My close friends and I range in how many and which decisions we like to make when we're planning a trip together. We have a spreadsheet maker who assigns tasks and has lots of survey questions and we have a friend who is more of a "tell me where I need to be and how much I owe" type of friend. And as adults, we all get to decide how much or how little we want to be involved in the planning and execution of a trip. We have agency over how a trip is planned and we have agency over the way we spend our time during our travels. Now, obviously somebody is making decisions, but that could be a travel agent, a tour guide, a travel buddy, or even AI!
So when we plan travels with kids, it should be the same. Now, I'm not suggesting we hand over the credit cards and let the kids book the hotels and make all the decisions. But I also am suggesting that kids can be more involved in choice than "what do you want for dinner?" during a trip. Here are some great ways to get your kids involved leading up to your next trip:
- Tap into their interests - is your child into sports, fashion, food, arts, video games, books, movies, music? Let's say you're planning a trip to Venice and your child is really into video games. Have them (not you) do a little research about what video games are set in Venice, or maybe Venice has a gaming competition that they can read about to get engaged in the trip.
- Ask them to find one thing in the place you're visiting that they want to see or do. Maybe they can find a cool culinary experience, or a bike tour. For example, if you are going to Paris and they want to do a bike tour, have them send you links for 2 different companies they found for the tour.
- Have a movie night and watch a movie that is set in the place you're visiting.
- In the month leading up to your trip, share a fun-fact-of-the-day. You can get the whole family involved by rotating through each family member. When it's your turn, you have to discover something interesting about where you're visiting and share it with your family at dinner.
And here are just a few ideas for keeping your kids involved during your trip:
- You have 10 days on your vacation? Let your kids design an itinerary for half a day. They can either do this individually or they can collaborate. And really let them run with it.
- Traveling can be exhausting. Sometimes when we travel though we are reluctant to have "down time". Maybe the trip feels too short to have any unscheduled time to chill. But we all need it - especially kids! Let them have an hour or two per day, or a half day or one full day of no plans. Watch a movie, scroll on your phone - whatever they would do at home to relax and re-charge is probably still needed while on a trip.
This is the main reason I'm writing travel guides - I really want to provide a way to engage kids and give them agency in their travels. I have a regret from my trip with my niece. She and her friend are into fashion and shopping and I didn't learn until after our trip that the original Gucci store is still open in Florence. I think this could have been a fun detour from all the museums and a way to get them thinking about the things they can see and do on future trips.