Kids are the worst.
They’re loud. They’re gross. You can’t have nice things. They make us look like crazy people in public. Why would any sane parent spend even more money to take them with you? They would certainly be safe at grandma and grandpa’s for a few weeks.
As most parents also know, kids are also the best.
They laugh hard enough to actually fall down. If you ever needed someone to eat peanut butter sandwiches for 100 straight meals they’d volunteer. You can even program them to like your style of music (for a few years anyway). When given a chance, they also love to learn and learn like crazy. Especially when they have a reason to.
Traveling as a family can be challenging but we’ve found it also brings you closer together. And cliched as it is, those memories are priceless. They’ll remember the picnic in Luxembourg gardens or walking through the Colosseum long after they’ve forgotten about toys and tv shows.
That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. We didn’t sign up to be parents because it was easy. But travel can be a fun and loving way to spend a couple weeks with those most important little people.
We’ve learned a lot about how to limit the “challenging moments” (often learned the hard way) and thus that will be a theme of many future posts. But before closing this post a few more positive considerations for traveling with kids.
Combat cynicism
Though people in “far away places” might eat different foods and speak different languages, we are all just people. (I know some adults that don’t seem to be aware of this). They go to work. They spend time with the family. They want their kids to be happy and healthy. Just like you and me.
Betsy happens to be kind and sweet while Dan is a little uptight and comes off kind of grumpy. However, we have still been treated equally wonderfully by people in every country we’ve visited. When traveling pregnant we would often be offered seats on the subway, or to go ahead in line, or just asked “How many days more?” with a friendly smile. You can get help or directions from strangers, sometimes without even asking. If you think you love your kids, wait until an Italian grandmother sees them. Ciao bella bambino!
Our kids’ world will be even smaller than ours
Our homes are full of food, clothes, furniture, gadgets, and other things made all over the world. Many of us work for or with people we may never meet in person. Some of us work with businesses that are based overseas. It’s more than just customer service agencies answering our phone calls. Our kids will likely work with people from different parts of the world. They’ll need to get along with them, of course, but they will also need to understand different cultures, different ways of doing business. We are all different to someone and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Granted, travel alone won’t make our kids globally minded business moguls, but it’s not a bad first step.
Learn by doing
What better way to learn about the world than to experience it. Not just learn for economic or professional purposes but more for the love of learning and better understanding oneself.
Even if they experience places as a “traveler” or “tourist,” it still affords parents an opportunity to provide a broader perspective of the world. Preaching to kids about civic responsibility and how history matters might be more meaningful in the Roman Forum or along the bricks of the Berlin Wall than home at the dinner table, for example.
What better way to begin to appreciate art then to go to the third floor of Rembrandt’s old house and make an etching yourself? Sure beats a textbook.
More than just art, history, culture, and science, we’ll be sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of our attempts to instill a love of learning through travel with our kids.
Talk soon,
–Dan & Betsy
Family Conversation topic: Ask the kids if they could go anywhere in the world, where they would go. Where isn’t as interesting as why. Ask them to explain their choices.