Involve Your Kids When Planning a Family Vacation
3 09 2007In my opinion, it is essential to involve your kids when planning a family vacation. Whether you are planning a Disney vacation, at trip to the Smoky Mountains, a visit to Wisconsin Dells, or anywhere else, involving your kids will help create a better experience for everyone.
I know, the control freak in you probably wants to plan the entire event. Well, that is how I am anyway. But, you will find that involving your children in your family vacation plans will actually help reduce your stress while also increasing their level of involvment with the trip.
When kids are involved in the family vacation planning, they feel as if they are an important member of the family and that their opinion counts. This in of itself should be good enough reason to involve them in the planning. But, one of the great benefits is that it will actually help reduce the whining during the family vacation. After all, if your kids played a role in the planning, it becomes a bit more diffcult for them to complain about the plans.
Of course, you can still narrow down the choices that you give to your kids. That way, you can make sure that any activity they select will fit within your budget and will be something that you can tolerate visiting.
I always involve the entire family in my planning process. Sometimes, I find that the things they want to do are different from what I thought they would be interested in. So, it always pays to ask and it will definitely lead to a far more pleasant family vacation experience.
I look forward to planning vacations when the kids are involved. I think the best memories come from the memories they’re able to share about the whole vacation including the getting ready and out the door stages!!!
thanks for the good suggestions - I tend to plan the whole thing myself and then I am amazed when no one wants to do what I want to do! As we are thinking about our spring break in 2008, I will keep this idea in mind and involve the kids in the decisions about what to see. Thanks!
Its very important to involve the kids. I remember being very disapointed as a kid when vacation time came up and mom and dad had already planned it without our input. Not that anything would have changed, but kids like to know that they are part of the process.
Great ideas! I think families will enjoy themselves much more if they take your advice. I wrote an article on this topic, too, that may be helpful. You can read it at http://www.howtodothings.com/travel/how-to-travel-with-children . I hope you find it informative, too!