When I was 13, my mom took me to Connecticut to visit family for the summer. We rode the Amtrak from Toronto to New York and then drove the rest of the way. On the train over, while I was gorging on tiny pizzas in the bar cart, I saw the most glamorous woman. She was dressed entirely in white, painting her nails a deep blood red. I’d only seen the small rectangular Chanel nail-polish bottle — Vamp, specifically — in the dog-eared copies of Vogue I pored over at the library and was blown away to see it in real life on a real-life person.
Before we’d left home, I was struggling with becoming a teen, super uncomfortable in my body and paralyzed by anxiety that I might say or do the wrong thing at school or with my friends. After spending a month hanging out with my cousins, biking around their little town on my own and spending hours watching the bootleg recording they’d made of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged episode, I went home a different person. More independent, more confident, and less afraid of being myself. That trip had a huge impact on my tiny mind, opening up my world in a necessary way.
Travel has a way of doing that, of expanding and stretching, not just my worldview, but my ability to overcome challenges and deal with stuff that’s hard and unexpected. Having kids though can make travel difficult, expensive and exhausting, so it’s tempting to do it less, to wait until the kids are older and can get “more out of it,” encouraging us to stay close to home to make it easier on everyone.
The hard truth is this: It actually is worth the stress, the mountain of gear, and the many meltdowns that will inevitably go down on the road.
A few years ago, we left London, where my husband and I lived for two years, when I became pregnant with our second child. We loved the city and it was hard to leave; we’d frequently talk eagerly about returning with the kids one day, especially our oldest, who spent his first years in the city.
This summer, we made the journey back with our three kids in tow, a harrowing prospect when we take a walk down the block, let alone go across an ocean. We hoofed it all over town, braved busy museums and bustling restaurants. For the most part, my husband and I were focused on logistics, making sure each kid was accounted for, fed, hydrated, and sunscreened.
One day, though, sitting in a garden in East London where we used to spend a lot of time with our eldest, I noticed something small yet remarkable happening with him, now 6 years old. At home, he can be incredibly shy, even struggling to say hi back to friends and family, nervous about engaging or sparking a conversation. I’ve often wondered what I should do to help him come out of his shell and build more confidence, especially as he moves through grade school.
I heard my son asking another kid where he was from. It struck me because I’d never heard him initiate an exchange like that with a stranger. When I went back a little later to tell the kids to get ready to leave, my son and this kid begged me to let them play a little longer. They’d become fast friends, and I was so happy for him that we lingered a lot longer than we’d planned.
A couple of days later, getting off the train in Brixton, both older kids started chatting with a little girl playing on a toy train outside the station as I was getting our stuff together. As we were walking away, my son waved bye to the girl and then took my hand and said, “It’s so easy making friends in London.”
Every frustration and bit of exhaustion I was feeling with dragging three kids around a massive city suddenly disappeared. So often on trips, I’m focused on what I’m experiencing and what the holiday will be like on us, the adults. The packing and lugging and negotiating. But that little remark reminded me that these little people are also growing, being challenged, and getting inspired and excited by their new surroundings.
In just a few days out of our usual routine, my son had found the kind of self-confidence I thought might take another couple of years to build.
Inspired by this small yet huge revelation, I asked other parents on X about the ways their own kids have grown while traveling. It turns out, it’s not just young kids like my own that benefit from busting out of regular routines.
Tom, a dad in Toronto, said he’d noticed several occasions where “those defensive adolescent walls” of his now-18-year-old “really tumbled down when we got away from home.” On a day trip they took hiking in a town a couple of hours outside the city at the end of his teen’s “COVID-ravaged” ninth-grade year, his son “spontaneously broke down to share how absolutely isolated and alone he felt.” Though it was heartbreaking for Tom, the revelation allowed them to work on getting his teen help as a family. “I think I’ll always remember that rainy day in the gorge,” he said. “It definitely wouldn’t have happened that way hunkered down in East York.” Other parents told me about how their very little kids discovered what home means to them through travel or finally took responsibility for their personal space and belongings while on a trip.
Research backs up our experiences with our kids. A 2016 study in the U.S. of the social impact of travel on students showed that kids who get out of their usual routine are more outgoing, have more confidence and independence, and have more curiosity toward the world. They also go on to do better in school. I’ve definitely noticed my son asking more questions about the world, not just the new things he’s experiencing on our trip, but trying to connect the dots to his own life back home.
Head down, in the throes of parenting, it can be easy to miss some of the simpler milestones that aren’t obvious — the first steps or words or read words. These advancements, though, are equally as important; the people we’re raising are learning how to navigate the world, see and feel its pleasures and challenges and scope and start to do it on their own, in little and big ways.
It definitely puts the hard stuff — the mornings when everyone is cranky and tired and begs for a cupcake or a stuffy they forgot at home — into perspective, making the prospect of traveling as a family not just more appealing but something that’s key to the growth of our kids, whether it’s a subway ride to the other side of town or a plane ride to a different continent.
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