What Travelling To Seoul With My 2-Year-Old Taught Me

It had been a long day of walking around in Seoul, and I was relieved to be back in our serviced apartment for a short breather before our next activity, dinner. On the menu: Sizzling pork belly served right off a griddle. As it inched closer to 6pm, I could almost taste the lettuce wrap, with a generous slather of ssamjang (Korean spicy dipping sauce).

But my two-year-old daughter, bless her heart, was having none of it.

“Don’t want to go out!” she screamed, over and over, her voice filling our room. It seemed she’d very quickly settled into the apartment, calling it our second home, and now refusing to leave. I took a deep breath to centre myself. Recalling all the advice we read on respectful parenting, we tried to acknowledge her emotions (“Yes, I hear you. We’ll go out for a short while, then come back to the hotel.”). My husband tried setting a firmer boundary (“We’re all going out for dinner tonight. You’re coming with us.”).

After 15 minutes, the tantrum escalated. Little Miss was attempting to climb up my legs like she was a koala and I was a tree. Her screams could be heard down the corridor. Gentle parenting wasn’t working, and I wasn’t interested in forcing compliance. My patience was wearing thin, and our travel companions – also our daughter’s godparents – were waiting at our doorway.

“Go with our friends, love,” I told my husband. “Enjoy dinner. At least one of us should have a good time.”

I held my child as I began to silently weep. Who cries over missing a Korean barbecue dinner? I thought. Putting my emotions aside, I asked my now calmer child what she wanted for dinner.

“Fishcake with soup,” she said between sobs, and I had to laugh. All she wanted was a snack from the street-food cart downstairs.

With her dinner procured, I threw in an extra treat: An ear of steamed corn. The tantrum was entirely forgotten. My daughter polished off half a corn cob, and politely asked for two servings of yogurt. Any parent of a toddler knows what a feat this is.

As much as I missed the prospect of juicy meat and adult conversation, I heaved a sigh of relief that my daughter had eaten well without putting up a fight. It was then I wondered: Was it a mistake to take our young one on holiday overseas with us?

The real disappointment

Child-free holidays are, for the most part, straightforward. You can book something on a whim, and do pretty much what you want, when you want. And sleeping in would be normal.

Enter the holiday with kids. Expect the unexpected. Eating somewhere simply because it is convenient, not because it was in the food guide. Leaving the hotel an hour later than planned because – what else – kiddo wanted to wear their own shoes. Meltdown? Because the air-conditioning is one degree too hot – or cold, who knows.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Being able to travel at all is a blessing. And being able to experience new places with my loved ones is a privilege I don’t ever want to take for granted.

Before our trip to Seoul, I thought I’d done enough preparation. Read books to my daughter about taking a plane? Check. Plan age-appropriate activities for everyone in the group? Check. Schedule short shopping breaks? Check.

So what was my disappointment really about?

Despite having prepared myself for tantrums and ensuring everyone has their love tank filled, I could not prevent the inevitable: When plans change. The loss of control, in the end, was what really caused my irritation and sadness.

Why, then, did we bring our child on vacation with us to Seoul? After all, it was not her first vacation with us. We’d taken her to the Netherlands and Spain last year, where she fell ill, woke up multiple times a night, and refused to stay still while travelling in a moving car.

While it’s tempting to focus on the negatives, we loved watching her make sense of the world. She loved watching trams rumble past our Airbnb in Amsterdam, and trying new foods such as olives and gouda. Fresh air and beautiful sights aside, we felt incredibly blessed to gift her the chance to experience autumn, to feel the cold brush your face while sitting on a swing, and to share the joy of discovering new places together.

Most well-meaning friends and family members told us Little Miss wouldn’t remember anything from our travels, but truth be told, she’s surprised us so far. From time to time, she will recount taking a train in Barcelona and seeing ducks in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark. I’m not delusional – and am not hopeful these memories will stay past the age of five. But given how we travelled to those cities more than six months ago, colour me amazed that our daughter can share those memories with us even today.

Other habits struck us, too. During our trip to Europe, Little Miss learnt to put on her shoes on her own (mostly wrongly, but also without adult supervision). She proactively put her dirty socks in a designated laundry bag. And during this trip to Seoul, the concept of payment somehow made the connection in her brain.

“Mama needs her T-Money card,” she’d quip at the train station, referring to the transport card popularly used on the Seoul Metropolitan Subway. Or when I made too long a trip to cosmetics store Olive Young, our daughter would tug at my T-shirt and go, “Mummy pay now!”

I could well be making these progress markers up in my head, if not for an insightful quote by Dr Claudia Luiz, a psychoanalyst. In an article in The Washington Post, she said even though explicit memories of a trip might fade, the importance of “implicit memories”, which are registered in the brain differently, cannot be understated. “Instead of going into a memory bank, they set neuronal pathways that determine our future experiences,” she said.

“While a four-year-old might not remember the glory of a pony ride, they will remember it as an experience that brought everyone joy, which can set the tone for future expectations of pleasure, joy and fulfilment in a new experience,” the article quoted her as saying.

A different view

When most of us travel, it is to take in new experiences, to try new things, and to take a break from our normal routine. Travelling with a child (or many – props to you) is then all of that and more, because everything is new to them.

It’s seeing the world through their eyes, and sometimes it’s a vastly different view.

It then dawned upon me that my daughter’s need for a simple, quiet night in with her favourite street cart snack was her way of experiencing Seoul.

On the second last day of our trip, we’d planned to go strawberry-picking. We – adults included – had a wonderful time, and Little Miss ate her weight in Korean strawberries. My husband lived out his dream of becoming an ice cream man by making strawberry ice cream right in front of us. It was one of the highlights of the entire trip.

And yet, when I asked Little Miss what she enjoyed most about our week away, her response left me floored.

“Spending time with papa, mama, godma, and godpa,” she said.

In the end, for me at least, going away wasn’t about purchasing a year’s worth of skincare, having the best soy-marinated crab, or the magic of watching the petals of cherry blossoms fall oh-so-gracefully to the ground, even if I did achieve all of that, and more.

It was a reminder that parenting, especially while travelling, is a marathon. The prize is not blind compliance, nor is it a sense of accomplishment thanks to obedience. It is the gift of seeing the world through a pair of innocent eyes. Being away with our little one is an opportunity to once again be humbled by the vastness of this world.

Let’s not sweat the small stuff. Unless, of course, your air-conditioning is broken upon your return to Singapore – that’s a different story altogether.

This article was originally published on The Straits Times.