Don’t listen to the cynics who warn that your life as an avid traveler will end immediately following the birth of your first child. Sure, traveling with children can be a daunting prospect. If they’re normal kids, they’ll be astonishingly ungrateful at times, and you will ask yourself why you are spending all this time and money trying to show them the world when they’d rather sit in the hotel room and play video games.
As with most things related to parenting, flexibility is key. You may have to skip planned activities or make on-the-fly itinerary adjustments to accommodate anything from a toddler’s nap schedule to a teen’s moodiness, but travel with kids will likely be one of the most rewarding things you ever do. No matter how many details don’t go to plan, how many missed flight connections or uneaten restaurant meals or long, whiny walks I’ve endured, I haven’t regretted a single trip with my two kids. So many of our strongest family memories took place in other places. There was that time we joined a few dozen Parisians to jump in a fountain in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on a blisteringly hot afternoon. Or the happy morning we spent communing with the residents of a cat café in Tokyo. Our terrifying visit to the Museum of Crime and Torture in Florence. Or the time we received a blessing from a Mayan shaman before descending into a cave deep in the Mexican jungle. Or how about the time we were served whole roast goat (head included!) for Christmas dinner in Portugal.
It goes without saying that travel is educational, that no amount of formal schooling can compete with the kind of experiential learning that visiting another culture provides. When my daughter had to write a report about ancient Rome for her history class, she remembered what it felt like to stand inside the ruins of the Colosseum and listen to a guide describe the violent gladiator games that took place there. When my son had to do a presentation on Van Gogh for his elementary school classmates, he had the advantage of having seen the artist’s works in person at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. Whatever the purpose of your family trip, the likely side effect is that everyone will return home with a richer sense of history, geography, art, and how another culture eats, drinks and lives.
And if your kids don’t thank you now, they will someday.