We left our 7- and 9-year-old kids alone while we went out to dinner in a foreign country. It was one of the best decisions we've made.

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It was the summer of 2022 when my family of four descended, via bus and train, from the relatively temperate and isolated peaks of Switzerland into a hot, crowded, Italian summer. My Pacific Northwest children, then 7 and 9, were not built to handle heat. When I pulled out my camera on a crowded ferry my daughter let her head loll back and moaned, "Document my misery!"