How old were your kids when you took your first vacation without them?

[Anonymous]

1.5 and 3.5 and we were gone for 8 days. My parents came to our house to stay with them and when we got back, my mom kindly told me it was too long our kids to be without us. The kids did great until about day 5, when they (especially the youngest one) became very weepy and started acting unlike themselves. While the kids have long forgotten about our absence, I don't think we'll leave them for longer than 4-5 days again until they're older.

I should also add that in addition to this trip, we try to take several 1-2 night mini-vacations a year. We'll either go to a B&B nearby or sometimes just stay in a hotel in town. The kids have never had any problems with these, even when they were really young.

[Anonymous]

We're planning our first night away together in August and our daughter is 4. We've been away separately many times though for multiple nights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: This makes me feel better...MIL keeps pressuring me to go out of town for the weekend with DH and let her watch DS, who is only 6 weeks old. She's been insinuating that I am a helicopter parent/too overprotective for not being comfortable with it and I was starting to think that maybe I was...

Your MIL is a nut. At 6wks, I was still getting breastfeeding established and trying to figure out what my baby's different cries meant. At that point, I still wasn't apart from DD for more than 2hrs max.

I remember all the fun I had spending weeks with my grandparents as a kid, and can't wait for mine to do the same. But not at 6wks. DD is 15mo and we talked about doing an overnight this summer, but I'm not sure DH or I am ready to not be there in the morning. He's gone away on business a few times and hates it, so doesn't want to voluntarily leave her. And I know I'm not.

[Anonymous]

I'm still waiting; DD is 12. I suppose we could have, but we like to vacation together as a family.