Our family takes a vacation twice a year. Sometimes we visit family. Sometimes our vacation is a long weekend just a couple hours away. Camping, long road trips, overseas travel, I love our time together and a break from our routine. Travel is one of our family’s top priorities.

I didn’t always love our vacations. Family vacations are not easy. Choosing a place to go, planning, saving, staying sane on long car rides, there’s a lot involved, they can be stressful, and I often find I crave a solo vacation once we’re home.

A family vacation, in fact, doesn’t necessarily feel like a break. They can include many of the same struggles we face at home. In some cases, new challenges arise. Sometimes disappointment travels with us. We can take our children to all sorts of wonderful, historical, important, beautiful, inspiring places and experience the opposite of what we envisioned. “THIS IS BORING!”, backseat fighting, arguments over screentime, food, and sleep struggles- the hard parts of parenting live on vacation too.

Should we resolve to only take theme park vacations until our children are grown? If your family really loves theme parks, sure. But, if you want your family to have other experiences, I’ve found there are ways to plan a vacation everyone will enjoy.

How to Plan a Vacation Everyone Will Love

Choose Your Adventure

While there are many factors that come into play when choosing where you’ll travel, when it comes to a family vacation, I think a child’s age is one of the most important things to consider. Some vacations need to wait until our kids are older. I would not have wanted to do our recent two-week tour through Greece with a toddler.

The most important part of choosing a destination is to know your family. Some people enjoy overseas travel with little children. When our kids were very little, we preferred camping.

What does your family love to do? What places or types of vacations are appropriate for your family right now?

While my family loves the outdoors, we would not enjoy an all-inclusive beach resort. That being said, as much as we look forward to one day hiking the Appalachian Trail, we’re not there yet.

Here’s how we approach finding a destination.

1. We consider how much time we can spend away from home.

If we have just a little bit of time, we prefer to spend less time traveling, so that usually means we stay closer to home. Ten days or two weeks offers a lot more possibilities, but the cost is more of a factor.

2. We look at how much money we have to spend.

I don’t want to be stressed out about money while we’re traveling or come home and feel regret. Our travels are very much defined by our current budget. For years our travel budget was small. Very small.

Thankfully, there are many ways to travel on a budget. Camping, covered wagons, hostels, Airbnb (here’s a $40 credit) or staying with friends/family can save a lot of money. We bring our own food and buy groceries on the road. I also look for free activities. Everywhere we’ve traveled there are fun things to do for free.

3. We take into account the season.

Our family doesn’t love extreme weather and we’re not a fan of crowds. We’ve found traveling off-season helps us save on costs and avoid standing in long lines.

4. We let our interests inspire us

My family’s love of reading led us to the Little House on the Prairie series, which led us to this vacation. My daughter’s love of horses had us riding through the Black Hills. My son’s and my love of Harry Potter took us to Florida. My husband’s interests often take us to national parks and museums.

Create an Itinerary

Once you choose a location, the fun part begins. Fun if you like organizing. I know this can also be the overwhelming part. Remember, a vacation’s goal should be to have a good time with the people you love. Let that goal guide you.

1. Interest is Key

Museums, national parks, ancient ruins, monuments, even animals- no matter how historic or how fascinating something “should” be, can look like an old building filled with old things or a pile of rocks. Without interest, anywhere could be considered boring.

If we want our kids to be engaged, we have to plant interest seeds.

Facilitating interest takes a little bit of planning and tending, but believe me, it’s worth it.

Because a vacation is for everyone in the family and everyone should have a say in how time is spent. That’s one of the keys to making sure everyone enjoys a vacation. But, as we know, if the kids are bored or melting down, no one is going to be having any fun.

Planting interest seeds means before we travel, while we’re traveling, and after we return we’re looking for ways to engage our children’s prior knowledge and curiosity.

• Read books, watch travel shows and documentaries, page through travel guides. Give kids a sense about where you’re going. Get everyone excited.

• Prepare for the activities that aren’t kid-friendly. If you’ll be spending a day at museums, pack snacks, games, and books. Play I spy. Do a scavenger hunt. The more we engage our children, the less likely they are to melt down or keep asking when it’s time to go home.

• Let them use your camera or get them one of their own.

• Let your kids be the guide and lead your family around.

• Museums often have activities for children. Seek them out. Don’t just hand your child a scavenger hunt, do it with them.

• Tap into your kids’ sense of fairness and community. Let your kids know today you’re going to go do something Mom really wants to do, just like yesterday you did something they really wanted to do. When we traveled to Saint Louis, my husband and I were interested in the botanical gardens. When the kids expressed how much they didn’t want to go, all we needed to do was remind them we’d spent the day before at a children’s museum. Kids get fairness.

 2. Make a list of everything you could do and resolve you won’t do it all!

• It’s okay to skip places your children aren’t old enough for or your family would not enjoy, even if it is a “hot spot”.  Resist the urge to see everything or go to the most popular places if they won’t be a good fit for your family.

• Websites like Furkot and Route Planner are great ways to find out what things your family could see and do along your route.

• I always look for: children’s museums, national and state parks, lakes, science museums, farmer’s markets, and things specific to the area and our interests.

3.  Try creating a Traveling Unit Study

It’s not nearly as complicated as it might sound and has helped me create some of our best vacations.

4. Allow for enough travel days

Are you children old enough or able to push through long drives or do you need to plan a few stops along the way? Vacations are painful if everyone is overtired. An extra day can make all the difference.

Especially when we’re camping and will want time to set up camp and make dinner in the daylight hours, I look for fun things to see and do along our way. We don’t hurry. These stops often create our itinerary and determine where we’ll be stopping to camp each night.

5. Allow for Do Nothing Much Days

So important and easy to forget, we all need days to lounge around the pool, watch movies, sleep in, and take it slow. It can be easy to pack too much into a day. It can also be easy to expect children to be content to just hang out all day. Adults might enjoy watching tv and snoozing for days on end, but I’ve found that’s one of the best ways to give my kids meltdowns. Kids need a mix of activities and downtime. Balance is key.

Pack Smart

1. Games

   
   

2. Books

Audiobooks and bedtime books always travel with us. I bring books that relate to our travels, ones we’re reading at home, old favorites, and new ones we’d like to try. We’ve found Magic Tree House, Roald Dahl, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Little House on the Praire are great audio travel companions.

3. Tools for Exploring

4. Healthy Snacks

So important. No one feels good on gas station food.

Focus on Time Together

1. Play

Be silly, do things you normally don’t get to do, get excited. Your kids will follow your tone.

2. Take advantage of grown-up time or breaks

Take turns giving each other a break. Let partner sleep in or go back to the museum alone. Let grandparents have a day with the kids and go on a date, get up early and head to a quiet coffee shop for some alone time.

3. Let your family be human

No matter how wonderful our vacation, no matter how much time we’ve put into planning, kids are human and humans get grumpy. Maybe they aren’t sleeping well, maybe traveling makes them anxious, maybe they just have a case of the grumps. Be understanding, make sure sickness or lack of decent food isn’t an issue, and remember we’ll all doing the best we can.

Family vacations are wonderful and hard. They take a lot of energy, but I think they are essential. They help us connect to each other and the world around us. Plan a family vacation everyone will enjoy and know there will be bumps along the way. Seek memories, not perfection. Plan ahead and be okay when things go differently than expected. There are so many places to see and things to do. You can create an adventure your family will love.