- I've traveled all over the world, both alone and with my two kids.
- A recent summer trip to visit my parents was a comedy of errors, but I learned lessons from it.
I've spent a summer backpacking across southern Europe, lived and traveled in East Africa for a year, and made an exhausting trip to Costa Rica with a toddler. I consider myself a seasoned traveler and am used to traveling with my kids at my side.
In fact, I've made 32 trips with them over the past five years: 11 of these trips involved flights, 20 were camping trips, and one was a local road trip. However, it was a summer transatlantic flight to meet my parents in West Yorkshire that took me down. That was the trip that taught me essential lessons in traveling with my kids.
The thing is, I want our family vacations to be perfect — we've made financial and time investments and have high expectations around spending quality time together and making fantastic memories. That perfection is elusive, though, and mistakes are inevitable — but that's OK. In fact, I've learned how to travel with my kids by making mistakes.
At the time, my eldest was 6 years old and my youngest just 3 months old. My husband had to stay home for work, and I was traveling with my sister. I thought I had it covered. Instead, I lived out a version of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."
Don't try to pack more into a trip than is necessary
The trip was a comedy of errors that, even as a well-traveled person, I can admit I didn't anticipate. Instead of deciding to fly straight to Manchester, I followed my sister's suggestion to reroute through London for a quick tour so we could cram more adventures into our schedule.
A flight delay and a missed connection upended our short window, my eldest had her first bout with motion sickness, and we spent three days traveling to our final destination with nothing to show for it, except exhaustion. We never made it to an afternoon tea, toured the city on a double-decker bus, or even saw Big Ben.
After bemoaning my mistakes, I embraced the lessons. I learned that less is more when it comes to traveling with children. When jet lag woke us up in the middle of the night in our London hotel, we ordered burgers to the room and stayed up watching television. The treat of staying up late, ordering room service, and watching non-PBS television is a memory my eldest still recalls with fondness.
Focus on the good memories
The best memories can grow from unexpected places, the seemingly unimpressive in-betweens, even when it feels like nothing is going right. I learned that memories cannot be forced.
Even though we experienced flight delays that upended our plans and left us exhausted, what my oldest remembers from the trip was playing with our friend's old Legos, checking out a new playground, and the magic of being allowed to use an iPad. I remember her delight in splashing in a fountain and then running barefoot through Piece Hall.
Traveling with another adult won't always help unless they're prepared to co-parent
I learned that traveling with another adult does not always make it easier unless they are explicitly up for the challenge of baby rocking and holding vomit bags. I unfairly expected a co-parent from my sister, but holding a thin paper bag to catch the remnants of your kids' breakfast while jostling around a vintage hackney carriage is not necessarily something every traveling companion is up for — neither is consoling a crying baby or calming down a kid having a tantrum.
Let go of expectations and be present
I also relearned that expectations breed resentment unless I can hold them softly and find amusement in the chaos and the story. Despite a lifetime of the best trips being the ones that upended my expectations, my need for control still reigned at first.
When I realized this and let it go, I found enjoyment in the afternoons watching the World Cup with my dad, having dinner at a pub with views of sheep grazing on the endless, rolling green hills, and making the baby giggle when I tickled her neck.
It's less about the itinerary and more about the location
Most importantly, I learned that travel with children is different — instead of finding joy in crowding as much as you can into an itinerary, perhaps enjoying a new location by strolling through parks and taking leisurely walks is the whole point. Much of traveling with kids involves doing the same things we always do in a different environment, but I find a change of scenery can make all the difference.