The Improbable Caravan (on children, independence, and designing for the hill they’re actually on)

Eight adults, nine children, and one bike with no gears.

Aug 13, 2026

We got back yesterday, after almost three weeks in the mountains. We’d run away from the deadly heat of the last few weeks, which was waiting for us again this morning, right where we’d left it, and in exchange we got some seriously intense days.

Some days we did the classic thing and went for a walk. Nine children, which sounds like a logistical disaster and was actually the whole trick as they kept each other going, and what they couldn’t do for each other, a gummy bear every five hundred metres did.

But the best days were the ones we spent all on bikes, up and down the valleys. Eight adults, nine children, setting off every morning like the least convincing caravan you have ever seen.

Every so often I ask myself why I make my life this complicated. Then I remember we were up there with three other families who’d decided to complicate theirs in exactly the same way, so there must be a good reason for it.

Here’s what it looked like for our family:

I had an e-bike and i dragged double trailer for the twins
my husband had also an e-bike with a tow rope for our eldest
a 20-inch bike for our eldest, mostly his own engine now, with a tow bar we clipped on for the climbs that went on too long, when being pulled suddenly looked a lot more dignified than pedaling.
16-inch bike with no gears, a bike built for a flat courtyard, for my boy twin (our daughter would not get out of the trailer…), who somehow managed from six to ten kilometres a day! This bike got lashed to the top/back of the trailer at an angle no cyclist would forgive, and he climbed in next to his sister like he’d planned it that way all along.
and a lot of stuff! food, bathing suits, towels, rain clothes, sweaters, jackets, chocolate…

Now multiply most of that by four families. Everyone was moving at a different speed, on a different machine, because everyone was at a different point. And the only reason it worked, the only reason nine children never once mutinied on the road, is that nobody had to keep anyone else's pace.

The one doing ten kilometres didn't get parked in the trailer because his sister wasn't pedalling. The one who couldn't do the climb didn't get dragged up it anyway because his brother could. The whole thing made room for the differences instead of trying to flatten them.

That caravan is the loud, visible version of something a family does all the time, usually where you can’t see it.

And it's basically what my house has to do too, every single day, just without the mountains. Same rooms, same morning, but the kids are all in a different place. The big one wants to reach the tap by himself. One of the little ones wants to as well, can't quite get there, and it ends in tears. The other would rather be carried and gets offended when she isn't. Three kids, three speeds, one bathroom.

The trick on the road was never making the slow one go faster. It was giving each kid the machine that matched where he actually was, with a fallback for the part he couldn't do yet. The tow rope for the eldest. A seat in the trailer, and a bike tied to the back of it, for the twin who can pedal the flat but not the hill.

The bike with no gears is the part I keep coming back to. We talk about independence like it's a switch: either a child can do a thing on his own or he can't. Living with three of them has made me think of it more like gears. The same child is completely independent in one moment and needs a lot of help five minutes later, on the same morning, in the same room. On the flat, my boy twin needs nothing from me. The road tips up and he's stuck, and it has nothing to do with willpower. His bike has no gear to drop into, so there's nowhere for the effort to go.

Most of the time, at home, whether a kid can or can’t comes down to the tool and not the will: whether the thing he’s using can shift to match what you’re asking of him.

So I don’t think the job of a family home is to make children independent as fast as possible. It’s to make independence available where it’s actually possible right now, and to catch the rest without turning it into a failure. A three-year-old doesn’t need a tiny version of everything an adult has. He needs a way to do the three-year-old things himself, and a decent fallback for the ones he can’t.

Design for what a child can do today, and build in a fallback for what he can’t do yet.

At home that mostly comes down to height. A step stool so he reaches the sink, a hook low enough for his own jacket, a chair that grows with him instead of one he outgrows in a year. Get it right and he does it himself. Get it wrong and you’re the one carrying him, and the bike, all the way up.

That bike spent the end of most days tied to the back of the trailer, carried by the thing that could still pedal, so that the next morning, on the flat, he could ride it himself again.

Maybe that’s what a good home is really for: to keep everyone moving at the pace they’ve actually got, and to carry the bike on the days they can’t.

About the author

Three kids in 20 months taught me this: homes need to evolve with us.

I’m Francesca, Italian architect. I practiced for over a decade and ran a small floral art atelier for a while. Then my first boy was born, and less than two years later, the twins arrived.

With three small children, shaping space became both more urgent and more chaotic. I keep adjusting, moving things, reassigning rooms, rethinking storage. Homes have to keep up with life.

Here, I write for parents who are fighting their homes every day, pouring everything I know about spaces, routines, and the beautiful mess of family life into every post.

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💬 If something in your home isn’t working and you want to talk it through, send me a DM and I’d be happy to help.