Parent- child travel: Creating bonds forever
“Two of the greatest gifts you can give your children are roots and wings” – Hodding Carter.
Open the world to your children, take them out, experience the unique and equip them with confidence to fly.
Travelling with your child can be a very exciting and adventurous experience. Every journey or vacation is not about relaxing or visiting major landmarks. Some of the most memorable and exciting travels are the ones where we learn and explore—places that make us think, understand and wonder at the multifariousness of our world. We want to share such experiences with our children and hope it kindles a LOVE FOR THE DIFFERENT in them. The benefits of family vacations for children go far beyond sightseeing—they foster growth, learning, and connection.
Some of the advantages of travelling can be categorized as follows:
1. Travelling Strengthens Bonds
While travelling to unusual destinations, parent and child can face different kinds of challenges—something they are not used to in their daily lives. This showcases the best and the worst for each—their problem-solving abilities, sense of humor, adaptability to change, and more. These range of experiences strengthen the bonding, and help us accept each member’s limits and capabilities. A bond which stays effective back in the “real” world too. Indeed, family travel deepens connections in a way no classroom or screen can replicate.
2. Promotes Interest in School Curriculum
Planning a trip around your child’s curriculum adds real-life experiences and tangibility to what children are reading and learning in school. A place from history, a landform from geography, or the origin of an English classic like Shakespeare can be planned to give credibility to school learning. Furthermore, various studies show that travelling improves curiosity, flexible thinking, and academic performance in children. This is one of the many benefits of family vacations for children, making education more vivid and engaging.
3. Teaching Tolerance and Acceptance
No trip is perfect, no matter how much you plan—especially those offbeat places where commonly expected things/facilities aren’t available. This teaches children to adapt to new situations, accept and deal with challenges, and very importantly, realize how a commonplace situation or thing can be a challenge in a different culture or place. They learn to make do without that supposedly “important stuff”—a valuable life lesson taught through direct experience.
4. Travelling Enhances Social Development
Social development starts the moment a baby tries to follow the sound of a caregiver. It increases with leaps and bounds as the child interacts with more and more people. Travelling allows them to connect with people of different ages, nationalities, and cultures. These interactions enrich their lives exponentially. All that can’t be experienced through school and friends is possible during travels—e.g., experiencing the nomadic life in Mongolia. Such journeys create lasting memories that shape character and perception.
5. Travelling Combats Boredom
Many a time I’ve heard children say, “I’m bored!” and parents start feeling guilty that we are not engaging our child’s brain sufficiently. A very important aspect of brain development is to keep oneself occupied without any external factor. Travelling to places with no Wi-Fi or play areas makes children think how to keep themselves engaged, which further promotes creativity. They observe and learn from their environment and try to modify it to suit themselves.
“A family that travels together stays together.”
I love this quote because it is the most effective yet simplest solution to Teeny Tantrums. As children get older, they need to form new concepts based on different situations, cultures, and beliefs—challenging the conventional. The situation is compounded by the independence shown by “teenagers”. As a result, a gap starts forming between parent and child. The children want to spend time only with friends, and parents are more than happy to let them. The skills that one wanted to teach or showcase as a parent are often lost amidst the arguments and tantrums.
Travelling to offbeat places or unusual destinations where everything is not readily available forces the parent and child to work together, adjust, and adapt their individual wants and desires for the greater good (for the family good). Thus comes the perfect opportunity to teach by role modelling all the life skills you deem necessary for your child. Budgeting for a trip, overshooting the budget, choosing UNIQUENESS over BORING comfort, planning meticulously and seeing the plans go haywire, expecting the unexpected, accepting other people’s limitations—these are experiences that, when shared as a family, make the bonds stronger and build resilience. One-parent-one-child trips are a wonderful way to bond, especially during transition years like early childhood or adolescence.
Travelling is truly something magical and an almost perfect tool for your child’s overall development. Thus, make it an important part of your yearly planner and design an interesting, out-of-the-box holiday for your family next. After all, the benefits of family vacations for children go far beyond what any textbook can teach.
I have gathered diverse experience working as lecturer in colleges as well as in schools, presently working in Doon International School as Special Educator/Psychologist. In my research papers I have extensively worked with and written about the relationship between delinquency proneness and various personality factorsin adolescents. Have also contributed to research as an attaché in the Psychiatry department of PGI (Chandigarh).
Dr. Rashi Nirwani Jain M.Sc. (Child Development), Ph.D. (Psychology).