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Lorna's avatar

Honestly, the small challenges are what make traveling worthwhile as a learning experience. It'd be great if we had seamless experiences every time, but missing a flight or our accomodation not being what we want or a 4 hour train delay at the end of a full day in NYC (that one might be personal) are the things that teach our kids how to be flexible and make the best out of the experience.

We travel to Europe a lot as our whole family are spread out there, and some of it has been wonderful and some of it has been terrible and those experiences create our family lore. "Remember the trip to Rome and the roof of the tour bus leaked and we got SOAKED" is a story told with a laugh. It SUCKED at the time but these are the bits that bond us and the story maybe grows some arms and legs as it is retold, but it's part of what makes us, us. Generally I would agree in keeping tales of kid meltdowns to a minimum out of respect for them, but I also get wanting to be honest about travel. You do such a great job of being respectful of them on your page, and it is so hard to balance. I'm sure you will all figure out how to handle it.

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Rebekah Kohmescher's avatar

Oh thank you for the share! I have traveled a lot with three kids. It is always ups and downs. And like another commenter said my kids favorite stories are all about me and how I handled (or didn’t!) the situation. Sometimes good “Mom, we didn’t believe you could speak French and then you yelled at that guy and he listened!” Haha. I will say that our travel got so much richer when I made the planning and picking things a group effort. My kids are old enough to find things to do. To vote on accommodations / weigh pros and cons from a list of options ahead of time. When we went to Rome last year my oldest wanted to also go to Venice. I told her to figure it out. She made a doc with links to train times, figured out cost where we could stay, what we would do in 48 hrs there. It was amazing and she was so proud as we did the things (and understood frustration when some didn’t work out as planned).

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