Traveling and vacationing with your children are prudent investments into their developing self-assurance.
To write this article, I went to Google (where else?) and typed in “Benefits of family travel.” Within .57 seconds I had a whopping 680,000,000 results. (Full disclosure: not surprisingly, I did not read all the results!) I did scan well over a hundred and read several dozen. Some entries were from scholarly journals; most were practical opinions of pediatricians, teachers, psychologists, travel professionals, and parents.
Here some informative entries:
> Family travel teaches children one important lesson: how to travel. Travel is an ever more important aspect of life and a skill never formally taught. Each year, millions of children travel as “UMs” (airline parlance for unaccompanied minors). We send older kids on teen tours, to visit relatives, and to go to college. Comfort with and willingness to travel often helps adults to compete in the job market.
> The age at which most children will remember traveling is around five years. However, traveling with younger children does have benefits. For example, when they become older, showing them pictures of where they were and what they did makes them feel that they were already part of the family.
> Often, we tell older children that travel to new places will help them see the differences between here and there and us and them. However, the more you travel with kids, the more they begin to see the similarities between cultures and people. When this happens, tolerance and acceptance grow while fear and mistrust start diminishing.
> In a survey conducted in Britain, adults were asked what their happiest childhood memories were. Forty-nine percent said, family vacations. Moreover, about a quarter of the respondents said that those memories helped them get through hard times. Reflecting on joyful times spent together can be extremely powerful in bringing relief when faced with the darker times in life.
> Coordinate your traveling with children’s recent book learning – it literally brings schooling to life. Visit historic sites, seats of government, different cultures, farms if you are a city dweller, and cities if you live in rural areas, for example.
> Don’t fret when children find historical-type destinations “boring” and they tell you that they would rather be swimming. In fact, such places tend to leave positive and lasting impressions. Often later on, you can hear them telling (or boasting to) friends and teachers where they have been.
> Family travel has all kinds of positive attributes for children. However, where you have traveled and vacationed is often used as a sign of snobbishness, especially with millennials. Travel is a more acceptable topic of conversation than other signs of snobbery such as where we live, the cars we drive, and where we went to school.
> Travel and vacationing help children develop their brains, says a psychotherapist. Families together in a pool, walking in the forest, touching tall grasses waving in the wind, or feeling sand between their toes, for example, produce strong social, physical, cognitive, and sensory interactions. Such experiences turn on the “genetic fertilizers” in the frontal lobes of the brain. This enhances functions like stress regulation, attention, concentration, the ability to learn, and improving physical and mental health.
> Never measure the success of vacations by their costs or by how far from home you traveled. More important is how vacations differ from everyday life. My family spends vacations at upscale resorts in the Caribbean and Hawaii. In contrast, I grew up poor. Every summer, my parents pitched a tent next to a small pond in a wooded area behind our home, just out of sight of the house. For a few days we slept in the tent, cooked our meals there, and swam and played with family who came to visit. We went indoors only to use the bathroom. I greatly respect my parents for the vacations they provided me.
> Traveling helps children learn patience. In life, unexpected events are common. When traveling, such events include dealing with bad weather, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, lines at airports and dealing with long car rides – all in the name of having fun. Children, with parents’ help, tend to learn creative ways to occupy their time.
> Family vacations promote curiosity, independence, self-confidence and interpersonal skills. This is further enhanced by the fact that vacations increasingly involve multi-generations: children-parents-grandparents, children-grandparents, or extended families. (Another plus: the grandparents often pick up the tab.)
> Traveling with the family is a gift that keeps giving, returning huge dividends.
(See, “How to plan successful family vacations” at http://kidstraveldoc.com/will-family-vacations-ever-be-all-fun-and-games/ )
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