My family has done its share of resort travel with kids. If the sole purpose of a trip is to warm up in winter or be with family and friends away from home, a resort or other all-inclusive vacation can be the perfect option.
But you can’t truly experience another place and understand what it has to offer from the sterility of a resort.
I can hear your objections: “But resorts are so relaxing”. Or, “I can’t do anything more adventurous than a resort with little kids (or bigger ones, for that matter)”.
I have heard people say that they do not travel to interesting places because of their kids. Let me be frank: Your kids are not preventing you from travelling.
We love to relax when we travel. You can still take a relaxing, rejuvenating vacation away from a resort. And in fact, it’s not in spite of your kids that you should be more adventurous in your travels, it is for your kids. You are going to give them opportunities and experiences that they will cherish throughout their lifetimes.
Here are five reasons to get off the beaten path with your kids:
1. Improved educational performance and future success for kids. This effect is amplified when the travel includes cultural components and not just the inside of the (admittedly beautiful and relaxing) Four Seasons. New research shows that adults who travelled regularly in their youth earn $5,000 more per year and are significantly more likely to graduate from university than those who did not travel.
These graphics from Travel Effect illustrate these statistics in more detail:
2. Better cultural understanding in an increasingly globalized world. If you have never witnessed, observed, or seen another culture in its place of origin, it is easy to misunderstand it. Travelling to places with different religious ideas, different customs and traditions, and even simply different food can change anyone’s perspective.
As they develop, children who travel become more tolerant and open-minded. They lose their fear of encountering situations and groups of people that are outside of their norm.
3. More gratitude. Children who experience other ways of life may have a better appreciation for their own existence. Watching a child peddler hungrily gobble down the leftovers off your own plate in an outdoor restaurant makes a conversation about poverty more concrete to a six-year-old. However, it also means that parents should be ready to have more complex discussions about inequality and even politics.
4. Affordability. Not only is off-resort travel easier than most peopler realize, travelling to more remote, more adventurous places is often cheaper than resort travel.
We found that eating out for an entire weekend in northern Spain was less expensive than a couple of meals at family restaurants in our hometown. Small hotels in most places offer personalized service and want to please. They often include breakfast and are still very affordable.
We visit museums in cities and enjoy adventure tours or simply a day at the beach when we want to relax. In the most expensive places like London and New York, we have found that renting apartments is the best value for money. I rarely feel like cooking on vacation (or anytime), so we still eat out as often as we would in a hotel, but we also have the option of grabbing something at the grocery store if the kids are tired.
5. Family bonding. This is my favourite reason to take the kids to interesting places that are new to all of us. When we travel together, we are a team. Compromising on meals and activities, we learn to respect each other. We bond over shared new experiences, stressful situations, and being out of our comfort zones.
For my family, the result has been that my boys are brothers and best friends, now more than ever. Without the distractions of daily life and while enjoying a mutual sense of discovery, these trips are family memories in the making.
This summer, get out of your comfort zone with your family! Adventures await you and I have no doubt you will make family memories to last a lifetime.
Liisa Vexler can be found writing at The Family Freedom Project. She bases stories on her experiences living free of the bonds of geography and the clock. The Family Freedom Project book will be released late summer 2014. You can also follow her on Facebook.
