On holiday with grandparents or another family: organising without friction

Holidays with grandparents or a friend's family have clear advantages: more adults for the children, playmates for the kids, shared costs, sometimes a little free time for the couple. They also have a well-known risk: coming home with a strained relationship over money, timings or who did the washing-up.

Almost all tensions come from unspoken expectations. The fix is to speak them beforehand.

Before leaving: the five questions

A half-hour conversation, before booking, about:

1. Money: what's shared and how — accommodation, groceries, fuel, restaurants, activities. Per family or per person? Do children count?
2. Kitchen and house: who cooks, who shops, who tidies. In turns, by family, by day?
3. Rhythms: meal times, children's naps, wake-ups. The 7am riser and the 10am riser have to live together.
4. Time together and apart: everything together, or some days each family on its own?
5. Rules with the children: screens, sweets, bedtimes. Who decides about other people's children? Usually: nobody, except for safety.

Write the answers in a note shared with whoever's organising. It looks excessive; it's what will prevent the day-four arguments.

With grandparents

Holidays with grandparents have their own dynamics:

• Help yes, full-time babysitting no: agree in advance how much the grandparents want to look after the grandchildren, without assuming
• Their habits: timings, food, need for rest
• Parents' rules still apply on holiday, with some flexibility: it's the grandparents' holiday too
• Health: if grandparents have treatments or particular needs, organise them like the children's

Shared costs, with clear accounts

Shared holiday costs are many and small, and everyone mainly remembers the ones they paid. Two rules:

• every shared cost gets noted immediately, with who paid
• settling up happens at the end, not item by item

In KidBox expenses every entry records who paid. Other families aren't part of your family in the app, so they don't see your expenses: at settling up, share the summary of the common items. More in the family holiday budget.

Day-to-day organisation

• A short evening meeting about the next day: trip, timings, who cooks
• One chat for holiday logistics with the other adults, and the family chat for your own things
• A single grocery list for the house: whoever goes to the supermarket buys that

When something goes wrong

Tension on holiday is better handled straight away and in private, calmly, than stored up until it explodes. And every family has the right to an afternoon to itself without explaining why.

In short

Five questions before leaving — money, house, rhythms, time together, rules with children — with the answers written down. With grandparents, help agreed rather than assumed. Shared costs noted immediately and settled at the end, a short evening meeting and everyone's right to some time alone. You'll come back tired, as from any holiday. But still friends.