Sure, travel with pint-sized travelers is a far cry from the carefree days of hitchhiking across the country after college.
It brings with it its own challenges and rewards—and the chance to see the beauty of the world through fresh eyes.
Virtuous Traveler Leslie Garrett shares her travel tips from a mom’s perspective…
I admit it. Kids have cramped my style.
I used to travel a lot and I always traveled light. A backpack containing one pair of pants, a sweater, some traveler’s checks and a camera saw me through most of Europe. The same backpack, a bathing suit, a Visa card, and a camera saw me through much of Southeast Asia.
These days, I’m as likely to be carting a Dora the Explorer backpack stuffed with a blankie, a pair of plastic high heels, a Junie B. Jones book and a bedraggled cat named Ginger, often even lugging the pint-sized traveler as well.
Yes, traveling with kids comes with its own baggage—and I’m not just speaking literally here.
Travel, however, is such a gift that I can’t help but share it with the little people I love most. Even in spite of the fact (or, perhaps because) it can pose such challenges. However, while I’ve often anticipated the worse, I’ve consistently been pleasantly surprised. My children may not travel light … but they certainly travel well.
Herewith, my hard-won experience of hitting the road with tiny travelers:
AVOIDING THE GOLDEN ARCHES
Don’t take your kids to some beautiful place on earth … then seek out exactly the food you eat (or, if you’re like me, avoid) back home. Yes, your kids might fuss when faced with something that looks “different.” But presented with no other options, they won’t starve themselves.
And they just might discover, as my then-7-year-old daughter did a few years ago, that Cajun food is “really, really good.” What’s more, by eating locally—at restaurants or grocery stores that support local agriculture—you’re supporting the community in which you’ve decided to vacation.
And, you’re also teaching your kids that different isn’t bad it’s just … different.
SEEK OUT GREEN TRANSPORTATION
Adults are often guilty of simply wanting to get from A to B as quickly as possible. Kids, on the other hand, are living incarnations of the adage “enjoy the journey.” Consider other ways to get where you’re going, or of getting around once you’ve arrived.
One of my favorite memories is of bouncing over rain-rutted dirt roads in Belize on a rusty bicycle with my then-5-year-old son in a too-small child seat and without a helmet (I took off before my husband—“Captain Safety” as I call him—saw us).
We biked into town and from our two-wheeled perch we saw a vibrant community, from kids shooting marbles in the alleys to row after row of laundry flapping in the breeze. We ducked into an ice-cream shack for a cool treat and chatted with the friendly locals. We even got to meet the owners and see the family’s incredible aquarium.
Consider bikes, buses, trains or your feet. Your kids will point out things you wouldn’t even notice … and you’ll be going slowly enough to see them.
LEAVE NO TRACE … OR AT LEAST TRY
Yeah, right, I can hear you moan. You’ve got a baby in diapers, a toddler in Pull-Ups and a nagging addiction to individually wrapped cereal bars.
If you can’t live trash-free (and who among us with children can?), at least take your trash with you if you’re camping or if you’re staying in an area where local infrastructure is, shall we say, primitive.
Better still, research the alternatives (flushable or biodegradable disposables? Corn-based biodegradable packaging?) and lighten your load.
SLOW IS THE WAY TO GO
One lesson I learned the hard way was that it takes my kids three full nights before they settle down enough to sleep like normal little people and not like some miniature radical jacked up on fresh air and mango juice intent on sleeping in five-minute increments.
As a result, we now hardly consider a vacation that’s fewer than 10 days. Two or three weeks are even better and I’m working on an entire month (any offers??) with the kids in the south of France. If you have to skip out on the three- and four-day vacations to save up for one big trip, so be it. Not only is staying in one destination better for the planet, but you get a far better sense of a place—and its people—when you slow down enough to smell not only the flowers, but the cuisine and the air. You’ll even get a whiff of the political and cultural climate.
FINDING AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCES
One of the most important contributions of travel (and one of the reasons I continue to promote sustainable travel even though many of us know it’s something of an oxymoron), is my conviction that meeting others in their cultures and communities gives us an understanding of and appreciation for our differences.
It’s why I take my kids on trips in which we’re immersed in communities, rather than isolated at a resort. There’s a fear factor that seems to come into play when parents imagine taking their kids to less “brochure-type” destinations.
Yet those who’ve done it— including my friend and her Middle-East foreign correspondent husband who took their toddlers to Lebanon and Syria—insist that it will change your children’s view of the world for the better. It will help them understand that the news we read is only one side of the story … and encourage them to think for themselves. Perhaps that’s a lot to ask from a family vacation. But it’s something that many will deliver.
Leslie Garrett is author of The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World.Visit her at www.thevirtuoustraveler.com.
Previously By Leslie Garrett::
Capital Green: Washington, DC’s Eco-Tourism Cred
Carbon Offsets: Travel With a Clean Conscience?
Eco-Oakland: The City You Only Thought You Knew
Chicago: More Green Than Meets the Eye
The Good, The Green and the Downright Crazy Tours
Don’t forget to check out our Responsible Travel section for more green travel ideas.
