Your momma can dance and your daddy can rock and roll
It's no secret New York in February is cold and miserable. So it wasn't a leap of madness for my parents to escape every February to tropical destinations like St. Croix or Nassau. The unique spin on our family trips is my parents divorced when I was four years old, and yet during those newly divorced years we all still wound up at the same resort during February break. Mainly this cooperative parenting arrangement occurred because my parents were college professors and their professional meetings were held during the New York public school system's February break. Our vacations were part family fun and part publish or perish. Good times. No really, they actually were good times!
While we were at whichever resort, my parents worked out visitation with me so each got to be on vacation with their daughter and each of them got non-parent time too. Usually I would spend a couple of nights in my mom's room and then take an elevator or staircase, wander down the hallway and spend the next two nights with my dad. It was't uncommon for me to fly down to an island with one parent, and fly back home with the other. No doubt that, of the three of us, I had the best deal, with the most time at the beach and in the swimming pool!
As I got older though, my parents both wanted to take vacations with me, but not necessarily with one another. They had both moved on to the world of dating, and being older, I was more independent too. The need to co-parent me in the same way they had initially done while on vacation had now shifted. What came next for me was a more traditional arrangement of alternate holidays spent with each parent which resulted in me spending an entire week with either one parent or the other during school breaks.
Granted there is a difference between being a the child of a single parent and being a single parent. I think I have a bit of both. My husband is in the US Military and I've spent a lot of time vacationing sans spouse. During the Gulf War I was known to refer to myself as a “Married Single Parent.” So I like to think I view single parenting through more than just one lens and this in turn gives me some amount of street cred when I tell you, “ I think all inclusive resorts totally rock for single parents and their kids.” Here's why…
Naps, reading a book without interruption, taking a break in parenting, spending a night out with other adults are high on the list of any parent, but single parents have to work doubly hard to check those items off. However, an all inclusive resort with childcare? It's a damn near perfect arrangement for a single parent.
Not only can a single parent grab some z's on the beach, mom can meet other grown-ups for a snack and a mid-day margarita. Want to eat dinner and have a beer with a hot/new someone you just met but you're a dad too? No problem. You can make a dinner reservation for two at 6PM, have your dinner date, later swing by the childcare and pick up your offspring. You and your kids can then head back to the room and dad gets to tuck them in for the night. If you want to continue your adult evening,you can even arrange in-room childcare for about the same price you would pay if you had to get a sitter in your own home town.
Another item on the checklist single parents don't often have is a dance partner. I can't tell you how often I was my mother's “date” because well-intentioned relatives thought the best way to deal with her single parent status was to have me seated with her at weddings and Bar Mitzvah's. It wasn't until I was a teen checking out my own teen singles scene, that I truly understood what a buzz kill it must have been for my mother to be seated with me while eligible bachelors her age were seated with single women of the non parent variety. This means finding a dance partner would require some moves a parent really can make easily with a child at their elbow either. But you know what cures that?
Two words. Crazy Signs…
Seriously.
While I've never been a huge fan of line dancing, due to my own issues with being left handed and mildly dyslexic, it's definitely a way single parents won't be left on the sidelines while everyone else at the party looks coupled up. Another benefit of line dancing? It's an opportunity to do dance with your kids, something Aviva and I are always saying is an inexpensive activity which can be fun for the entire family. (Try it on vacation, and then do it at home in your kitchen!)
But maybe you want to dance with a partner but not get the stink eye from anyone worried you are out to bait their catch. No worry. I saw a willingness to share partners, but not in a “let's all get naked and go back to the room” kind of way. It was far more more like what Aviva and I experienced in Cancun; Something far more community theatre than meat market. For example, our Chief De Village announced a dance contest, but knowing my, um issues, I told Aviva I would sit it out and take pictures of her dancing. And it was mere minutes before a GO was at her side and she was ordering him around like a dance-a-matrix.
There is definitely is debauchery to be had, but it is all kept more on the bawdy side side rather than the naughty side.
We all know kids play “let's pretend” and it's okay for adults have their own form of it called “fantasy.” And if your fantasy is to sit on a beach, with or without your kids, happily meet others and play, this my friend is one way you can have your reality and your fantasy meet as a single parent on vacation with your offspring.
Did you notice there is a Single Parents Forum on the Insider? Follow me over there and contribute your own suggestions, ideas or travel tips. I'll start the ball rolling by posting some tips from my vacations with one of my parents. You'll just have to go over to the forum to see which one…
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