Breaking It Down: Tips for Traveling with Kids

People often tell me that I'm so lucky because my daughter is such a good traveler. They travel to Disney or Universal every year, with an occasional trip down the shore, and can't imagine that their kids would be able to take some of the trips we take. Their kids would be bored! They would never spend time in a museum! An old church would make them cry for the lack of animated characters!

While I think my kid is totally amazing and is definitely a great traveler. I don't think luck has anything to do with it. She has traveled all over the world - Greece, Italy, England, Iceland, Turkey, Russia, Croatia, Finland...the list just goes on and on. And she has loved all of them, just as she loved Disney and Universal! How did we make that happen? How do we get to go on amazing trips with a kid (who is now eleven, but started traveling at two and a half)? Over the next few posts, let me share some tips with you that might be a help.

Tip One: Start Small
I would start small. Take a day trip somewhere that you want to go, but you aren't sure your kid would like. We are lucky enough to live near NYC, so one day trip we took was to MOMA. What 5 year old wants to go to MOMA? Well, mine, for starters. We picked a time when they had a cool exhibit going on - in this case, it was Jackson Pollack. Pollack is the guy who splattered paint on canvases, sometimes by throwing paint at it, sometimes by standing up on a ladder and dripping it. That's something kids can get into, right? Making artistic messes?

I spent some time with her in the month preceding the trip focused on getting her ready for the visit to MOMA. We looked at Pollack paintings and tried to figure out how he made them. We talked about art in general - did she think that this throwing of paint on a canvas was really art, since its something anyone could do? And we talked about why it was, in fact, art - the fact that this was a new concept that now you see everywhere as decoration - on t-shirts, billboards, backpacks, whatever - but he was the first. And we did some splatter painting ourselves to see how our versions would come out.

Then we went to the museum and she was actually excited to see them in person. We saw the Pollacks and she thought they were awesome - because she knew what she was looking at before she got there and had some of the story behind it. And then we wandered some of the rest of the museum to see some of the odd things they have there, again considering "is this really art?" I kept a close eye on her to see when her interest and excitement started to wane, and then we called it a day. Had I kept lugging her around, showing her artwork after artwork, she would have hated it and cried and never wanted to go again. When we left the museum, we went to a cute little place that served ice cream and bakery goods in pretty bowls and plates, as sort of a reward for her being so awesome.

Now, imagine if I had just decided to take her to an art museum to see what I wanted to see. Imagine if I expected her to look at the art the way I do. Imagine if we had spent 4 hours there and then went home. This would have been a very, very bad day for all involved.

This is step one of creating a kid who loves to travel - introduce it slowly and in a fun way so they get into it. They don't realize they are learning, they just do it.

Breakdown of Step One:

1. Go somewhere local to start to introduce sightseeing to your kids.
2. Don't plan a full day to sight see. Just take an hour or two. Don't over do it.
3. Prep ahead of time with fun facts, pictures of what they will see, and examples of how it fits into their lives. 
4. End the excursion with something fun as a reward...and so that the last thing you do is something cool that they want to do.

Moral of this story: Before expecting your kids to spend a week in the art museums of Florence appreciating the Michelangelos, prime them first. Try it out on a small scale for a few hours and prime the pump before you go. It'll make things better all around.

I'll be breaking down some more tips for you in the next few posts. Trust me - you can get your kids to love seeing sights other than Mickey and Donald!

Ah, Air Travel. You Are The Worst.

Up bright and early with our carry on bags packed, we headed to Newark Airport to catch a United flight through DC to San Antonio. I'll preface the story to come by saying that connecting flights never work for me, ever. I avoid them at all costs. But no direct flights were available from Newark to San Antonio, so on to DC we flew.

Or should I say, planned to fly. Boarding is about to begin, and the gate representative gets on the loud speaker. She tells us that the plane is "broken" - what? - and that we are indefinitely delayed. My husband took off immediately to the customer service desk, since we knew our connection in DC was tight and we would likely miss that flight. He was second in line - good running there, hon! My daughter and I sat at the gate with the "broken plane" story repeated over the loud speaker. Then suddenly, we were boarding! Hubby came back and said he had us booked on two flights now from DC to San Antonio, our original flight and another one five hours later. Well, we are boarding so it seems we will make the first connection and all is well in travel land.

We board the plane, get nestled into our seats, and start reading our books. Ready to go! Until. The flight attendant gets on the loud speaker: "There is a problem with the lavatory and maintenance is looking at it right now. We will update you as soon as we can." GROAN. We sit. We wait. The next announcement comes: "We can't fix the lavatory right now, but we did get permission to fly to DC without a working bathroom because it is only a 50 minute flight. We would like to take off as soon as possible but if anyone needs to use the bathroom they can use the one back in the terminal." Click. Click. Click. Seatbelts start unfastening and people are getting off the plane to use the bathroom. I can't even believe this - let's just get in the air, people! Pee in the District of Columbia!

Ok, so everyone goes to the bathroom and gets back on the plane. Let's fly! But wait...now the pilot is talking to us. He is apologizing; he can't believe this is happening and he is so sorry, but a piece of the plane door fell off while they were closing it.Time to get off this plane and find a new plane.

The guy behind me has been yelling since before we boarded. I assume he has not flown before or not flown often, because the whole idea that travel does not always go smoothly is a new concept and he can not deal. Everyone else is mostly calm and collected; there's nothing you can do about this stuff, so don't yell at the flight attendants. Don't yell at the gate reps. This is not their fault.

We finally leave Newark, sometime just after our connecting flight has left DC. So we resign ourselves to the fact that we are getting to San Antonio at night. We are missing the Mardi Gras parade. We are not going to be able to go swimming. We have spent Valentine's Day in two different airports rather than in Texas. But whatever. We have beer and we have books, so we chill and we drink and we read, and we will get to Texas when we get there.

And that's a lesson we have learned from extensively traveling: Go with the flow. You have to keep your patience and expect things to not go as smoothly as you like. You have to be prepared to create your Plan B on the fly. You have to deal with delays and kinks in your plans. And most of all, you have to not let it ruin your trip. With a start like this, it could have soured us all for the duration. But we kept on keeping on and had a wonderful trip after all.

Dreaming...

I have always dreamed of being a travel writer. I have to admit that this dream falls somewhat behind the dream of being a punk rock drummer, but it's up there.

I've tried before to start a travel blog and it hasn't really worked for me. But I figure this is as good a time as any to start a new blog. I have a trip to San Antonio coming up in a couple of weeks, then a road trip to Vermont in April, followed by some deep decision-making on our other trips for 2015, so I should have some good material.

For now, I'm dreaming of getting out of the snowy cold New Jersey weather and getting on that plane to Texas. While it was not my first choice of destination, I'm hoping it will be a great trip.

Coming next: how we went about the process of choosing our first trip for 2015.