Travel with Young Kids - How?
We’ve learned a lot on our current expedition. In honor of the five years of our oldest kids, here are five “commandments” to chisel onto the itinerary of your vacation (with some fake King James English just for fun).
1. Know Thy Family
For some parents, a 12-hour flight to Japan is a serene voyage with their little angels. The rest of us are picturing an emergency landing in the Pacific to quell the inflight cage match amongst our progeny.
Trips should stretch us as a family - but they shouldn't break us. When it comes to distance and intensity, you know where that breaking point is.
No kids in this Japan picture
The same goes for when you take your trip and for how long. With school and work, use whatever unique levers you have to make as much space as you can. Have young kids? Great - pulling them for a few weeks of kindergarten shouldn’t ruin their chance at Harvard. For work, can you do it remotely? Can you aggressively hoard PTO or take unpaid time off?
What languages do you know? What friendly uncles with far off cabins do you have? Do you like urban or rural? What kind of house setup do you need?
Once you take stock of your family’s unique limitations and advantages, preferences and desires, you should have a trip that’s all your own. Maybe that’s six months in Tokyo - or maybe it’s an AirBnB two towns over. Whatever the case may be, make sure to design your trip with your family in mind.
2. Thou Shalt Travel Slowly
If you desire to travel with young kids, you need to learn to travel slowly.
Your trips are no longer jetting around as fast as you can to see the maximum number of possible things. Slow Travel means living your life in a new place and soaking that place in deeply as a family. In addition to being more rewarding (and often times significantly cheaper with weekly/monthly rates), slow travel is much easier on little people.
Slow travel can be illustrated in the difference between the two trips to Europe that I’ve taken.
Fast Trip 1 (Pre-Kids)
11 different stays across 6 countries. Many flights, much driving.
Sllloooowww Trip 2 (Mucho Kiddo)
2 Stays in 1 Country. Spread over twice as long as trip 1.
The need for bedtimes, play, and massive amounts crap don't disappear when your kids cross an ocean. Instead, these things become more important in a new place. And just think about it for a second - do you really want to be figuring out the pack-and-play, monitor, blackout shades, and nap plans in a different spot every single day?
The biggest gift you can give your kids (and yourselves) is to stay in the same place for at least a week.
For fast-traveling sightseers this is tough (for me too - right now I’m an hour away from Italy- Italy!). But for those who are disciplined enough to limit themselves, a richer experience awaits. For our France trip, that meant that we got to know the ins-and-outs of our city - from the best boulangerie in town to the guys at the local bike shop. By the end, our kids were leading us to all our favorite spots and calling it “Our French Home”. We even made some French friends and hung out with their family on the weekends! (That’s not going to happen when you’re flying around with other tourists to all the “must-see” monuments.)
To be specific, slow travel is:
Day Trips - Check out all the cool spots around your home base
Playgrounds - Prioritize kid happiness and fit the rest (cafes, pubs, museums, etc.) after
Recovery - You can have a crazy day! But then you better take it easy the next day.
3. Pay Not for Thy Flights
You thought that trip was expensive before kids? Try multiplying everything by 5. If flights are involved, I highly recommend you travel for free.
4. Thou Shalt Prep Like a Champion (Today)
If you're currently sitting on the plane wondering if you should have brought snacks and activities for your two-year-old, then let me just say… I'm glad I'm not you.
As soon as we booked the tickets (10 months in advance), my wife immediately got real intense about travel planning.
You ain’t the free-spirit solo-travelers you once were - and you need to up your planning game. So book your Airbnb and start packing.
Personal Soapbox: Hit Pause on Idealism
In "normal times" we try to be as screen-conscious, health-conscious, and every-other-kind-of-conscious as the next family. If there’s a place to bend some of those ideals (so that you can live up to others), it is on a plane, a train, or an automobile.
So for eight hours on the flight, my wife and I gave up our ideals for a “light parental Machiavellianism” - we did anything to get us to that next airport. We brought kiddie tablets. We brought their favorite snacks and treats. We did everything shy of slipping our kids the in-flight whiskey as a sleep-aid. And we made it.
5. Bring Thou Reinforcements
We brought two Grandmas to France and it's made everything from grocery shopping to bedtimes to date nights easier and more fun. Extra hands are the difference between a crazy trip and a crazy trip that approaches (though still rarely reaches) restfulness. Because in reality, there are two options for trips with young kids:
Your Family + Big Trip = Fun, enriching, and exhausting
Your Family + Big Trip + Grandma = Fun, enriching, and less exhausting
Now, if it came right down to it, I’d still travel even if we didn’t have help, but the potential gain is worth trying for. If you don’t have grandparents who are willing and able, all is not lost.
Who in your life might be a good travel buddy? A babysitter? A kid-loving friend? A preschool teacher? (seriously - we have friends who do this) Who would be fun and helpful with little ones? Could you buy (or travel-hack) someone’s tickets and lodging in exchange for a few days of childcare per week? With a little creativity, you might be surprised how doable this is.
Summary
There you have it. Henceforth, thou, thine kin, and thy quest shalt not be vanquished!
Know Your Family. Travel Slowly. Travel for Free. Prep Like a Champion. Bring Reinforcements.
In other words, Gird Thy Loins - and then have fun, you adventurous family.
You can do this!