BootsnAll Travel Community

I found this New York Times article about traveling with teenagers, and thought I'd pass it along.

What tips do you folks have for keeping kids of all ages entertained and engaged when you're on the road?

Thanks for that Jessie. Yes, we'll be traveling with one 14 yo and one 12 yo, though the chance of us going to a Club Med is very low.

Here are some tips for kids:

very young children: I packed a "goodie bag" with small items that were new and didn't even let them have a peek beforehand. Some of it was art supplies and some was little toys that they could set up in a kind of "village".

medium size kids: I read this one in David Cohen's "One Year Off"(I wish I'd thought of it): When going to a museum where kids usually last for a grand total of ten minutes after you've paid $20 to get in, first go to the museum gift shop and let the kids pick out postcards of paintings or whatever the museum display is, and then have them look for "their" paintings. He said they had a hard time getting the kids out of the museum!

Advice for teenagers: I need some of that myself. We're not sure how much the kids will still like us at the end of our year of RTW.

General advice: understand that what's interesting to you is not necessarily interesting to a kid and vice versa. I'll never forget taking my kids to Mexico when they were 5 and 8, and the highlight of their trip was the shoeshine shop they set up in the hotel room. And the murky hotel pool that probably had 10 billion bacteria per square inch.
Fortunately for me, I find my kids every bit as entertaining as the traveling is, so I got a big chuckle out of the shoeshine shop.

I have a teenager and a kindergartener, so keeping them both amused is quite a challenge.

What I've learned with the teenager is that she really does listen to my "background history" stories, and I've been surprised by the number of times that she's made a comment (as much as a year after visiting a place) that shows me she actually absorbed stuff no matter how much groaning and moaning went on at the time.

My motto now is to plow ahead to where I want to go, ignoring the most obnoxious protestations since I'm secure in the knowledge that what I'm doing will pay off in the end.

Thanks, Sheila
Family Travel blog

quote:

My motto now is to plow ahead to where I want to go, ignoring the most obnoxious protestations since I'm secure in the knowledge that what I'm doing will pay off in the end.

That's a very good motto! I will remember it well.