Sure, family road trips are fun. But in addition to all those fun times, family travel has some amazing benefits. Family travel teaches:
Cooperation: Whether choosing a place for dinner, or the next activity — you have to compromise and consider each other’s feelings.
Budgeting: Unless you have an unlimited supply of money, figuring out how to pay for activities becomes a family affair.
Resourcefulness: Often you’ll need to solve a problem on the road without your everyday problem solving tools.
Flexibility: When you’re traveling, the unexpected happens much more often than when you’re at home.
Communication: At home, upset family members can retreat to their corner of the house. When you’re traveling together, you can’t easily hide your problems.
Patience: Whether waiting on line, or taking turns in the single shared bathroom, traveling with your family requires you to practice your patience.
Wonderment: When you’re traveling, every day is an opportunity to experience new sights and different ways of doing things. Interesting discussions are ripe for the taking about how things are not the same as in your home town.
Adventure: Out in the world there are things to see, places to explore, people to meet that will never be found on the couch in your own living room.
Respect: Spend more than a week outside of your comfort zone and you’ll realize there’s more to gain in accepting and respecting the local rules, than in trying to get the locals to change to accommodate you.
Bonding: When you’re traveling together, you’re relying on one another all day, every day.
Spontaneity: On vacation, you can allow yourself to wake up mornings and wonder: What should we do today? How often does that happen at home?
Camaraderie: There’s something about having shared experiences that will bring your family closer than you could ever imagine. Especially if they are unforeseen and scary!
Strength: There will come times when traveling when things don’t go as planned and you need to be strong. Don’t look upon this as a disaster, but as an opportunity! Maybe your river raft flipped over or you took a scary ride down Pike’s Peak. Challenging yourself, or your kids, and finding you’re up to the challenge – that’s a priceless gift.
Memories: The stuff you buy today, will someday be thrown away or sold. The memories you make on your travels, you’ll carry with you for the rest of your life.
We were fortunate enough to have six weeks together on the road last summer, it has changed us in so many amazing ways. What do you look forward to most when you plan a family vacation?
