FAMILY VACATION TIPS

10 Ways to Improve Your Family Vacation
(for parents with children school aged and older)
By David Boesch, M.D.*
additional tips by Keri in italics

1. Let the kids help plan the trip. Let them pick the destination for a day or plan the day’s sightseeing. This way they will be doing what interests them. They aren’t likely to choose an art museum or theater, but whatever they decide will balance out the cultural activities you have chosen.
2. Manage expectations. If you tell your kids that a car ride is going to take four hours and it takes four and a half hours, they will be angry because you are late. If you tell them it is going to take six hours and it takes four and a half, they will be stoked that you are early. High expectations beget disappointments; even if you are going to a great spot, don’t make the mistake of talking it up too much. Talk about what is going to happen at the event. Walk through the drive; where you will be stopping and how long it is will be between those stops. This is so they have a sense of time and purpose to the day.
3. Make a spontaneous rule that can break up the road trip at any moment. We vowed we would stop at every go-kart track. This is a great way to break up a boring drive. It doesn’t have to be go-karts – it can be a driving range, batting cages or whatever your family enjoys – but it helps to have something for the kids to look for that results in a spontaneous stop. Be sure you collaborate on the "rule" to make it fun for everyone!
4. Develop a tradition around food. For us this was a pizza contest. One of our goals during our year of travel was to find the world’s greatest pizza. At each stop we asked the locals where to find “the best pizza in town.”
5. Use “dollar snacks” to save money and limit empty calories. We treated our kids to one snack per day, as long as it cost under a dollar and has less than 300 calories. If someone didn’t want a snack, we would give them the dollar to save or spend on a non-food item.
6. Turn museums into treasure hunts. Whenever we visited a museum, we started in the gift shop, where each of us bought a postcard of a famous exhibit. We would read about the exhibit in one of the books and then searched for it. Once we found the exhibit, whoever had the postcard would give a brief presentation. No two objects could be in the same section of the museum, which guaranteed that we would walk by a lot of different stuff. The postcard could then be cut into a puzzle for a game in the car or hotel.
7. Use electronics to your advantage. Automobile DVD players and other portable electronics can be a godsend on a long road trip. But some technology can be destructive to family time. (i.e. a teen texting her BFF instead of looking at the Statue of Liberty or a father who turns on the t.v. and plops on the bed as soon as he checks into the hotel). Not having these distractions forces your family to interact more, and isn’t that the point of travel? Make sure that the rules for electronic use are agreed upon BEFORE you leave for your trip.
8. Read your kid’s body language. Throughout our year of travel we were constantly tinkering with the pace of our trip. If our children were bored, we did activities to tire them out. If they were tired, we slowed down to let them rest. There is no requirement that says you have to see every single monument in Washington D.C. for the trip to be a success. It is okay to leave some famous sights for the next time!!
9. Don’t be afraid to split up for a couple days. Many times during our trip the boys went one ways and the girls another. This allows family members with different interests to do what they want.
10. Don’t leave home without a tour book. Throughout our travels we bought dozens of tour books and they have all paid for themselves many times over in saving money and avoiding hassles. The Internet is no substitute for a book that you can carry in the car and pass around to members of the family to discuss restaurants and accommodations.

*Four years ago, David Boesch, his wife Jill, and their three children packed up their minivan and set off on a one-year trip around the world that would take them to 17 countries on six continents. As time went by, their family dynamics improved dramatically. The kids became experienced travelers who tolerated long trips without complaining and David and Jill learned a few parenting tricks that helped foster family harmony.