Unpacked is AFAR’s advice column. Once a quarter, Dr. Anu Taranath answers an ethical quandary that a reader recently faced. Taranath is a speaker, facilitator, and educator based in Seattle, Washington, who specializes in racial equity and social change. She’s the author of the book Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World (Between the Lines, 2019). If you have a question you’d like examined, please submit it to unpacked@afar.com.
I just took my teen on an amazing trip to Spain. I was thinking a lot during the trip about what travel behaviors I was modeling for him (both good and bad). One of my main goals was to instill a love of traveling, but I of course also want him to travel with intention, regard, and resilience. What’s your advice for future trips we take?
Family travel can be filled with joy and wonder, but having a trip remain positive can be trickier than meets the eye. Will your teen enjoy it? Will you get along? How might you focus on the beautiful opportunities ahead of you—and sidestep any potentially unhelpful family dynamics that tank everyone’s spirit? To help your teen love travel, let’s unpack a few core elements.
Find comfort in change
The point of travel is to take us away from the familiar, and that means change from what we know. Change is hard for many of us and can be particularly difficult for an adolescent who is already navigating big hormonal and social shifts. Try to be gentle: it’s possible that being away from the familiarity of home, friends, and routine might supersede the excitement of travel.
Talk to your teen about the changes that travel can bring. Tell them what might make you uneasy about your own routine changing as a way to invite them to share. Let them know that you, too, are learning to go with the flow. Teens are often hardwired to find their parents cringy and seek to flex their own independence. Even if they don’t respond with long flowery paragraphs, teens are often listening and watching us carefully.
Give your teen agency and voice
Consider your travel preparations, itinerary, and activities. Does your teen feel that they have agency while traveling? Does it feel like primarily your trip, or does your teen have a say in where you go and what you see? I don’t suggest you coddle or acquiesce to their every whim to win their favor. That said, they shouldn’t feel as if they are merely hostage to our capricious vagaries.
Rather, I’ve had better outcomes when I’ve approached my own teens as both fellow participants and planners. This can take many forms and gestures—both small and big. On a recent trip to Vancouver, we found a cute boba café for my older teen even though it was out of our way and nobody else in the family drinks bubble tea. On a trip to India, we planned a day-long outing to a forest knowing my younger teen would enjoy the wildlife. Though I might not have pursued either activity on my own, both teens appreciated doing something they selected and had a stake in.
“What is one small and big thing that you’d like to do on our trip?” and “How can we plan this trip to also intersect with your interests?” can be powerful openings that invite your teen to co-create your family’s experience. Allowing our teens—no, encouraging them—to plug in and engage means we will need to seriously consider their contributions, less like we’re doing them a favor, and more because we wholeheartedly believe that traveling with them will enhance everyone’s experience.
Zoom out beyond travel
Let’s consider the relationship you have with your teen outside of the traveling context. What kinds of positive experiences do you enjoy and seek to cultivate in the everyday? How do you and your teen communicate, make decisions, follow through on plans, and hear each other out?
Our core familial relationships can inform our mood, temperament, energy, and behavior whether we are at home or on a trip. Our travels might expose us to new sights, sounds, and experiences, but the dynamics between us as a family usually travel right alongside us.
Share the whys of travel
If you want to encourage your teen to love travel, talk to them about why travel matters to you. Share what sparks your passion, and the travel memories you continue to hold close. Stay away from bloated and saccharine statements such as, “Travel opens up my worldview,” and instead, get granular, vulnerable, and real. “Walking through that open-air market in Guatemala, I couldn’t help but think about the fancy grocery stores in which we shop. Travel sometimes makes me uncomfortable about what I have access to, but in a good way.”
Is it important to you that your teen feels the exact same way about travel as you do? Or are you open to following their lead and helping them discover what matters to them? Because we can’t force someone to feel the same way about travel as we do. Possibilities expand if we, instead, follow our teen’s lead, stay curious, and discover something special together. All of this starts at home before we ever board a flight. Find ways to connect and share experiences in everyday life. Open up, and let those moments grow and expand into explorations of the rest of the world.
