I am so excited for this column! I cannot wait to hear more trials and tribulations from the travel circuit with your little one. We recently took our 9 month-old son to Puerta Vallarta and I was cheered to see you had all the same questions, internal debates, and (insanely) long packing list as I did. My own favorite story regarding gear was taking our older daughter to Panama when she was also 9 months old and schlepping her infant car-seat on a train across the isthmus where we were met by a prearranged driver. We picked a driver who had a van so the car seat would be sure to fit… only to discover that the van didn’t have any seat belts to attach the car seat!
Bravo! Especially for even considering the potential impact on your campground neighbors. I am concerned about this column encouraging the rampant trend of parents, thinking only of their children, raising children who think only of themselves.
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Might I suggest you and readers consider the travel writing of Erin McKittrick who lives in Seldovia, AK. First with her husband, now they travel with children
My favorite travelling story. I often went alone with two small children ( two and four) between Minneapolis and Albany NY, changing in Detroit. I came armed with lots and lots of new small toys, books, snacks. Once in front of us a very badly behaved little boy was jumping around, yelling. The father looked back at us and said "How do you do it?" The answer was our children ALWAYS were required to sit in the car with seatbelts on, and just took it for granted. A year earlier on a similar trip I got the two little ones situated in a seat, next to an obvious businessman. Oh no, I thought. But after we sat down and got ourselves comfortable, he leaned over and said "lady, I am going to buy you a drink!" True story. Then he proceeded to read to my son all the way to Detroit. Most people are good.
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This column looks fantastic, look forward to it! We have already taken our 21 month old to Tulum, Europe and the Caribbean, looking forward to more trips ahead and hearing your thoughts.
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Is your budget $2,400 per trip, or for a month, or for the year of travel? It would be helpful to know just how frugal you are planning to be.
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As with most things regarding children, success in traveling with children depends on the personality of the child. From an early age our first child couldn't handle time zone changes, couldn't sleep and therefore was a bear for the whole trip. The child didn't like being in strange places, couldn't sleep away from home and was generally uncomfortable throughout any travel. The other child was completely relaxed but annoyed by the first one.
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We started traveling with our daughter when she was three months and she's now 16 and a travel fanatic. Last summer she went to Chile alone. It's so worth it to expose kids to the world as often as you can. The worst period for us were those early toddler years on a plane. That can be brutal but it's short-lived.
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Looking forward to this column! My husband and I are expecting our first child in July and have been told by countless people that we will have to put our vacations and and weekend getaways on hiatus. We refuse to and are determined to make sure we can continue to explore the world (on a budget!) with little one in tow and will look to you for ideas and tips to come! Glad to see that we will be in good company!
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Good for you. Enjoy the journey.
Would've been nice to have this column written by someone with 2 or more kids. As anyone with more than 1 kids knows, it's a completely different ballgame when you are traveling with more than one kid. So I'm not exactly looking forward to you lecturing smugly on the ease or even the hardship of traveling with one kid, let alone an infant (which can be much easier than traveling with older kids). From that perspective, can you say you've even really been around the block?
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I would think that someone who is traveling with their first child will have plenty to figure out along the way and will probably find that there are a lot of downs as well as ups. The author says that she believes that traveling with her daughter will become more difficult. At no point does she claim to have been "around the block"? But you certainly sound like someone who has, and who regrets it a lot.
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We traveled several times a year, throughout the world, since our kids were born in 1988. One secret to success is to let them find their own interest at each location. We drove a considerable distance specifically to show our pre-school daughter the great redwoods in CA. We figured it would install an awe of nature, commitment to natural preservation, etc. Her fascination was not up but down. The long pine needles could be pushed into little piles to make a play farm with pine cone segments for horses. We realized that was fine, she had a great day in the woods and that was what would bring her to preserving our parks.
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My mother always said that she traveled more after having children than before. When I was two months old, my parents and grandparents drove from Minneapolis to Boston to visit relatives. When I was four and my first brother was three months old, we took a winter vacation in the South. There was never a time when we didn't travel around the country, often in a trailer or folding tent trailer. By the time I graduated from high school, I had visited 38 states and several foreign countries.
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it depends where you go. I refused to take kids to Nepal and to Africa until I was certain they could handle severe diarrhea. and a three month y.o. in a tent is a different deal than a toddler who wakes at 4 am and is READY TO GO
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As a single working mamma in the tourism Industry and with two toddlers , I will be looking forward to reading your column! We have already been to Cancun, Puerto Vallarta and will be visiting relatives in Tijuana next fall...
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Thank you! We've found the key to traveling with our 2-year old is planning, loads of wipes and flexibility.
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Bravo! I will keep an eye out for your columns, We took our first post-baby trip when our son was 3 months old. We were moving to Europe for a year. Our dog went too. We had a very finite budget. Some of our friends thought we were crazy while others thought we were brave. We were neither. It was fabulous, and we haven't stopped traveling.
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My husband and I work in the travel industry. We have traveled all over the world with our children. They are now off in college and traveling on their own. I hope to think we expanded their horizons, planted the travel bug, and created more companionate, easy going young adults.
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