Let Them Carry Their Own Luggage

by Katie Tamony

I was never a Disneyland kind of mom. Of course, I knew that we needed to take the kids there at least once in their young lives, but I didn’t relish the long lines, the compulsion to buy things, the frenzied pace of trying to see the whole park in a day when they were young. Luckily for my daughters, I got over that stressed out feeling more than once to watch them light up as they entered It’s A Small World, or meet Cinderella and Goofy ‘in person’, and later, take their first ride on Space Mountain. We ended up taking them to Disneyland at least 3 times, including at Christmas, and now that they are adults, I look back on the trips to the Magic Kingdom as just that--pure magic.

Watching your kids as they experience new worlds, and sharing time with them on trips away from home, is one of the most precious parts of being a parent. Sometimes, we get too caught up in the logistics of planning the perfect vacation, or capturing the perfect photo, that we forget to just enjoy the little moments of discovery for our kids. Now that my daughters are grown, I often watch other families on vacation with young kids and my heart swells with a sweet envy. “The time your kids are really kids with you is so brief,” my own mother would remind me. "Make the most of it.” Here’s my advice on making the most of your travel with kids this summer:

Take a vacation. Sounds simple, but so many of us busy working parents put it off and tell ourselves that the kids will be okay going to camp. But you need to take at least a week’s vacation in summer, so your kids can enjoy being with the relaxed version of you, in shorts and flip flops, licking an ice cream cone, with no place special you need to be.

Let them carry their own luggage. We bought our daughters their own bags on wheels, and they learned early on to pack only what they could carry. They felt so responsible walking through the airport with their own bags, and they behaved like polite adults on airplanes.

Read about places you’re going, before and after. Before our first trip to Hawaii, I bought a book of Hawaiian nursery rhymes called Tutu Nene. The girls were in preschool, and we read the book every night. When we arrived in Hawaii, they understood how the Hawaiian alphabet worked and squealed when they saw birds like they’d seen in the book. It made them feel like smart little travelers.

Let them take their own photos. You’ll be amazed at the way they see their trip, the views they capture, and how much they’ll want to share their story with others.

Give them a trip allowance. Let them manage their own souvenir purchases, but buy them an extra gift along the way that’s from you.

Go to some places year after year, but take new adventures, too. My girls were lucky to go to my parents’ cabin every summer, but also to try out new destinations often with us. They could see how their favorite place changed (or didn’t) with the passage of time, and how their views of the same place changed as they grew older.

We took the girls to Washington D.C., Hawaii, Mexico, and Japan, took them camping all over, took them to 5-star hotels, took them to visit boring family and fun family, made them eat strange things and take buses and subways...and on every trip, I tried to remember what my mom said: Make the most of it! Watch your kids as they watch their world expand. Yours will, too.

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Katie Tamony is vice president and editor-in-chief of Sunset, the magazine of Western living and a subsidiary of Time Inc. Sunset has a circulation of more than 1.2 million readers throughout the 13 Western states. Prior to joining Sunset, Ms. Tamony was an associate editor and then managing editor with Northern California Home & Garden. In 1990, she began freelancing for Parenting Magazine and wrote Your Second Pregnancy (Chicago Review Press, 1995), a book that sold more than 30,000 copies. A native of Sebastopol, Calif., Ms. Tamony earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, she resides in Oakland California.