In 1985, I arranged a summer-long trip through Europe with three teenagers \u2014 my son and daughter and her friend.\u00a0I had two key goals for the trip \u2014 no wait, three.\u00a0The first was to spend quality time with my kids before they flew the coop, the second was to introduce them to the wonderful world beyond Leesburg, and the third was to teach them responsibility and independence.\u00a0 For the most part, it worked out quite nicely. My son, Ryan & I, paired up, as did the girls, so two could stay with the luggage while the others scouted for hotels, restaurants, or bathrooms.\u00a0 Rarely was anyone alone, but it did happen from time to time \u2014 after all, they were responsible, independent semi-adults.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Save one occasion in Germany while taking the rail from someplace to someplace else.\u00a0 Oh, I forgot to mention that the girls had elephant-sized suitcases, Ryan had a big backpack, and I had\u2026I can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 All this to say, getting on and off trains was an ordeal involving someone on the train and someone hauling suitcases up the steps, then everyone hopping on before the train pulls out of the station.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 Except for this one time when, as we pulled away, I looked out the window to see little Ryan standing there just watching.\u00a0 \u00a0Gulp<\/em>.\u00a0 My heart jumped into my throat.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 The girls and I, including our luggage, were headed off, leaving behind my little boy (notice he was a responsible, independent semi-adult, and in just a split moment he reverted back to my little boy).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Ryan remembered the rule, and I did too:\u00a0when separated from the group, go back to the place where you last made eye contact,\u00a0<\/em>and I knew exactly where Ryan and I made eye contact\u2014he on the platform and I on the train!\u00a0 So, at the next stop, I gathered up the girls and the luggage, and we got off the train.\u00a0 Leaving them with strict instructions, I boarded the very next train back one-stop, collected Ryan, and returned to the girls.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Lesson:\u00a0\u00a0When separated from the group, go back to the place where you last made eye contact and stay put.<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1985, I arranged a summer-long trip through Europe with three teenagers \u2014 my son and daughter and her friend.\u00a0I had two key goals for the trip \u2014 no wait, three.\u00a0The first was to spend quality time with my kids before they flew the coop, the second was to introduce them to the wonderful world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":818,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freedomtravelllc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}