Our daughter is 3 years old during this trip. This post is a collection of the valuable, teachable moments that would never have occurred if we simply flew 3 hours rather than drive for 5 days to Spain.

1. The consequences of unbuckling the seat belt in-drive.

Driving somewhere in Spain, I noticed something odd in my peripheral vision: my daughter had gotten out of her child seat in our van!

She was trying to pick up the book she had dropped earlier.

I rarely raise my voice at her, but this time I did so instinctively because it was too important a point not to be made loudly.

“NEVER remove your seat belt yourself when we’re still driving!”

She broke down in tears right away. It’s one of genuine cries that come back even after they seem to have gone away.

When we stopped minutes later, before hugging her, I squat next to her and explain what could have happened.

I tell her the horrific story of the man that I witnessed die before my eyes for not wearing a seat belt. I detail how blood came out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. How far his body was found from his lorry and how his body convulsed on the floor.

I tell her that the look in his eyes in his final moments said everything: “what have I done?”

The next day, when we arrived at our destination, she said to me, “Daddy, look, I did not remove my seat belt.”

2. Refusing to eat unhealthy breakfasts.

I can never predict what I’ll get in a hotel breakfast. One of the hotels this time served a platter of processed foods:

• 3 spreads: peach jam, strawberry jam, Nutella
• 2 packets of bread biscuits
• 1 packet of muffin
• Bottle of processed orange juice
• 2 slices of toasted white bread

There was literally nothing fresh on the plate!

At 3 years old, our daughter wouldn’t mind this, of course, because she didn’t know about the dangers that lurk in these foods.

So, naturally, she picked something from the plate. The packaged muffin.

At this moment, we asked her to pause and look at what’s on the plates in front of us. We explained why it was an unhealthy breakfast (everything is processed, nothing is fresh, everything is too sweet).

I’d be lying if I said that she got it right away.

But within a minute, we managed to persuade her to stop eating by promising a fresh muffin from the nearby bakery. Yes, it would also be sweet, but it would not contain preservatives, stabilisers, and may contain fresh fruits.

A bad hotel breakfast gave us the chance to teach her what a bad breakfast looks like and what she can do about it.

3. Normalising independence when sleeping.

We slept in a total of 4 hotels on the way to Spain and each had a different bed configuration.

One of the nights we got a triple room with a double bed and a single bed.

I could have slept on the single (driver’s sleep priority) and my daughter could have slept with my wife on the double.

But my wife and I decided to try and ask her if she wanted to sleep alone on the single.

She didn’t refuse.

And to our surprise, after we’d brushed our teeth, she crawled into the single bed and pulled the sheet over herself. We said good night and slept that way that night.

I woke up feeling like she had grown a little more independence.

4. Developing a sense of distance and scale of the world.

We had over 2000 km that we needed to drive in this pilgrimage from Germany to Spain.

How far is that? Well, ask an adult and he’ll respond, 2000 km! Duh!

How far does it feel, though?

It’s said that astronauts who have seen Earth from space are never the same when they return. Part of it is due to the revelation of the sense of scale of things.

Driving for 5 days and 4 nights before reaching Spain has helped our daughter get a feel for how big Earth is.

How I know: in the last 3 days when we were driving in Spain, she kept asking, “Why are we still driving? We’re already in Spain!”

5. Gracefully handling a setback at a restaurant with creativity.

One night after check-in, we walked to an Italian restaurant that we found on Google Maps.

We tell the waiter, a table for 2 and a half, please.

She asks if we made a reservation. We say no. She shakes her head and says, “sorry, we’re full tonight.”

To my wife’s credit, she immediately turns the situation around and asks, “Do you have pizza? Can we do takeout?”

Turns out, yes, they did pizza takeouts.

So I squat down and explain the situation to our daughter. The place is full. There exists this concept of reservations, so even though there seemed to be empty tables, people were expected to take them soon. And how this meant that we wouldn’t be eating here tonight.

Then I point at her mum and said, “But mum’s got a great idea. We’ll buy pizza and enjoy it in our own hotel room.”

“How does that sound?”

“Good!”

It was cold outside, so when our pizza was handed over, we wrapped it with my scarf. We walked 5 minutes back to our budget hotel and then we sat, shoulder to shoulder, at the foot of our bed, cracked open the pizza box, and each took a slice.

I think we taught her 2 things here: how to think outside the box (or inside?), and how joy comes from who we do things with, not where we do them at.

6. Learning how Bollywood sounds and moves.

We ate at an Indian restaurant in Villareal, Spain.

