Take the Children

Nobody deserves a summer's vacation in Europe more than the parents of young children. But what to do with the children? The increasingly popular solution: take them along.

The most articulate spokesman for this solution is a pretty young woman named Leila Hadley, whose four children (Arthur, 18, Victoria, 10, Matthew, 8, Caroline, 4), plus a peripatetic geologist husband and an inborn wanderlust provided the fieldwork for her new, four-volume guidebook, How to Travel with Children in Europe.

Miracle Flight Diet. For one thing, says Miss Hadley, "more unusual, unexpected and downright pleasant things happen when you travel with your children than when you travel alone. Children have a way of making friends unselfconsciously both for themselves and for you. . . . People everywhere go out of their way to be helpful and kind to families with children." Traveling together also produces the treasure of the shared experience. And for those experiences you don't want to share with the small fry, Mother Hadley waxes ecstatic over Europe's part-time-child-care facilities. "Accustomed to baby sitters who spend more time watching television than the children, it is one of the small joys of traveling abroad to be greeted by ... baby sitters who play with your children, laugh with your children, and watch them with a constancy and affection that I've seldom seen duplicated by part-time help in America."

For parents who have decided to give it a try, Author Hadley bristles with travel tips, both obvious and esoteric.

> On clothes: "In every large city in Europe, the mode of dress is decidedly more formal and conservative than in our casual and easygoing U.S.A. Girls are dressed to look like girls and boys to look like boys."

> On trains: "The attention span of children for scenery is appallingly short." They like the trains themselves--for eating, sleeping, exploring. "Therefore, take advantage of train travel for long, overnight journeys."

> On planes: "A child throwing up is an unpleasant circumstance," to forestall which Traveler Hadley has discovered what she calls a "miracle preflight diet: Six hours before the flight, a little toast, coffee, tea or one-half glass of milk, and some tinned peaches with heavy syrup; 4 hours before the flight, 8 to 16 ounces of any of the calorie-rich reducing liquids." > On bidets: "It's no good to say 'It's not a drinking fountain,' because your child will still want to know what it is. There's no use your giving your child a purposely wrong answer. 'It's a foot bath' can only lead to future embarrassment, misinterpretation and general confusion. As far as I know, there is no evasive answer. Just say it's a bottom washer-offer."

Shocks & Surprises. Mother Hadley is not one for insulating young minds from un-American sights and sounds that may seem somewhat shocking. The sheer gruesomeness of a torture chamber, she feels, may inspire children with more respect for and curiosity about history's tortured. She feels much the same way about bullfights. She advises parents to explain the mythological and historical background of bullfighting to any children "capable of understanding and reason" and then take them to a major corrida. "Whether your children are horrified or think it enormously exciting, I think, in light of its past history and present pageantry, a bullfight is a fine addition to a child's education, and I can't imagine going to Spain and not seeing one."

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