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Get back to the basics for family beach fun.
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I sat on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean this past summer, watching three teenage girls flip through magazines and giggle as they noted, evaluated and discussed every person of the male persuasion who happened to cross their field of vision.
I turned to my sister, who had one wet kid hanging off each arm, and our eyes met in mutual understanding.
“I hate them,” I said.
She nodded as her son wiped his face, smeared with cherry juice, across her midriff.
Remember the days when all you packed for the beach was your teensy-weensy bikini and the latest copy of People magazine?
I do. And those days seem very far away, indeed.
Taking your family on a beach vacation is one of the best things you can do to forge fond memories of summer fun. After all, what’s better than sand, surf and sun? Not to mention the languid afternoon hours, when you’re pleasantly sleepy from the ocean breeze.
But lately, a day at the beach takes as much planning as the invasion of Normandy. Not to mention all that stuff.
Buckets and shovels and water shoes and lunch and sippy cups and cut-up fruit and floaties and blankets and sunscreen … all I can say is thank god we have a mini-van.
Would you believe we actually bought a special cart just to haul all our gear? Or that the cart, while exceedingly helpful, was NOT BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL THE CRAP?
Visit the beach in the late afternoon, as the sun goes down and the crowds clear out.
Don’t pack too much food—the kids will be too busy (and sandy) to eat it—and you’ll just wind up bringing a bunch of spoiled food home with you.
Keep a dry towel in the car to wipe off sandy hands, feet and behinds.
And after all that effort to get the stuff—and the kids—to the water, the kids up and decide that sand is yucky, the water is too cold and that applying sunscreen is a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Multiply this by an entire week at the shore, and by the time your trip is over you need a vacation from your vacation.
Luckily, there are ways to avoid making what should be a fun experience into an argument about who is going to carry the umbrella, or hey, you watch the kid so I can at least eat my sandwich, and no, you may not put that hermit crab in your cousin’s bathing suit!
Jennifer Jacobsen-Wood has lived by and frequently vacationed at Laguna Beach, Calif., and she has a very succinct list of strategies that help her family make the most of their time by the ocean.
One thing that helps her stay sane is making sure the kids are protected from the sun—before they ever set food on the sand.
“Put on sunscreen before you get to the beach, preferably at your hotel so that you avoid the whole ‘the beach is fun, fun, fun! Now stand here for ten minutes while I slather lotion on you’ fiasco,” says the Princeton, Ill., mother. “And you don’t need a lot of gear—sunscreen, a bucket or two and a blanket.”
Wait a minute! For Pete’s sake, you mean I didn’t need to blow my grocery money on a beach cart?
No, says Jacobsen-Wood. Leave the stuff at home. That way, you don’t have to bicker with your husband over who is going to haul everything from the car to the dunes and back again.
“I would try to fit everything into one backpack, per adult. That way, hands are free to corral the kids,” she advises. “The kids find so many ways to entertain themselves at the beach—diving in the waves, digging for sand crabs, writing in the sand—that you really don’t need any fancy toys.”
One thing you do need at the beach is vigilance. Kids and water can be a deadly mix, and parents can often be lulled into a false sense of security at the seashore.
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