Over the past decade of holidays, we’ve covered 5 continents with our son, beginning when he was 4 months old. This weekend a friend suggested it would be useful to others to share what we’ve learned about planning these trips. So
over the next 10 weeks I’ll unpack one of our insights on small family vacations.
Over the years, we’ve come up with an approach for making choices from the smorgasbords of everything possible. With young children, this is about parents making the call, but as children get older, it’s much more about co-creating
an itinerary that takes into account the widely varying interests of everyone in the family.
The formula that has emerged and worked well for us looks like this: 1 for you, 1 for me and 2 for we. In other words, each person in the family gets to propose the one thing they want to experience on the holiday and agree two
things that the whole family would enjoy. (Families with more than 2 children would need to adapt this approach, such as grouping children , or having 1 for children, 1 for adults and 2 for the whole family.)
Don’t tell them, but it’s a great way of sneaking in research with children, especially aged 8 and above. Powered by self-interest, it requires them to grapple with:
- Geography, maps, transportation — Is the thing I want to do reachable or within a reasonable distance?
- Economics — What is the total cost of it and how can we afford it? What is the budget? (You could also give them a budget and a day and let them plan it for everyone.)
- Information sources, from the library, book shop and the internet, to information from their peers and others.
Decision time lets us talk about the things we’re each interested in doing and making choices to create an itinerary that has something for everyone. It’s a great exercise in collaborative decision making and respecting and understanding
different perspectives. Its also requires that each person think about how to persuasively present their preferred options.
When my son was young, this was more about presenting the itinerary we parents had put together and pointing out the things in it that included something for everyone. It tested his emotional maturity in making choices between limited
options, a process that evolved from self-centered unhappiness in not being able to do all the options, to tempering disappointment with gratitude for the opportunity to do something he chose. Now that he’s hit the double digits,
it has lead to interesting conversations that weave in history and culture.
So what does this look like in practice?
France, 2010, age 3 (
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1 for you: Paris, as experienced through its parks and playgrounds
1 for me: Wine tasting in Provence
2 for we: Exploring old castles and riding the TGV (high-speed train)
Tokyo, 2016, age 8
1 for you: Pokemon Centre
1 for me: Senso-ji (Asakua Temple)
2 for we: Taiko drumming lessons and Yoyogi Park
Mongolia, 2016, age 9 (
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1 for you: Eagle hunting in the westernmost Bayan-Ölgii province.
1 for me: Bhuddist temples and shrines.
2 for we: Stay with nomad families and in traditional gers.
Great Britain, 2017, age 10
For this upcoming trip, we’ve boiled it down to:
1 for you: LEGOLand
1 for me: Hiking in the Scottish Highlands
2 for we: Harry Potter Studios and visiting places linked to the legend of King Arthur.
This rubric may or may not work for you, but here’s hoping it might be helpful in thinking about ways to make planning your next family trip a less-stressful and collective process.
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