For most people, travel is a life-changing experience. Having children along for the ride doesn’t change that. In fact, travelling with children can further enhance the transformative power of travel – not just for you, for your whole family.
For many moms and dads, travelling with their kids changes them as a person and changes the way they travel. I asked 10 other parents to share how travelling with their kids changed them, what they’ve learnt and how it’s helped them grow as a family. Here’s what they said:
Travelling with My Kids Changed Me:
11 Moms & Dads Share How
Travelling with Your Kids Makes You Adventurous
Travelling with my kids has definitely made me more adventurous. I’m more compelled to get out into nature and experience things with my children. I realise now how lazy my solo travels were! Travelling with my kids keeps me on the go, doing more than I normally would and pushing me outside my comfort zone. Travelling as a family has also taught my how it is vastly more important to spend money on experiences than on things. Building happy memories is the most valuable thing you can do with your kids. – Bethaney from Flashpacker Family
Travelling with Your Kids Turns You Into a Team
Doing long-term travel with my son has undoubtedly made me a better parent and strengthened our relationship. We work together as a team, and we are together pretty much 24/7. Not many parents can say they have that much time with their children past the toddler stage. Now that he’s a teenager, our bond is even stronger, and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world. – Talon from 1Dad1Kid.com
Travelling with Your Kids Makes You Fully Present in the Moment
Travelling with my kids has helped me become a better mum. Sharing the world and my favourite passion (travel) with my kids has helped open all our eyes and share such amazing moments. I just feel more alive and in the moment when we travel and this translates into a mum who is fully present and not caught up with the drudgery of day to day life. – Sharon from Where’s Sharon?
Travelling with Your Kids Connects You on a Deeper Level
Traveling with our children has been the most wonderful experience, not only for them but also for us as parents. They enhanced every aspect of the journey bringing out the best in us and showing us the world with childlike innocence. It forced us to trust ourselves, embrace the good and bad as worthy experiences, and connect on a deep level to each person in the family! It has forever made us more bonded as a family and through their perspective it has given us a better understanding of the world around us. – Mary from Bohemian Travelers
Travelling with Your Kids Shows You the Positive Side of Every Situation
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from the kids is to question the lens through which I’m seeing the world. Where I might see poverty and despair, they see hope and opportunity. They’ve taught me to see the silver lining in almost every situation and have helped me to realize that we can always use a little more ice cream in our day. – Heather from Globetrotting Mama
Travelling with Your Kids Teaches You to Focus on What is Important
Traveling with my kids has changed me by teaching me to slow down as a traveller, be more aware of my surroundings and pay more attention to details. I see things from different perspectives now and it’s been interesting to see the world through my children’s eyes. I’ve also become more patient, a better multi-tasker and planner. I have learned to cherish every family moment and have fun despite the challenges. – Mary from The World is a Book
Travelling with Your Kids Helps You Drop Your Guard
Travelling with Your Kids Opens Your Heart & Mind
What has changed travelling with kids is being able to see first hand how open they are to the world. They are like sponges, absorbing all the natural, cultural and human interactions everywhere they go. Their lack of inhibition allows them to mix with other children who speak no common language and just strike up a game of football or run around together. You allow so much to enter in when you have an open mind and heart like a child does! – Samiya from The Selim Family Raasta
Travelling with Your Kids Makes You Feel Young Again
Family travel is so different to solo travel or couple travel. Your needs and desires are often left on the wayside as you seek to make your children happy and in return you see the world through their eyes: Filled with awe and wonder where anything is possible and even the smallest blade of grass is interesting. Disneyland is no longer a theme park, but a reality. A castle is no longer a historic centrepiece, but a battle ground. Family travel makes me feel young again. – Erin from Explore with Erin
Travelling with Your Kids Encourages You to Slow Down
Our travels as a family didn’t change overnight. It was a slow transition into a different way of seeing the world. Traveling with children made us stop, catch our breath, quit the sprint of travel and turn it into a very slow, many year long marathon. My children saw more at their vantage point than I would ever see, forcing me to actually take in the sights we had traveled so far to visit. It hasn’t all been smiles and laughter, but we wouldn’t want to go back to the way we traveled without kids. – Keryn from Walking On Travels
Travelling with Your Kids Keeps You in Awe of the World
Travelling with my kids has helped me to slow down and appreciate the smaller stuff. Things like climbing over boulders and making music with twigs. There are so many things that adults glaze over, but kids bring you back to appreciating beauty and being in awe. I love seeing the world through their eyes! – Caz & Craig from Y Travel Blog
Thanks to all the amazing moms and dads who contributed to this post!
