When should you travel with children?

Who wouldn’t like to see the world, travel and explore new things? I think there are only few who would not. Your youth is the perfect time for that. But then you get married and have kids… What happens to traveling then? A lot of parents think about the question what is the best age to start traveling. Let’s have a look at the question from different views.

The first and most important question is. What is the goal of our travel. We are all different and the purpose of our traveling varies, too. There are those who enjoy lying on the beach for an entire week and there are those who organize sightseeing tours. Forget your purpose, once you have kids you have to manage everything with them in mind. Sigmund Freud was the first to deal with childhood amnesia. According to him, people forget things that happened to them before the age of three. Dr. Amanda Gummer psychologist, a researcher of child development even went further. She declared that we travel with our kids in vain under the age of 5 because they will not remember. So what’s the point in traveling with little kids? If my purpose is not for them to have cultural experiences and to gather memories, but we simply would like to enjoy the time we spend together and we settle for traveling with a little compromise, there are no boundaries.

If we kept this idea in mind that says it is pointless to start traveling with kids younger than five, we shouldn’t have been anywhere for more than 10 years and we should still stay home for another while until our fourth one reaches the ’necessary’ age. At the same time our older ones have long passed age 5 so should they be excluded from all the joy of traveling because it is ’pointless’ for their youngest sibling? We think traveling is one of the best things. Of course it means a lot of compromise when it is not only the two of you any more but it provides as much joy to be able to share it with your kids, as much it takes from you with all the extra planning and giving up. They may not have memories from these journeys but these memories  definitely help form their personalities. Dr. Erica Reischer, a clinical psychologist says: ’Travel is a great foundation for learning life skills that you can’t get at home. For example how to menoeuvre in an unfamiliar environment: how to ask for help (politely) how to be stragegic in what you need, how to navigate a new place, how to be comfortable in an unfamiliar environment, how to collaboreate people unfamiliar  to you.’ So they will be a lot more open-minded and flexible thanks to these experiences.

People are very cautious with their first child. When you first go home from the hospital, it feels as if you have traveled to a whole different planet. You have to learn everything again, you have to build your family up because you have this little human with you and the only pepole that can satisfy his/her needs are you, the parents. It is more than enough to measure up to the role, to get back on track with your everyday life and you should already be thinking about stepping out of this newly forming comfort zone? I have to say this. If traveling was important for you before you had kids, it is manageable with even very young children. If a couple wasn’t keen on traveling before kids, maybe it is not the best time to get to like it. However the hardships of the first months indicate traveling. When both parents are exhausted and tired, that’s when you need a change of scenery. I do not use the word relax on purpose bacause traveling with kids is not the most relaxing way, but it has numerous beneficial results. You can refresh and gain new sources of energy during some time spent away.

I was a world traveler before I had kids so for me it was not a question that I would like to travel with my kids as well. The oldest was 6 months old when we went skiing in Austria. It was a 6-hour-drive. When we had two kids and the younger was a year and a half, we drove to Greece. It took us 21 hours to get there. But we traveled to Germany with an 8-month-old, flew to London with a 6-month-old and with the fourth one we even went camping when he was 4 months old. There is no rule of thumb. The most important question is what you and your family feel comfortable with. But how can we make the decision? First we need to analyze ourselves. Am I ready to go? Can I lower my expectations or even let go of them? When you have kids, you can have many programs planned, life often overrides the script. Ther are countless unexpected situations in which we always have to keep the kids in mind first and many times it takes sacrifice from us. Are we ready to take this sacrifice? If we are, it is time to try ourselves. I mean it literally. Before you plan your fortnight dream holiday to the Maldives with your 5-month-old it is worth giving it a try. Don’t go far. Don’t go for a long time, make it enough to get a glimpse of what it is like. Test how hard it is to pack, how many things you leave at home, what the things we did not pay attention to are. You can learn from your own experience and it is a lot better to go on a big vacation prepared. So first try yourselves.

But what are the most important criterea I should consider? For example how do I choose the perfect destination or what exactly should we take with us? What type of transportation is best? What accomodation is the most convenient for us? I will have a look at all these aspects and I will give you a broader picture of the issue in a following post.

by Evelyn Gyöngy