Have you ever considered traveling with your children or someone else's? Is the idea a bit daunting to say the least? I love to travel, and generally include my 3 year old daughter on most trips that I plan these days. I've had people tell me that she won't remember the trip, it's too much trouble to take her, she won't enjoy it and neither will I. People think I'm crazy to take her on big trips. When asking for advice on traveling with kids, several people have advised simply, "Don't!" I disagree, and have found the following huge benefits from traveling with my daughter.
Why travel with kids?
It allows you to really relax and enjoy yourself alongside the kids. Even though traveling with kids can have hectic moments, if you're prepared, there will also be many moments of enjoying all the things you came to do. That's essential for family bonding (even extended family or friend bonding if you're traveling with someone else's kids). As a parent, your only relaxed, happy time shouldn't be when your kids aren't there. They will relish in having you laying back, basking in the sun and playing, as much as you will adore seeing them do the same. If you travel with kids, you will learn to relax together, and get to see a different side of each other. You'll get to know each other better. The same benefits you reap from travel will also extend to the kids. My husband and I took our daughter on a cruise when she was 2, and we all came back very relaxed and recharged together. We all slept great on the trip and some of the sleep and behavior issues we had been seeing with her before the trip completely disappeared.
It will help you and your kids learn to travel without fear. If you can travel with a baby, you can travel with anyone. If you travel with your kids when they are babies, you'll become an old pro. So by the time they are old enough to really be aware of the travel, things will go much more smoothly because you'll know what you're doing. So will they. My daughter is 3 and she has been on 4 flying vacations, 1 driving vacation, and a cruise. She has zero apprehension about getting on a plane and is pretty well behaved in flight. We got the nerves and uncertainty of traveling together out of the way when she was an infant.
Even if kids don't remember the trip, you will, and you'll have pictures to for you and the kids to look back on. People have a terrible tendency of wanting to put off things until the "right time." If you try to wait until kids will understand and enjoy every aspect of your vacation, you may be old and tired, you may be divorced, heck you may be gone. The fact of the matter is, your memories matter, too. And if you remember watching the sun set over the Caribbean while your beautiful baby slept on your chest, that is a powerful memory in your story. If you have a picture to show your child of this later, you're also able to show her how it's part of her story. I've already taken my daughter to Disney World with one of my girl friends who had also never been. Will my daughter remember it when she's 10? Who knows. But, it was a great opportunity for my friend and I to spend some time together that we had been missing since I started a family, a great chance for her to get to know my daughter. My daughter also has a hard cover photo book to look back on, and if there comes a day when I'm no longer here to take her to Disney, thank God that we went when she was too little to remember, and that she can look back on those photos.
It's better than any formal education you can provide for a child. I had a teacher say this to me, and I couldn't agree more. We can see the world on tv, we can read about it in books, but nothing compares to experiencing it in real life: tasting the food, meeting the people, hearing the language roll off the tongues of the natives, drinking in the landscape with our own eyes. As a kid, one of my biggest mindset problems growing up in a small town was that the whole world seemed as small and limiting as my town. The boundaries of the world seemed to start and end in my town. I found out that the world was big and the possibilities within it were bigger by traveling. I didn't see many people who looked like me in my town growing up, but I've seen people who look like me in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Italy and Greece (though none of my background is from those places). How's that for feeling like a citizen of the world? Want the kids in your life to understand the similarities and differences between themselves and others? Show them. Want them to appreciate the majesty of God's undyingly beautiful creation? Show them. Want them to believe the sky is the limit? Show them!
So, have I convinced you to travel with kids? Share your experiences or philosophy on traveling with kids in the comments. This post also appears with others on my blog Zentrified Lawyer Mom.