It’s a timeless childhood memory: a family road trip, kids gazing out the window, spotting something exciting—a quirky roadside attraction, a billboard promising adventure. They ask, they plead: “Can we stop?” And what do parents so often say? “No.”
Bill Bryson captures this whole routine in The Lost Continent, his classic book about road-tripping across America. His father, like so many others, would resist: “It’s too expensive,” “It’s out of the way,” “You haven’t behaved well enough.”And yet, according to Bryson, the answer almost always turned into a yes eventually. “I never understood why he didn’t just accede to our demands at the outset,” he writes, “and save himself thirty minutes of anguish.”
How much of parenting is exactly this? The arguing. The criticism. The resistance. Does it ever truly win the day? Hardly ever. But the residue of that negativity, of that conflict, it remains. We all remember those pointless fights we had with our parents…sometimes it feels more memorable than the actual experiences we ended up getting anyway. We remember that Mom and Dad didn’t seem fun. We remember having to beg. We remember the tears.
It’s a healthy reminder that not everything needs to be a battle. As parents, we can get better at picking our moments. If it doesn’t truly matter, if it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme, why not just say yes upfront? Why make it harder on everyone?
This doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It’s not about always doing what your kids want. It’s about being quicker to embrace opportunities for fun, spontaneity, and connection when the stakes are low. Save the “no” for when it’s really needed, for when it truly matters. Avoid the long, drawn-out struggles over things that, deep down, you know you’ll probably agree to in the end. Spare yourself and your kids the unnecessary conflict, and instead, create more space for laughter, adventure, and memories that aren’t weighed down by the tension of getting there.
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