Adventur

The nightmare situation: You’ve put the time, effort, and finances into planning a vacation, only to get there and have the kids complain about being bored, not liking the planned activities, or being into something ENTIRELY different than the main attraction (we spent SO much on theme park tickets only for them to prefer the hotel pool! What the heck?!).

No doubt dads are doing their part, but with 82% of travel decisions made by women, one parent is disproportionately carrying the load when it comes to investing their own time and mental energy into the planning process. This leads to even more frustration and exhaustion when a planned trip doesn’t meet the troop’s expectations.

A way around this: Involve the kids in trip planning to increase excitement and satisfaction with a trip.

The First Trip

Our family of four has been traveling together since our girls were little, but it only took one vacation with a “blah” reception for me to throw in the towel on being the sole trip planner for family vacations.

While it’s easy to be angry or frustrated at my efforts getting a lukewarm reception, the reality is that I didn’t ask the others what they wanted from their experience—I made assumptions about what they would like. It shouldn’t have surprised me that there were elements that they were less-than-thrilled about, or that there were other things they might have preferred to the choices I made. We are different people, after all.

When the time came to plan the next family adventure, it was family meeting time.

First: Budget

As with any trip, the budget is an important starting point. While you might not communicate that with the kids (depending on age), this will frame your conversation and the options you entertain. For example, if you have a weekend road trip budget, you wouldn’t be providing options for a trip to Paris.

Know in advance what you might be able to budget for the trip so you can appropriately guide decision making.

Ask: Where Do We Want to Go?

Children, even very young ones, can help choose the destination of your family vacation. Depending on their age and your travel frequency, it might be more appropriate to provide options from which they can choose.

“Would you like to go to an amusement park for four days with roller coasters and a water park, or would you like to go on a cruise to an island?“

Older kids might have an idea of where they want to go based on things they’ve learned in school or movies they’ve seen. Depending on your budget, you might need to adjust to meet their interest. For example, a child interested in visiting Egypt might be fascinated by a special exhibit at a museum in a new city. A child interested a road trip that would take 2 months might be satisfied by covering a portion of the route.

Be prepared with highlights of what they would experience with each option. Cover what the accommodations might be light, what the food might be like, what there will be to do, etc.

One of our favorite things to do when we are making decisions about travel destinations is to watch YouTube videos about the destinations (or the ship, if we’re taking a cruise) to get a feel for what to expect. After we have had a chance to learn about the options, then we vote for what we’re most excited about.

Encourage Research

Once a destination is chosen, engage the kids in selecting what to do on the vacation. This comes in the form of research about highlights, hot spots, key sights, great restaurants, and more.

Younger children should be presented with options from which to choose (“Would you like to go for a hike to a waterfall, or visit the big zoo?”). It’s not necessary to engage them in selecting every element of the trip, but when they feel that they’ve had a chance to pick the things you do, they’re much more likely to be excited about the activity, whatever it may be. My kids always feel a sense of ownership over the activities they choose, and feel a sense of leadership in learning about the activity and what the family can or should expect.

Older children may be tasked with researching the destination to identify the sites they’d like to put forth for family consideration.

When my kids selected Rome as a destination, they were tasked with researching the sites they wanted to see. We took out a book about Rome at the library, and they made a list of must-see sites in the city based on what they read.

Assemble an Itinerary Together

You have a destination and the must-do activities—now it’s time to assemble the itinerary so everyone knows what to expect.

For some trips, like a cruise, an itinerary will be easy to provide, as these are nearly complete at the time of booking. For other trips, creating a day-by-day itinerary with a loose plan of what you’ll do in the morning, afternoon, and evening (paired with restaurants if you have must-do locations) will provide the family a high-level view of the planned activities and ensure you have a document with everything in one place.

Assembling an itinerary together helps others speak up if they don’t like how things are working out. For example, if you are planning to schedule an early activity but the rest of the crew doesn’t want to wake up early, this is their chance to speak up and impact how the trip is planned.

Last, involving everyone in the itinerary avoids the “Are we doing [insert activity name]?” “When are we doing that?” questions. Everyone knows what the plan is, because you all had a part in deciding what will happen on the trip, and when.

Create a Trip Binder

One of the best things I’ve done for our family trips is have a trip binder with all of our trip documents, paper tickets, the printed itinerary document, and any confirmations for the trip. While much of this is redundant to digital tickets and reservation confirmations, the kids enjoy flipping through the binder in the evenings or on travel days to get a handle on what the trip has in store.

And again, that binder saves my sanity when the answer to every “What time is [name the activity]?” or “What are we doing tomorrow?” is “Look in the binder!”

Celebrate Kids’ Picks

This is a small one, but a good one: When we get to an activity that one of the kids selected, we acknowledge their contribution to the planning process. Whether that’s a high-five for a solid pick, or a slack-jawed “THIS WAS AMAZING!”—as was the case with my daughter’s pick to visit the Borghese Gallery—that little celebration fuels them for the next trip. And also helps them understand that when people put energy into something, it’s kind to recognize that contribution.

Nearly 1 in 5 women return from vacations say they need a vacation from their vacation, exhausted by both the planning process and—grand assumption here—carrying the family through the experience. Involve the kids in vacation planning to generate excitement and a vacation that they will be equally excited about and help alleviate the pressure of finding something that everyone will love.