Traveling With Young Adult Children

Traveling with your children as they mature and become young men and women is an enlightening experience. Gone are the days of “Are we there yet.” Although that may seem like a good thing, also gone are the days when they are locked up in the backseat, seatbelts secure and reliant and accepting of every choice you make. These golden times are replaced with adult conversation and mature reasoning. Well, at least it’s heading in that direction. With all travel there are a million things one cannot plan for, however the following three concepts are imperative to assure a successful vacation.

Decisions – Create discussions prior to your trip. Find out early what is important to each person. Determine what attractions and events that everyone wants to partake in. At the same time, understand that desires change with age. Theme parks may no longer hold the same allure they once did. You may find they are replaced by extreme sports, or have become more historical significant based due to their latest history course. Know before you go, but keep an open mind as itineraries often change due to delays or newly discovered

Drinking – The United States believes that the drinking age should be 21. However, the majority of the rest of the world believes 18 is just fine. I have also found in some parts of the world, ability to pay is the primary factor in determining how old is old enough. Regardless of how you feel, if your offspring has reached legal drinking age there is really little that you can say. So it is imperative that if you are against the idea of your less than 21 year old son or daughter drinking it should be discussed and understood prior to departing. The last thing you want to do is to be having this discussion/disagreement over dinner in some distant land.

Freedom – Perhaps the hardest thing in life is letting go of our children. Nowhere is this more obvious than when traveling international. The question is how much freedom to allow. Do we let them venture out on their own? If so, for how long, and what time is curfew? Several factors to be considered are but not limited to, their fluency in the local language and what attraction they want to experience? The difficult part is that customs and laws are unfamiliar. We must ask ourselves how comfortable we are in the country before determining how much freedom should be given. Although chauvinistic, I believe that young women face a far greater danger than young men. That is not to say that young men do not make poor decisions, in my experience they make far more than the opposite sex. However, for the majority, the personal safety of young males is more secure than that of your daughters.

Traveling is about exploration and understanding. This is not only true for the traveler, but for the parents of the travelers. Spending uninterrupted time with our young adult children provides a wonderful opportunity to get to know the people they have become. It allows for ample time together where guards are let down and real identities surface. We learn how they deal with frustration, new surroundings and the awe of discovery. Just remember, the time traveling together can be even further enhanced if the trip’s expectations have been discussed and agreed upon prior to packing the first bag.