Should you Travel with your Kids before they're Old Enough to Remember it? My answer is YES. Here's why.
- Jennifer Evans
- Sep 8, 2024
- 5 min read
I often get asked, “Why do you spend so much time and money on trips your son will never remember?”
And the truth is - the reasons are absolutely endless.
When you look at the situation from a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full perspective, I’m about to list several reasons that traveling with young kids is a good idea. If the only negative part is that your kids won’t remember it, don’t the positives outweigh the negatives?
Reason 1: Your travel dreams shouldn’t end just because you become parents.
Just like your kid's age, you age, too. So many people are guilty of waiting until retirement to see the world. And unfortunately, a lot can change both internally and externally between now and the time you retire.
I’ve heard so many stories about a husband and wife wanting to travel together when they’re old and either one or both don’t make it to retirement age. Or sometimes even if they do make it to retirement age, their ability to move freely is limited.
My heart aches so badly for these people thinking about the amount of hours they had to work, just to achieve a goal that’s now out of their reach because they waited too long.
Even if you do make it to retirement and you’re in good health, external factors can make certain places unachievable in the future such as war, crime, global pandemics, natural disasters, and other factors that can destroy your dream destinations.
If a place is high on your bucket list, you deserve to make it happen before any factors make that goal impossible.
Reason 2: Your kids are only this age once
There is a HUGE difference between taking a 1-year-old to the beach and taking an 8-year-old to the beach.
A 1-year-old will sit in the sand, feel the world around them, smile at people who walk by, and play with seashells. Once they become older, they’ll want to swim in the ocean, play football, and build sand castles.
One experience isn’t better than the other, they’re just different.
Pushing a trip back to when your kids can remember it makes one of those experiences go away forever because once they aren’t babies, they’ll never be babies again.
Even if kids don’t remember the specifics of a trip, they are constantly evolving through their experiences as we do as adults, and letting them be in new environments often has a plethora of positive benefits down the road.
Reason 3: Mom and Dad deserve to make memories
After a couple becomes parents, their focus shifts to their children which is amazing to a certain extent. However, many couples end up getting divorced because they forget to prioritize each other too.
One of the most meaningful things you can do as a couple is watch the kids you made together smile and laugh while doing new things.
When our son was a year and a half, we took him to an amusement park that was 4 hours away from home. We put him on his very first amusement park ride and we were nervous about how it was going to go. As soon as the ride started moving and we saw the look on our son’s face, it brought my husband and I to literal tears.
We looked at each other and laughed because we couldn’t believe something so simple made us both start crying. But we both had a simultaneous lightbulb moment that our little boy was growing up and at that point, it wasn’t really about our son’s experience on the ride since he won’t remember it. But it was about Mom and Dad’s experience watching him soak it all in.
And still, to this day, that amusement park visit is one of my favorite memories together as a family and we never would have experienced it if we just stopped traveling.
Reason 4: Traveling with your kids young will make them smoother travelers in the future
Kids are always developing habits and following Mom and Dad’s lead. When you have a habit that you want them to develop for an entire lifetime, it’s incredibly helpful to start them on those habits as young as possible so they carry into the future.
For example, if you put a 10-year-old kid in the car for 8 hours for a road trip for the first time, it may feel extremely overwhelming to them and it may not be enjoyable for them which, in turn, makes it not enjoyable for you either.
However, if they’ve been going on 8-hour car rides for as long as they can remember, it’ll feel like second nature to them and the hurdles will be easier to overcome.
As the parent and coordinator of these trips, going on them often also gives you a chance to learn the tips and tricks involved with traveling with kids and learn what works best and what doesn’t work for your family which means it will get easier for you as time goes on as well.
Reason 5: Years that your kids don’t remember are some of the most influential years of their lives when it comes to development
Kids' brains are developing at a high rate of speed which means even the years they don’t remember are some of the most influential years of their lives.
According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services,
“Early childhood experiences from birth to age 8 affect the development of the brain's architecture, which provides the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health.”
Being in unfamiliar environments and living real-world experiences provide a learning experience for kids that they’ll never be able to replicate in a classroom.
While learning from a book is effective for certain things and is still an important piece of a kid's life, letting them go out of their comfort zone and use their imagination outdoors will help them become well-rounded adults.
Moral of the story... Travel with your kids and travel OFTEN!
Don’t get me wrong - kids don’t have to go on EVERY adventure with you. Mom and Dad deserve some kid-free bonding time (or even some solo traveling). There are a lot of benefits of leaving your kids at home and some of my favorite trips have been just my husband and I.
It’s important to develop a healthy balance between marital bonding trips, personal exploration, and family adventures.
If you want traveling and exploring to become a long-term part of your kids' lives even after they enter adulthood themselves, start them as young as possible. It’s affecting them more than you might think!
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