Why travelling as a family is the best way to travel
(Photo of Virginia’s Two Young Boys)
Do you have horrid memories of been squashed in the backseat of the car whilst you drove for hours and hours? Perhaps the memories are of getting to Lake Tahoe to turn around and head back to Anaheim to get your Dad’s backpack that contains ALL your passports and then head back to Lake Tahoe. Yes. It’s a pretty picture ain’t it?
My sisters and I (there are 4 of us) are sympathy vomiter’s. One gets carsick and we are all sick! The roads seemed to be windier when I was a kid. They most likely were before huge freeways and expressways were added. There are many a spot I drive past now and remember fondly as a known car-sick resting place!
Road trips aside, there are people who think overseas holidays are a waste of money for children if they are too young to remember them. A European holiday suddenly jumps in price when you add two extra airfares and you’re paying for two extra dinners. What seemed affordable at a stretch has now escalated sky high. Should you be a family of more than two children you will then have the added delight of an extra room to add each night as most hotels only allow 4 per room. It may also mean two cabs instead on one.
You can see why then people tend to find a summer vacation place and return year on year. So that brings me to ask what is your favourite memory as a child? I interviewed about 20 friends and an overwhelming 90% used a holiday memory as their favourite childhood memory. The types of childhood memories that an adult recalls may be linked to personality. This gives some explanation as to why we desperately try and strive to not only book a lasting memory for our children but one that is bigger and better than before.
We used to camp, twice a year in fact. It was quite literally a living hell at times. One other trips we couldn’t wait to go back. We made friends with all the families who were also putting their children through this special kind of torture. Funnily enough my Dad spent Easter with those exact parents this year- 25 years later! So when the sun shone we had a blast. We would all borrow and use all the various pieces of equipment up and down the row of tents. We would all band together and play cards at night or go ‘spotlighting’ (code for kissing boys as we got older) for crabs on the beach. If it rained though, its things nightmare vacations are made of. One year we had 15 inches in a matter of days. My sister and I had army beds and the floor of our tent was full of water, inside, to about 2-3 centimeters off our beds! Dad would head into town and buy tarp after tarp in attempts to keep us dry. We would spend the miserable days huddled under the tent watching the water come down. We couldn’t pack up and go home as you couldn’t book your site the following year for those dates unless you were there!
Did it make us stronger for going through hardship together? Did it promote team work? It certainly gave us something scarring from our childhood. I refuse to take my kids. I would argue we are united in the terror of having to relive that and it is certainly a shared experience that we all feel is best left in the past and not to be revisited.
In 2013, German researchers investigated the psychological effects of travelling. The findings were that travelling does alter your personality in 5 main ways. Travelling alters emotions, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to new experiences. Click here for reference to the whole study.
That’s all very interesting but I sat on the bus on my way home from work and contemplated this article. Travel can change your personality. I’m raising children and I have one shot of getting it right. Travel is an essential part of helping me. Why? Is my home life not going to amply provide for the range of interactions to support my children to grow and develop?
I want to raise my children to be resilient, independent, confident and kind. Always kind. Of course I want them to be brilliant and charming, prosperous, healthy and witty. But prior to of all of those things I want my boys to be men. Men who can fight in the trenches with their loved ones when the going gets tough. Men that challenge the world they live in and push forward to achieve their goals and their dreams, overcoming life as it throws various curveballs. I want them to be men that will take care of their mother when I am old. I want them to be men that will take care of each other. I want them to take care of their father, their grandmother, their grandfathers, and their cousins. I want them to give to their community and to those around them. I want them to be kind. Tell me where those skills are going to be developed and tested. Sure I drive them home each and every day. I involve them in a broad range of activities to test and help them explore their skills. They see me do things for the church. They see me do things for the school, for the surf club, for the office.
When my son turns to me after I have helped a lady with her bags at the airport in another country and says ‘That was really kind of you mummy’ I know that by taking them away from their comforts and continuing these behaviours they are getting absorbed. The little sponges are developing all of these personality traits. I choose travel because it brings out the best in me which in term will bring out the best in my little sponges. Travel allows me time away from my desk and everyday distractions where I can invest in those little brains and listen to their rambling. Travel allows those little hands access to me away from the distractions of our everyday lives’. It is in that access to us, as parents, that their memories are created. The memories of us being there with them and for them every day , joining in their activities and doing things together.
“What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.” Mary Jo Putney
That’s why we travel as a family. To create memories of not only delightful places but of each other at our best and potentially our worst. Boundaries are pushed and understanding is built. As my children become older they will be well practised at seeing us at our best and our worst. They will have yarns to spin that will make them laugh and cry. At the heart of it all they will have understanding and that will teach them to be kind. Always kind.