wheel – coachcrystal.ca/wheel. You can also find the link at the bottom of the show notes, print that off and have that with you. Or you can just have it on your phone or something, take a screenshot of it. 

And just take a minute to just tune into one of my feeling-- Especially if you're feeling a really strong, a really big emotion…see if you can name what that feeling is and just sit with that for a second. 

Number two, breathe. You're going to do that; inhale through your nose, exhale twice as long…out through the mouth, and just sit with that feeling.

We're not going to push it away, we're not going to judge it, we're not going to feel bad that we're feeling irritable; we're just going to allow ourselves to feel it, and we're just going to breathe into that. Going to do that for just a few breaths. 

And number three is we're going to ask ourselves, what do I need? And I mean, what do I really need? Not on the surface level like, I just need to scroll my phone or I just need to eat a bunch of Oreos, that's my surface level needs. But underneath that, what do I really need here? Deep down, what is needed. 

And when I ask myself that, then that can really help tune my body into my intuition and what I need in that moment…and I can give myself what it is that I need. 

So, again, what do I feel? 

Number two, breathe. Just allow yourself to take a few deep breaths just to sit with that emotion. 

And number three, what do I need? 

All right, I hope that was helpful for you and I will see you next week. Next week is our last episode of the season, then we're going to take a break for a few weeks for the winter and have a lovely Christmas, and then we will be back in January with a whole new season for you.

 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me – send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.