But basically our parenting was based on PREVENTING conflicts rather than trying to resolve them with a variety of less than successful tactics.

Whatever your parenting style, try to avoid some of the discipline/conflicts with children. One good example is toy clutter. I built this Automatic toy cabinet to avoid having the toys spread all over in the first place. This avoids the confrontation and lets us spend our time interacting on more constructive activities.

What do you think?

I think that families do best making decisions that work for them and only you can know that, but I also can relate to second guessing when I thought I’d be ready to leave my children. After my first we were planning on going to a wedding across the country and would be gone for at least 3 days. When I was pregnant I thought, “No problem, baby will be six months old, grandma will be taking care of him. Perfect.” As the wedding approached I started really questioning it and as it came closer I realized I wasn’t comfortable with it at all. I know some people do and that works for them, but for me, I have a hard time leaving a child who does not understand that I will be coming back. It’s one thing to be gone for a few hours, a day or even overnight, but to be continually gone without understanding was troubling to me.

I think if I wasn’t bfing and my kids had a good relationship with grandparents I would love to consider a long weekend away with the hubby. 7-10 days? That seems like a lot.

Good luck making your decision!

Personally, I wouldn’t do it. My son is five now and I think I would feel okay leaving him for a few days with my parents, but up until now I didn’t think that he/we were ready for that long a separation. He has been away from me for a few days and my husband for a couple of weeks (and he was really acting out by the end of my husband’s trip), but never from both of us at the same time.

Would it be possible to take the grandparents with you? We have taken my mom and/or both of my parents with us on vacation several times. It gives us extra hands to help with the kids and built in trusted babysitters if we do want to spend a day or an evening alone, without having to spend a significant amount of time away from our kids.

My wife and I will be celebrating our 5-year anniversary in June, and at that time our twin girls will be about 18 months old. We’re considering a 7-10 day vacation abroad (since we haven’t really been anywhere since our honeymoon) but now that it’s approaching we’re starting to feel guilty about leaving the girls with grandparents. They’ve spent the day with them before, and mom has been away from them for 4 days at a time before (although never both of us), and they’ve been fine, but we’re still worried. We aren’t breast feeding and they don’t exhibit signs of separation anxiety. I’ve looked for articles or educated opinions on whether there’s any science that says this is a good idea (“worthwhile to allow them to learn to trust others, important to nurture your marriage, etc.”) or a bad idea (“this is a critical age for their development, don’t want to traumatize them, etc.”) but have found few of either.

Suggestions or opinions?

But…when we do travel, I tend to be more of the be-a-kid-again type, or taking advantage of handy relatives and relaxing. I love that!

I do just want to put in another word for the parents of any babies you hear screaming in hotels. We’re right now dealing with nightmares each night that have our little guy up and screaming for a couple hours. I breastfeed, we turn on lights, we walk, we watch videos, we console — but it’s a noisy couple hours, and I feel bad for our condo neighbors. If we were in a hotel with even thinner walls — yowch. So, while I agree that many parents may be doing CIO on vacation, some might just not be able to find anything that works, especially if the kid is overexhausted from the vacation, as our kid always gets (see above for not wanting to travel with him!).

Which is really fine. Traveling with little kids is too exhausting to be “fun,” and they are mostly not going to be impressed with the whole thing anyway.

Me and my husband would probably fall into the bug-me-not school, though. (well, okay, I would fall into that school. He’s the good parent, the one who builds sand castles and wrestles and stuff.)

Let ‘em fight and eat sand and experience a near-drowning or two, I say. AND STOP BUGGING YOUR SISTER!!

But then, I am NOT an advocate of CIO for any reason, and yet, I’ve been “that parent” with the hysterical 18 mos old on a plane. After it was delayed for several hours. After it then sat, loaded, on the runway, for several more, well past regular bedtime. Without offer of food or water, and we’d run out of snacks. The dirty looks we got from other people did NOT help (hey, at that point, “I* wanted to cry too!) And thank goodness, I was nursing, so I did that, but frankly, as someone who had never liked nursing in public and had no idea I’d nurse past 6 mos, let alone to (eventually) 2.5 years, it was actually a big deal for me. Shouldn’t have been, but was.

Oh yeah, and we’re probably helicopter-ish parents

Sorry. I didn’t realize that your posting on your style as a parent on vacation was in the comments and not a separate post.