I hope we have provided some inspiration and encouragement on why travelling with your kids is hugely beneficial to all members of your family.
Great article !
What a great idea for a post, love it. Definitely travelling with kids is SO different from travelling before kids – and I love it, too. Helps me be slower, and helps me meet more people, too.
Beautiful! I love this post. It has renewed my love for travel with kids… but I’m still looking forward to New York solo hehe.
What a beautiful post. I love hearing everyone’s different comments while still seeing all the similarities in what we have to say. Travel with kids is a very cool experience 🙂
This is great! I loved reading the other families’ perspective as well as seeing all the fantastic family photos. I hope this can inspire someone to travel with their kids. You really do appreciate the smaller things despite meltdowns and fights. Thank you for including us along with these awesome group of parents. Safe travels!
I have been travelling as a solo parent with my 3 kids 9 12 and 15 for 6 months now…having then watching you 24/7 as someone mentioned makes you accountable for every reaction, human interaction, opportunity to help, be compassionate, understanding and patient. Its been a massive learning experience for all of us. We evaluate value, danger, restaurants, street food, activity as a team. Its a gift to all of us.
This is such a great post. So many of these traveling families have inspired me over the years, and now that we have launched on our own nomadic adventure I can say that their advice rings so true! I love what you said about how solo adventures were so lazy – so much about partying or hanging in one place, whereas the kids do demand we get out and see and DO new things, especially for us more active things, to burn off their energy! I also really resonated with Global Mama’s insight that traveling with kids pushes us to look for the silver lining. Of course that’s part of the reason we’re doing this ourselves to begin with. Remaining open to possibilities and hope is so important, and kids definitely remind us to do that, especially when encountering new, challenging situations. So glad I got to read this. Put me in a great mindset!
Hats off to all of you traveling families! I find it hard enough sometimes to just travel with my husband. That said, I really loved traveling with my family when I was a kid. What a gift!
What a great post! I don’t have kids, but if I ever do I hope I can share my love of travel and the world with them.
Thank you so much for taking the time for collecting all these different experiences of parents travelling with their kids. This is a true inspiration for everyone who has or ever plans to have children and travel with them.
I don’t have kids yet but I can absolutely picture how it can be a challenge for such a person like me — so kudos to all these parents for making it happen! I hope that when I have a family in the future, I can do the same. We’ll see 😉 I’m still too young to start one but I look forward to it haha!
I don’t have kids but when I do, I hope to have the strength (and fund, heh!) to continue travelling like you guys do! 🙂
I loved reading all of the different answers, and a common theme that emerged was the wonderful viewpoint–silver lining, openness, non judgmental–that children have. We traveled as much as possible with our two children, and I cherish all of our memories! I’d like to think that’s why, as adults now, my children still love to travel with their friends, and when possible, with us!
These are such inspirational stories. I love to see that parents are traveling with their kids. It obviously builds a stronger bond and allows the kids to see and learn things that are priceless. Kudos to all these parents!
Lots of great and inspiring stories! Kuddos to everyone traveling with kids.
Nice post!
We included it in our weekly reads on DitchingSuburbia.
Cheers!
Some wonderful lessons.
These are all such great stories. Its a dream of many families to be able to do this, in small or large doses. It is so pleasing to be able to read about these families who are able to share this wonderful gift together!
Nice collection!
Thank you for this post!! I cannot wait to check out everyone’s blog and am glad to have discovered your blog via Lainie Liberti! 🙂