In a world where families are living in individual tech worlds, travel could be the best way to bring families closer together. More and more families each year are taking adventurous, long-term trips with their children. Guided by a desire to spend more time with their loved ones, break away from the pressures of work and explore new cultures and lifestyles, many parents are taking their children out of their routines and are embarking on adventures with them. How much can a family benefit from travelling together?
Families that travel together often talk about their friendship and how it has improved substantially since they started travelling as a group. Friendship might not be necessary for survival, but we can all agree that it certainly adds value to our lives. Without the framework of a routined daily life, where periods of nagging about getting up, getting dressed, taking out the rubbish, eating properly, doing chores and homework and washing teeth shape every day, being out in the world provides you with an opportunity to remind yourself just how much you really love each other.
Travel often puts you in situations that cultivate mutual respect, fairness, trust and sincerity. Travelling together usually leads to more open communication and abandoning of standard disciplinary approaches in favor of developing a more considerate guiding process and encourages growth. Away from the pressures and crushing expectations of daily life, travel lets you discover happiness, security, freedom and optimism.
Alongside with developing friendship, travel makes you teammates. Your family members are the only people you know in foreign lands, and you learn how to always have each other’s back. Being on the road together makes you mutually reliant and connected to each other – your children become more than extras, or responsibilities – they become priceless members of the team.
In urban lifestyles and societies pressured by automation, climate change and worldwide integration, there are few opportunities to comprehend and accept the responsibilities adulthood entails. Each birthday is celebrated with cakes, candles and toys and is considered extremely important since it should represent an annual milestone and your readiness to seize and experience more difficult tasks in the upcoming year.
But, is that really the case? Children’s milestones can be celebrated and marked with a trip – an experience for the entire family that is more meaningful than a party, cake or another present. Hiking, for example, gives you and your children enough time to discuss and decide what you/they will strive for in the next year/s while bringing you closer together.
Travel shows us the real world, all of it, the good and the bad and allows our children to see a world different than their own. In doing so, it helps you tailor shared values – the extensive environment of traveling in the unknown offers new experiences filled with social, physical, intellectual and sensory interaction. The benefits for children, long-lasting memories for your family, happiness and the bonding opportunities provided by travel outweigh any possible difficulties you might expect when traveling with your children.
(1) Gow, Melanie. “5 Ways That Travel Brings Families Closer Together.” Wanderlust, www.wanderlust.co.uk/content/how-travel-brings-families-together/.