INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL FOR KIDS

I am a huge proponent of children and young adults travelling abroad and have encouraged my own children to do so when the opportunities have arisen, sometimes at the expense of my own travel plans. I encourage parents to either travel internationally with their children and/or allow them to travel with a group. Not only is it important to travel internationally because of the sights, sounds and smells of a foreign destination but it takes the traveler out of the realm of their ordinary. Travel abroad offers young people an opportunity to exercise patience, resilience and a sense of humor.

One benefit I have seen with group travel, sans parents, is that young people are required to do more on their own. They learn to read maps and foreign street signs, exchange pleasantries in a foreign language, exchange foreign currency and compute the cost of their purchases in that currency, and follow local customs and rules. Without their parents around, young people are more directly responsible for resolving the situations that they encounter and this can challenge them and improve their problem-solving skills.

While on a two week Study-German-Abroad program, my 16-year-old son missed his stop on a train in Berlin. After being turned down by several train patrons whom he asked for help to contact his host family, he decided to stay on the train until it had run its course. When he got off the train, he scoped out several of the area businesses and decided that someone in the local bar would surely help him. The kindly bartender contacted his host family and while they were waiting for them to arrive, the bartender gave my son his first beer (at least he said it was his first). When I asked him why he chose the bar he told me that he thought the people in there would be a happier and more helpful lot than the grumpy people that he spoke to on the train. I thought that was pretty resourceful for a kid who was traveling abroad for the first time – he was in a jam but he figured out a solution.

Adverse situations while travelling can turn into great adventures and invariably, make for some of the best and most enduring family stories. As children get older and the family dynamic changes from parent-child to person-person, it is important to travel internationally as a family and let your children see the great person that you really are, not just “the parent”, and parents get to experience the adult person that their children are becoming. -Claire, April 2014