Zoe Armstrong, a single parent of a toddler was determined not to let her marital status stop her from travelling so she took herself off to Paris with toddler in tow and she was successful. Read on and be inspired by her will to succeed.
It is written: travelling (alone) with a young child will inevitably lead to trauma.
Turns out that’s bunkum. It’s a far greater strain to have your world shrink suddenly at the point of giving birth than to witness toddler meltdown on the Eurostar*. Even when it’s rammed.
I don’t know how it happened but unexpectedly, any place that could not be reached on foot whilst listlessly hunched over a buggy had begun to seem somewhat strange. It was a bad scene.
The creeping sense of claustrophobia that can come over you as a (solo) parent is an insidious thing. Doing stuff is just harder than it once was. We know that. It takes longer and is more tiring. That’s parenting. But parenting on your own? That is some serious shit.
So you do less. And slowly the shrunken horizons begin to exert their pressure.
It was largely practical really the source of this angst. Essentially, I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t alone lug everything my daughter and I would need for a period longer than about 36 hours**. In my mind I’d made myself dependent on whoever it was that ‘ought’ to occupy the space beside us. And since that space was pretty vacant, we were stuck.
But that’s no way to carry on. No way at all.
So we went to Paris. It’s not Marrakesh, or St Petersburg, or Rio de Janeiro but it moved the logjam.
Still, the proposition of the City of Light with an 18-month-old raised more eyebrows than expected. Ack, people LIVE in Paris with toddlers, it’s not Gotham City. And the French – whilst not the Italians, I grant you – DO like children, they just choose not to indulge them, or their parent(s), with anything so patently bourgeois as a highchair, or a ramp… or a damned lift.
The Metro is no good with a buggy; buses are better. Walking is better still. And the Batobus down the Seine is great. A budget cruise. A hop-on, hop-off floating sardine can of fun. If you are a toddler.
The Eiffel Tower, magnificent from afar, is of course hellish up close. But not so for the very young. Its great height and vast sturdy legs elicit gasps of pleasure from my daughter and she is compelled to find new ways to express her approval. “WOW!” she says. (Her first “wow”. I am very proud.)
And THAT is why, despite all the lugging and bawling and heaving and wailing, travelling with a toddler is really okay. Enthusiasm is contagious.
So we had fun. And I came home with my head re-adjusted.
*Flying is easier than Eurostar – counter-intuitive but true.
**This is actually a reasonable concern – I now resemble a small, tired packhorse when we travel. And I do not like that.
–Zoe Armstrong
Writer Zoe Armstrong lives in Brighton with her young daughter. Together they bumble around, hoping not to make a hash of things. And mostly they enjoy it. Zoe blogs about the terrors and triumphs (and frankly the entertainment value) of raising a toddler by oneself at For the girl . Her blog is a reminder that, despite rumours to the contrary, solo parenting is often happy, funny and really rather ordinary actually.
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A great post. I wish I had been braver travelling with Dot when she was little, and Paris is so beautiful. Now Dot is 11 I have already decided to travel more with her, there is so much to see – it would be an education for her, even worth a few days off school. I was in Marrakech in November and I said I would take her this year at some point… what have I let myself in for! I can’t wait though.
Thanks! Oh you’ll have an amazing time together – sounds fabulous!