Our "20 second" plan is working!

We are now breaking up our trip by laying it out like this:

We have one or two travel days maximum followed by a stay of four days or longer and it seems to be working out much better.  If we have to do back to back travel days then we try to break up the days with a long stop at a store, national monument or a park to let all of us breath for a bit.  We rarely get out of a location before noon so we travel all afternoon and into the early evening.  Our plans now have been to go a maximum of 300 miles a day which equates to about five or six hours a day.  The terrain dictates our speed and it is really comfortable to stay around 60 mph.  The RV is doing just fine under this new plan too, so all is well and we are going to stick to it.

Erica and I seem to be most relaxed when we have this type of schedule too.  The transition is smoothing out and our happiness is shining through more.  Change is never easy but man this was a big one! We have had not so glorious moments in the RV when the kids got really stir crazy and demanding.  How do we as parents keep the peace and make sure we lead by example? Talking to my cousin Jason yesterday he said something that summed it up perfectly, "we always have to think 20 seconds ahead of the situation".  Sounds so simple!  Erica came up with a great "20 second" plan.  She is implementing her learning from one of the parents on the facebook groups we are on called Fulltime Families. She reads a book to them on travel days.  It is so simple and the kids have responded really well to it. Yes it takes her involvement and could keep her committed for an hour or two depending on the attention span of the kids and strength of the book content.  She has read three age appropriate books to them in the last week and I have enjoyed listening to her as I drive.  I hope this will pay dividends in their reading comprehension and keep them on track as we prepare to tackle homeschooling in the fall.

The reading is also taking the place of time that used to be spent on the kids using their kindles on travel days.  We have decided to remove the tablets from the kids again due to their behavior before, during and after their use (They didn't have them all last year due to behavior and we told them all year that we would give them back for our trip). I have to say that it has been the most difficult to handle Boyd's choices in behavior over Blythe's due to his personality being so much more impulsive.  What we found was that he would get off the tablet and immediately start treating Blythe badly by poking and prodding at her.  It was almost as though he was still in a game in his own head and he was having trouble regulating back down to a normal behavior.  I had epiphanies of my childhood, playing video games and then immediately trying to play Street Fighter or Mario Brothers on my unsuspecting brother.  I told Erica, I can't remember how many people I performed the "Karate Kid" on that I probably should apologise to today.  No doubt that what our kids take in from technology affects them and right now it is becoming a point of pain for our family as a whole so we will do without for a while and try again later.  I have to say that the last two days have already been tremendously better and even after I had a long heart to heart with Boyd about our decision he understood and flat out agreed with me that he still plays whatever game he turns off on the tablet with his unaware sister.  It was still sad to lose his tablet but that's life and he has moved on. We also must add that we don't miss the non-stop bartering and persistent begging that would prelude their tablet time.  It drives Erica and I to poor behavior choices and has literally made us crazy at times.  Blythe was not so understanding since she has not had near the meltdowns and behavior issues but she has had her moments too and we talked about making this decision for the whole family's benefit and she is doing ok with it.  We will focus on rewarding their good behavior and her's has been really good the last two days.  Erica softened the blow of taking the tablets away with some really cool new colored pencils too and the kids have been going crazy coloring with them.  

The choice was hard and following through hurts us too.  We long for the quiet times the tablets afford us but honestly avoiding its destruction is worth the change.  Active parenting is hard and exhausting but we will continue to commit to staying involved as best we can and communicate openly with our kids about why we make our decisions and what their roles are in them.  We will continue to use the most powerful three words in the english language, "I am sorry" when we miss our "20 second" planning windows of opportunity and have faith our two wonderfull kids will forgive us.

Peace and Love