Baggage, budgets and boundaries: How to plan a smooth family reunion
For families long separated by pandemic travel restrictions, the time is nigh for a reunion. A multigenerational vacation is a way to reconnect while remaining in a relatively safe family pod.
Multigenerational vacations were already trending pre-pandemic, says Dan Austin, who with his family runs Austin Adventures, a group and custom travel outfitter. In recent months, he says, “we’ve been inundated.” Austin, his wife and their adult children recently reunited in Baja California. “Like ours, many families have been cooped up and separated for 14 months, and really just want to enjoy some family time. People are eager to travel, but they still want to travel in their own bubble.”
But what if a week with your extended family, surrounded by your needy parents, whiny toddler nephew or crude-joke-telling brother-in-law sounds like a trip to hell? Duty may obligate you to take a multigenerational vacation, but travel experts and family therapists say that a healthy dose of planning can keep it from being a stressful, miserable experience.
Family reunion trips, says child psychiatrist and family therapist Maurizio Andolfi, are a reaction to the closures and imposed distancing of the past year, and also a celebration that (hopefully) everyone, especially elderly family members, survived the pandemic. But even for happy families, he says, “all that togetherness is pleasurable at first, but after a day or so, it might feel claustrophobic.”
“No family is perfect,” Andolfi says. “They all have their unfinished business.” Factor in divorces, stepparents, addictions, old rifts and childhood trauma, and you have got the makings for some major triggering. “You might be 50 years old,” he says, “but you may recreate the old mechanism of a kid in the middle of a family conflict. It’s easy to put on the clothes of your 11-yearold self when you’re confronted with the conflicts you’d buried or forgotten.”
“There’s a gravity to thinking that ‘because we’re a family, everything will be easy’,” says Matt Lundquist, psychotherapist and clinical director at Tribeca Therapy in New York City. “Vacations are fun and relaxing in proportion to how much you work at them.” And that includes not just the practical work of planning accommodations and activities, but in preparing ahead of time for the inherent emotional challenges of a multigenerational trip.
Lundquist says self-preservational planning means talking about potential conflicts ahead of time. Maybe the elephant in the room is a years-old argument between two family members, where there is still a great deal of resentment. “It might be necessary to talk in advance and name this tension,” Lundquist says, “and to say to each of the warring parties, ‘We look forward to seeing you, but don’t fight with your stepbrother.’ “
If you’re the one who is at the center of an unresolved conflict, or if you anticipate that a family member — an older sister, for example — may intentionally or unintentionally trigger unpleasant memories, emotions or reactions, Lundquist says to line up allies ahead of time.
“Talk with someone on the trip who knows how your sister can push your buttons,” he says. “Agree in advance that they’ll pull you aside, squeeze your hand under the table, and just be your support.” If you can align with someone who gets along with both of you, they may be able to serve as an intermediary peacekeeper — at least long enough to get you through the week. “The objective is to minimize conflict,” he says.
Andolfi says that if possible, give a wide berth to those family members who create or trigger conflict. If that means positioning yourself at the opposite end of the picnic table — ideally a long table — so be it. “It’s OK to put up some individual defenses,” he says, “and decide to communicate from a certain distance.”
Lundquist and Andolfi both say that a family vacation itinerary should include breaks from one another. “If you’re all spending several days together, then it’s OK to split off a few times,” Lundquist says. “And if it’s talked about in advance, it plays less like you’re avoiding your family and more like, ‘We’re having a blast but now we want to go off on our own for a while.”
Andolfi stresses that family matriarchs and patriarchs need to be part of the discussion, too. “There may be a dominant figure, like a father who was important during his career or was used to commanding lots of employees and wants to do the same with his family,” he says, “or a mother who gets her feelings hurt because her children want to spend time by themselves.” It’s best to prepare them ahead of time that everyone is going to choose their own levels of space and privacy.