It’s worth noting that it’s completely normal to dread the thought of traveling on road trips, plane rides, or even cruise getaways with your kids. With carrying the extra weight of diapers or formula or toys, plus dreading the inevitable temper tantrum, some parents don’t even want to travel for the first five years of their kid’s life.
But here’s the thing, you can’t let just let your luggage collect dust while your kids are young! There’s no other comparison traveling with kids; it’s honestly the most essential and important opportunity of a lifetime–both yours and theirs. So here are some of the most quintessential reasons why you should book your next trip with the whole family and how it benefits parents and kids.
Traveling Beats Out Classrooms Any day
Hands-on learning is the way to get any kind of real-world information to stick with anyone–so imagine, with traveling, you’ve got the best learning tools surrounding you and your kids. From hiking the Rocky Mountains to whitewater rafting down the rivers of Colorado, no textbook or novel can describe the smells of the Washington forests or the feeling of the Grand Canyon rocks like actually being there to experience it themselves. There’s no better feeling than having your kids go back to school and telling their teacher that the pictures they see in books can’t beat what they saw over the summer.
Decision Making Isn’t Just For Adults
Picking a restaurant is sometimes too tough but when you can’t decide, why not ask the kids? Maybe they’ll want something you haven’t had in mind or they’ll want to try something new with you. If you can’t decide between hitting the parks or hitting the hay, let them take the reins! Decision making is a trait that can be formed to later help them in the future gain strategy skills that will be taught through compromise and understanding. Kids can learn that their opinion is accounted for and help develop a sense of self-worth in the family.
Family Bonding
It’s a blessing these days to get even an hour’s worth of bonding time with all that hustle and bustle of city life and balancing responsibilities. Being on vacation takes away the stress of having to comply with everyone else and only focus on the most important thing in life–family. It’s always best to start learning new things whenever you get the chance, so why not have them start early on? They can learn new qualities about you and you never know what they might say that can surprise you! When vacation comes to mind, I think of relaxation and spending time with the most important people in the world. When I was younger, my parents always took me and my sister on trips with them because they knew that we aren’t just four people who happen to be related, but we are four people who happen to make a whole. Plus, there is nothing that strengthens a family bond more than learning about and exploring new places together.
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Unplugging Your Hometown
We spend most of our days surrounded by smartphones, tablets, TVs, and computers which leads us to stress over those incessant work emails. Children these days aren’t exempt from being sucked into technology overloads as well, but traveling can surely take it away for a period of time. While visiting your destination, let your little one open their eyes to new things. Traveling to a new place without being bogged down by technology helps them garner a better understanding that there is so much of the world–they will want to continue discovering without those incessant game noises.
Culture Awareness
Documentaries can only explain so much about a culture until you can surround yourself with it. Traveling to places outside of the U.S. can vastly teach the kids what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes. From trying absolutely delicious spaghetti in Florence to gallivanting the streets of Barcelona, the kids get to socialize with the locals and hear new languages they haven’t heard before. Trying new things opens up a world of new opportunities for them to explore new traits and qualities they haven’t yet discovered. Learning a new culture also improves the way they look at life and how to embrace diversity! So when in Rome do as the Romans, right?
Memories Of A Lifetime
At 10 years old, I took a trip to the blisteringly sunny state of California. Nearly 12 years later, I can still remember slowly passing through the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco and even seeing a bear cub in Mammoth. I still remember the feeling of how cold I was in Fishermans Wharf but how hot I was in L.A. These memories stuck with me, they shaped me, and they will be carried with me for the rest of my life. Pictures can get lost and videos can get deleted, but having even the slightest memory of your little one’s first trip to Disney or their first trip to Paris will mean something more in the years to come. They’ll go running to all their friends all throughout their life describing how fun it was to be at that destination and how much they want to go back to experience it all over again.
