‘If I go on holiday alone with my children, I am the brave daddy’ | Family

As a father alone with your children of 4, 12, 15 and 17 years to the Philippines for six weeks? “My environment thought I was crazy,” says Tim van der Vliet (53). “It may seem like hell for most parents, but traveling alone with your children is the best thing there is. Traveling is the only thing that makes you richer.” And that certainly applies to a father with his children, he says.

Tim van der Vliet calls himself a ‘daddy 2.0’. He does his best to be a present, active and relaxed father. Traveling together, without his wife, is an important part of that. “People think it’s very special. When traveling, everyone asks, ‘Where’s mommy?’ When I tell them that she’s just at home, they look at me with wide eyes. My wife just doesn’t like the beach so much, so why should she come along?”

His wife also sometimes travels alone with the children, to Japan where her family lives. But then nobody on the plane asks where Dad is, Tim tells. Or they think ‘how pathetic, a mother alone with all those children’. While I mostly get very nice reactions.”

Nonsense, of course, that it is more special and ‘brave’ for a father to make a long journey with the children, he thinks. “Well, that’s that fixed role pattern”, says Tim. “We wrongly think that mothers do more with the children, care for them more and have more intimate contact with them.”

Especially when traveling, Tim notices that he and his children are getting closer to each other. Like after that one dive where it almost went wrong. He was hyperventilating underwater and should have aborted the dive. Still, he kept going because he didn’t want to disappoint his children. It almost went wrong, until he narrowly managed to save himself ‘with a self-developed breathing technique’. Once safely back on the boat, there was a beautiful moment, he says.

,,The conversation we had then was actually the best part of the whole trip. I explained to my children that I was carried away by peer pressure. Because of my daddy ego. That I always pretend that daddy is cool and okay, but daddy isn’t always okay.” Moments like these with your kids are so important to the band, says Tim. “From our travels, I have learned that I can be vulnerable and confide in my children.”

Marketing consultant and travel journalist Sander Abbes (48) from Egmond aan Zee also sees what traveling can do with the bond between him and his children. The big holidays, such as touring Europe for six months in a motorhome or two months to Australia, are taken with the whole family, including his wife. But there is also always room for quality time with his children one on one. “I will never forget how I snorkeled with Kai at the Great Barrier Reef and a reef shark swam below us. I can still see his eyes double in size behind his mask and he squeezed my hand. It is special to see your children enjoying themselves. I enjoy his reaction to the shark more than the shark itself.”

But making memories doesn’t have to be far from home. Father Sander also finds it important in the Netherlands to travel alone with his children. His son, in particular, loves adventure as much as he does. Stay overnight in nature, paraglide or spend a weekend at Campground Twente, where you can abseil from a control tower. ,,We experienced many beautiful father-son moments that weekend in Twente. That already started in the car when listening to the wrong top 100 music. A song came along with the word horny in it and my son asked me what it meant. That was a good time to explain things to him.”

The four of us would never have had these kinds of conversations, says Sander. ,,The dynamics change when I go out alone with my children. Kai then comes off completely. We are really men among each other then.”

When traveling together, you step out of the daddy role for a while, Tim agrees. “It’s so much fun. You are really exploring together. Moreover, you get to know other sides of yourself. Like the mother role, says Tim. “Suddenly I was walking with my little one in a baby carrier. You are just as much father and mother at the same time.” He therefore advises every father to go on holiday alone with the children. “It’s really not as special or difficult as it seems. You just have to do it!”