The young man there proudly put on Bollywood music on the speakers, which was also playing on YouTube on the TV.

We then witnessed our daughter grooving to the music. She shook her little body left, right, forward, and backward. It was a night to remember.

It was also the night she discovered a new genre of music and dance moves.

7. Understanding bad things can be good in some contexts.

I’m the sole driver in our family. So, as insurance, I brought 2 cans of Monster energy drinks with me on this trip.

I didn’t think much about this, but I now realise that this presented a moment to teach a useful idea to her: bad and good depends on context.

Monster energy drinks contain things that aren’t good for you. If not taurine (or one of the hard to read names on the label), then at least the sugar. If not sugar, then at least the artificial sweeteners.

I explain it’s unhealthy. But I then explain that sometimes I get sleepy when I drive for many hours, and drinking a bit of of this stuff keeps me awake.

In other words, bad things can sometimes be good. It depends on the situation!

8. Learning how people can turn a bad situation around through kindness.

As we drove through Lyon, traffic stood still as there was an emergency. One, two, three emergency vehicles started trying to make their way through the buildup on the two-lane road to get to the scene ahead.

The third, an ambulance, squeezes between our van and another too hastily and fails to do so cleanly. His right wing mirror slams into my left wing mirror. The sound of impact startles us and bends my mirror backwards.

I look at the passenger in the car next to me and gesture with a “WTF” (5 fingers together pointing up). She purses her lips and nods in empathy.

Charlotte asks, “What?? What happened?”

“An ambulance tried to squeeze through traffic too quickly and knocked onto our wing mirror.”

“And then he just drove on!”

I pause, knowing this was a teachable moment, and say, “But I understand why he drove off. They need to go fast so they can save lives up ahead. He did the right thing. The problem isn’t him, it’s the way this road is designed without emergency lanes.”

I thought that was the teachable moment so I move on to the matter at hand: checking the damage.

I wind down the window. Before sticking my arm out to attempt to fix the mirror, I check if there’s a fourth vehicle that might squash my hand if I did.

Clear. I pull the wing mirror toward me and it clicks right back in place.

Miraculously there was no damage done.

A few minutes later, as traffic eased and we started driving again, a police van rang his siren behind us. I signal my hazard light and slow down. What now?

Two French policemen then speaks gibberish to me. Something something something. I say I don’t speak French.

They then point at my wing mirror and say, “OK?”

I touch it and say, “Yeah, OK. No problem.”

They smile. The driver says loudly, twice, “SORRY!”

“It’s okay!” I shout back, giving him a thumbs up, and they drive off.

I turn sideways so Charlotte can see my face.

“See that, Charlotte? That’s what we should all do.”

“Just now they knocked onto our van and just drove away, because they had to. Saving lives is more important than breaking the van.”

“But once they had the chance, they caught up to us to check if our van was damaged. They are being responsible for their mistake.”

Turns out, this was the teachable moment. It’s about taking responsibility for our actions.

We certainly would have missed this had we flown over instead of drove through France.

9. Being safe home alone.

While we ate pizzas one night in our budget hotel, I decided to quiz Charlotte about safety:

“If someone was outside this room and knocked on the door, and he sounds just like daddy and says he is daddy, would you open the door?”

She thinks about this for a few seconds. Then, she replies satisfactorily: “No, I won’t open it.”

“If there is a peep hole in the door, I will look into it first.”

“Why?”

“Because I cannot see if it’s daddy or not and I must see.”

We’d taught her this at home, and she’s repeating the procedure exactly. Fantastic.

Two days later, in another hotel, I needed to go out to get something from the van. My wife thought it’d be funny and tells me a code word. “Say ‘funny buttocks’ and I’ll let you in.”

I leave, get our pillows, and come back.

I knock on the door and hear her say, “funny?”

To which I reply, “buttocks!”

My wife opens the door and right there standing in the way is Charlotte with a wide grin on her face.

Chuckles… “Why?” … chuckles…

“Daddy and mama used a code word! There’s no peep hole on the door here either, so just like you, mama needed to find a way to know that it really was daddy outside before opening the door.”

At home we have more than one set of keys. Because this hotel only issued one, Charlotte learned yet another way to authenticate!

10. Exploring gymnastics between hotel beds.

Where else would we get two beds put slightly apart such that it would look instantly like a playground to a toddler?

Charlotte started by jumping across. Then she tried walking across. And eventually she did splits and planks. A free opportunity to explore gymnastics.