Parent- child travel: Creating bonds forever
“Two of the greatest gifts you can give your children are roots and wings” Hodding Carter.
Open the world to your children, take them out, experience the unique and equip them with confidence to fly.
Travelling with your child can be a very exciting and adventurous experience. Every journey or vacation is not about relaxing or visiting major landmarks. Some of the most memorable and exciting travels, are the ones where we learn and explore. Places which make us think, understand and wonder at the multifariousness of our world. We want to share such experiences with our children and hope it kindles a LOVE FORTHE DIFFERENT in them.
Some of the advantages of travelling can be categorized as follows:
1. Travelling Strengthens Bonds
While travelling to unusual destinations, parent-child can face different kinds of challenges. Something that they are not used to in their daily lives. This showcases the best and the worst for each, their problem-solving abilities, sense of humor, adaptability to change and a lot more These range of experiences strengthens the bonding with each other as well as make us accept each member’s limits and capabilities. A bond which stays effective back in the “real” world too.
2. Promotes Interest in School Curriculum
Planning a trip around your child’s curriculum adds real-life experiences and tangibility to what children are reading and learning in school. A place from history, landform from geography, origin of English classic like Shakespeare etc. can be planned to give credibility to the school learning. Furthermore, there have been various studies that shows that travelling improves curiosity, flexible thinking and thus academic performances in children.
3. Teaching Tolerance and Acceptance
No trip is perfect no matter how much you plan. Especially those offbeat places where the commonly expected things/facilities aren’t available. This teaches children to adapt to new situations, accept and deal with challenges and very importantly realize how a commonplace situation/thing can be a challenge in a different culture or place. They learn to make do without that supposedly “important stuff”.
4. Travelling enhances Social Development
Social development starts the moment baby tries to follow the sound of a caregiver. It increases with leaps and bound as the child interacts with more and more people. Travelling allows them to connect with people of different ages, nationalities and cultures. These interactions enrich their lives exponentially. All that can’t be experienced through school and friends is possible during travels eg experiencing the nomadic life in Mongolia.
5. Travelling Combats Boredom
Many a times I’ve heard children say, “I’m bored!” and parents start feeling guilty that we are not engaging our child’s brain sufficiently. A very important aspect of brain development is to keep oneself occupied without any external factor. Travelling to places with no wi/fi or play areas makes children think how to keep themselves engaged which further promotes creativity. They observe and learn from their environment and try to modify it to suit themselves.
“A family that travels together stays together.”
I love this quote because it is the most effective yet simplest solution to Teeny Tantrums. As children get older, they need to form new concepts based on different situations, cultures and beliefs challenging the conventional. The situation is compounded by the independence shown by “teenagers”. As a result, a gap starts forming between parents-child. The children want to spend time only with friends and parents are more than happy to let them. The skills that one wanted to teach or showcase as a parent to the children are lost amidst the arguments and tantrums.
Travelling to offbeat places/unusual destinations where everything is not readily available forces theparent child to work together, adjust and adapt their individual wants and desires for the greater good (for the family good). Thus comes the perfect opportunity to teach by role modelling, all the life skills you deem necessary for your child. Budgeting for a trip, overshooting the budget, choosing UNIQUENESS over BORING comfort, planning meticulously and seeing the plans go haywire, expecting the unexpected, accepting other people’s limitations are ONLY SOME OF THE experiences that when shared as a family make the bonds stronger.
Travelling is truly something magical and an almost perfect tool for your child’s overall development. Thus, make it an important part of your yearly planner and design an interesting out of the box holiday for your family next.
I have gathered diverse experience working as lecturer in colleges as well as in schools, presently working in Doon International School as Special Educator/Psychologist. In my research papers I have extensively worked with and written about the relationship between delinquency proneness and various personality factorsin adolescents. Have also contributed to research as an attaché in the Psychiatry department of PGI (Chandigarh).
Dr. Rashi Nirwani Jain M.Sc. (Child Development), Ph.D. (Psychology).