Leaving the kids, or taking them with you.

Hi

I've just booked to go on a round the world with my 2 kids a 10 year old and a 12 year old. Not sure how its going to work out to be honest but I'm sure it will only add to the experience. We plan to travel for a year. How old are your kids?

Hi Vivienne, well i am sure it is going to be a great trip with your family. I was just trying to get some kind of concept on how others have handled long trips with children, or if anyone decided to leave their kids at home. There are a few places i have been i wouldn't take children personally, maybe others would, i know it totally changes from person to person. Where are you planning on going? Is your trip like 9-12 months across Asia/Africa or like Europe USA AUS/NZ?

My parents did the same, but only 2 weeks in Japan.

They returned to find their bedroom filled with a mass of feathers, their darling child (me!) aged 5 took a pair of scissors to their duvet in 'revenge' for leaving me behind.

Don't think I missed any of their trips after that episode!!!

Kira

Before our children we travelled, and backpacked, reasonably extensively. After we had the children, we discovered that we still could - and that having the children with us made the experience even more enjoyable.

last year we did a one year RTW backpacking trip, and had a fantastic time with our two girls (3 & 7). Although we decided to avoid India, we did take in almost the whole of the South East Asia backpacking route, and we all enjoyed it - having the children with us gave us some insights we'd never experienced on our own.

Yes, we were aware of health concerns, education etc, but can only go on our own experience - in one year we saw a doctor twice - once for ear infections caused by a swimming pool, and once for a serious ankle sprain caused on a trampoline - both could have happened at home, and we'd probably have been at the doctor's more than twice in 12 months if we'd been at home!

If you left them at home while you went travelling, you'd miss out on them, and some of the travel experiences!

Hi

We took our children (age 7 and 5) to Kyrgyzstan in Asia for 1 month. Our stay included living with nomads, walking in mountains, and a week-long stay at the base camp of Peak Lenin (3720m) while waiting for my husband to come down from his climb.

Our stay also included having 3 "showers" in 21 days - the kids loved that! (It was in their "allergic to water" phase.)

Looking back, my husband regrets that he was climbing, and that he was not with us for 3 weeks of our month, because we had such fun. We are busy planning our next big trip, and he has decided he would rather climb lower and/or less technical peaks, and spend MORE TIME with us. As for me, it has its challenges when travelling with children (yes, I could not do all the hiking I would have done when I was pre-kids).

But the benefits are 3-fold:
- we have the most amazing common experiences which allow our family to grow together
- seeing far-off places through kids eyes is an additional perspective - new insights
- children are an amazing door-opener: locals engage with us more often, and with more enthusiasm. In many places, my children were the first child tourists, and the communities we visited enjoyed our visit as much as we did!

Some of our friends travel without their kids - this is not for everyone. But, I would not change it for the world!

Regards
Celia

My parents took us on their first trip to Europe when I was almost three and my sister was nine months. Later they took us to Japan for 2.5 weeks during which my mom traveled alone with us as my dad was working. (neither spoke a work of Japanese and this was back in the early eighties when Japan was a lot less Americanized) Then when we were adolescents they took us to Italy and Switzerland. They always said the trips when we were little were the easiest. Having kids with them also opened a lot of doors that otherwise would have been closed. In Japan we made friends with some of the kids whose families lived on the campus my dad was teaching on. We got invited into homes which was very unusual at the time there. That said traveling like this my family did not move very quickly and we did a lot of staying in one place and taking long daytrips as opposed to sleeping somewhere new every night. Bottom-line, I am so glad that I was privileged enough to see some of the world as a child and traveling is a habit I still have!

My parents left us a couple times when they went to the city to buy a new vehicle! We were resentful! But I had plenty of friends whose parents spent a couple weeks in Hawaii and so on. I always thought that was strange. Several of my friends have gone off for a few weeks at a time without kids. Now, I have been tempted to leave them more than once. But really, as the previous posters have noted, you see things so much differently when you travel with kids. And why have them anyway, if you can't enjoy life with them. These have been amazing experiences. Since we can't do any kind of nightlife with the kids, we tend to move around a lot and do a lot of things we might not have done.

We haven't done anything super long. The worst was a three week tenting trip to Alaska when they were 6 months and 2 years. Tenting in the rain with a baby, just NOT fun. Since then, a month in California and New Mexico, five weeks in Cambodia and Vietnam, a month in Bali, a month in France, a month in Italy and Germany, and seven weeks camping across Canada.

my advice, is dont leave your kids at home, they resent it and you'll miss them. not to mention the fact that the trip is made so much richer by having the kids around. i know it sounds cliche, but there's a reason for that - its true.
I've travelled a lot with my daughter, from Brasil (where she was born) down to patagonia in argentina and all the way up to quebec in canada overland (we flew over from colombia to panama city), we also made a trip to australia with her (a 38 hour plane journey) when she was 6 months and a brief travel in england and germany. I did 5 months of this 1 1/2 year travel as a single mum, the rest with her father too. we travelled a lot before we had the baby, extensively in asia and africa, and believe me, while its a bit trickier to travel with kids than without, its way easier to meet local people and to interact. we were invited to stay with families often and I found it much easier to talk with local women. I recently made a short getaway for 3 days to turkey without my daughter (I left her with her dad and grandparents). she was fine, though she missed me, and i had fun, it was really great to have a little break without my girl, to be a free young backpacker again, but after 3 days, i was just aching to get back to her. I firmly believe everyone should travel, starting as young as possible. my girl speaks 5 languages, 2 of them fluently, and can read in both english and hebrew, and she is very comfortable with travelling. (she is now almost 2).
so sure, if you want to have a holiday from your kids, fine, discuss it with them and take a vacation, but dont go on any long trips without them, and dont worry about them missing school, they can always bring homework along, and they'll certainly learn more about the world than they would at school for a term!
have fun

I've just returned from a round the world trip with my 10 year old son - we spent 6 1/2 months on the road - sometimes he loved it and sometimes he was deperate to come home. I would not leave your kids behind. Take them and adapt.