Traveling as a Single Mom and Leaving the Kids Behind

Over the past few months, I have made the transition from “married” momma to “single” momma and while everything else changed, the one thing I worried the most about was traveling. This past weekend I had my first extended trip without my kiddos since this transition, while I will openly admit that it was tough, there are things that I did that made it easier, and there are things I did not do that I wish I would have.

Communication with my kiddos while I am away is one thing I cannot live without, as much as I sit here and think do they ever stop jabbering the minute I am away from them I miss their little voices. I prepared for being away by preparing them, both of my kids have Ipod and I have downloaded a few different apps that help us communicate at any given moment. My daughter who is 9 is an expert at texting, she also uses facetime, and she good about sending pictures of her and her brother. Now my son is only 4, so texting is not an option, unless you can de-code what this stands for kjdfahgkjgd…. therefore he has an app called Voxer Walkie Talkie, that runs off of Wifi. He can simply push a button and send mommy a voice message at anytime he feels the need, he can also send me pictures, and sometimes I get text messages through the app from him, but as I said, I cannot de-code them.

Stand-in Mommy, no there is no one that can ever take a mother’s place in a child’s eyes, but it always good to have someone they feel comfortable with and you know can pick up where you left off. I am personally blessed with having my sister pick up the slack for me, she was amazing at remembering schedules even when I forgot to tell her, sending pictures, and doing all the mommy chores while I was away.

Have a written schedule, that stand-in mommy or childcare provider needs to know your schedule down to the exact details, fortunately, my sister has been around enough lately that she has the gist of it. It is not them keeping the schedule as important as just giving the care giver an idea of how the kid’s day goes.

Schedule reminders to remind yourself to check in on the kids, just has my plane took off and I had no cell service I remembered I had forgotten to remind my sister to pick up the kids from school. No worries, she had remembered, but I would have saved myself a lot of fretting on my plane ride home had I remembered to remind her to pick up the kids.

Communicate with their school, let’s face it kids talk, or at least mine do non-stop, so it is best to tell the teachers that you are going to be out of town prior to leaving. I sent notes and talked to each of the kid’s teachers explaining that I would be out of town and who would be picking up the kids on each day. I feel this avoided any chaos and gave the teachers the ability to answer any of the kid’s questions.

Prepare for the worst, just hours before time for me to depart for my trip I was sitting in the doctor’s office with a sick kid. While I wanted to cry, these things just happen, so I had to pull out the backup plan and all was good again.

Have a contact list for everyone involved; here is another area I feel I personally could be stronger in. After returning from my trip and kicking myself in the booty for not being more prepared with a contact list. I created a document that lays out information that might come in handy for while traveling withou