As I emerged from the tunnel of mothering small toddlers, I realized I missed travel desperately. I had spent my high school and early college years in New England, not leaving the Eastern time zone until I was nineteen. But as soon as I got my first passport and felt the thrill of discovering another culture, I fell utterly in love with being completely lost.
Could motherhood (which for me often felt like a scary struggle to keep my kids safe and my brain from exploding) and feeling happily discombobulated co-exist? As soon as I could string together enough hours of sleep to plan an adventure, I decided to find out. And to my surprise, I absolutely loved traveling with my kids. I was able to play to my strengths, leading impromptu hikes and food-driven explorations, and the excitement of a new locale helped allay the exhaustion that overwhelmed me during long days at home.
My husband works full-time, and summers stretch long and hot in Austin, Texas. I filled the summer months with travel whenever I could afford it (and sometimes when I really couldn’t afford it but decided to forgo less important things like new clothes and furniture—my kids are avid thrift store shoppers and sleep well on hand-me-down beds). I began writing travel stories to fund plane tickets, first to Savannah, Georgia (where my parents live and could help me), then to Belize (I found a cheap, all-inclusive adventure lodge), Mexico, Athens, Costa Rica, and Hawaii. My sweet kids brought me coffee while I wrote in the mornings, and I tried to choose hotels that had safe room for them to roam on property. (My kids knew every sloth and toucan at El Parador in Manuel Antonio, where we spent two weeks eating everything in sight at the free breakfast buffet.)
Sometimes—I’ll be honest—they played on their iPads. Often, I worked after they were asleep. I loved rooms with balconies, where the kids could watch movies and play safely in their pajamas after dinner, and I could work outside with a view. I made a lot of mistakes and some of them were scary. Once, I stood on a local beach with my young daughter on my hip, watching my sons, aged ten and seven, paddle a rented kayak in the ocean. I thought, “I’m the best mom ever,” and before the thought was over, I smelled pot smoke from the group of teenagers five feet away and my two boys disappeared out of sight, behind a large cliff.
It was clear then that I was actually the worst mother in the world!
I grew hysterical, grabbed a stoned teen, and screamed that my children were lost in the ocean. The teen woke up the dozing kayak rental man, who swam out to alert my kids that “Mama Loco,” and my boys returned to me.
Travel with children is messy, exhausting, thrilling, challenging beyond reason, and my favorite thing in the world.
But if even when you only have a few days and a tight budget, if you’re willing to embrace the chaos, you can have meaningful journeys with the whole family. Read on for a few tips and tricks to help you create incredible memories without going completely insane.
Eating in your hotel room is a great for saving money and energy. Eating in restaurants with picky and active children can be expensive and exhausting. For my vegetarian daughter, I always pack cups of ramen, a water heating coil, and plastic spoons. One of my sons found a youtube video about making quesadillas on a hotel-room ironing board. For a longer trip, stashing a rice cooker in a checked bag can help make larger meals “in-house.” Supplement your in-room dining with local vegetables. If your hotel has a breakfast buffet, be sure to bring a purse and stash a few extra cinnamon buns and bananas for later.
We love visiting local grocery stores for cheap snacks, vegetables and fruits, and gifts. Groceries also give us a glimpse into the local culture. It’s always a thrill to buy basics in another country—Greek shampoo, Hawaiian soursop candy, a Jamaican soccer ball.
Learning even a few words of the local language can help you enjoy your destination. My kids and I always learn enough to say “hello,” “goodbye,” and “thank you.” Even such simple words encourage meaningful connection, and often lead to longer conversations.
Starting when they were small, I gave my children a stack of local currency in small bills. This gave them the ability to tip freely (after saying “thank you”) and to buy their own souvenirs. There’s no better way to teach math (and cultural fluency) than to hand kids stacks of cash and let them choose their own snacks at the grocery store. This also does away with questions like, “Can I have this plastic sword, pleeeeeeease?” I just tell my kids they can buy what they can afford and leave the decisions to them. (They always buy the sword, and it always breaks five minutes later.)
I can remember a few times I was unsure about a local outing and almost chose to stay in our hotel room and watch TV. But in the end, I treasure memories of times I forced myself out of my comfort zone. My kids still talk about cheering at a crowded soccer game in Belize and wandering together around downtown Puerto Rico in the rain with a broken umbrella we found in a garbage can.
There are days you are just too overwhelmed to be a tour guide, and that’s more than OK. We’ve missed precious experiences because I was simply worn out and needed to lock myself in the hotel bathroom with some bubble bath. I have canceled incredible visits to “off the beaten track” locations when I realized I felt unsafe driving on mountainous roads. And as I mentioned, my sweet kids know that no adventure begins until Mom has had her coffee.
It’s incredible to say that my two older boys now travel on their own. I think our family vacations—as cheap and tiring as they have been—have made them empathetic, curious world travelers and this makes me proud. I hope to have many more trips with them, and am happy to keep hitting the thrift stores to scrimp and save for priceless adventures.
Amanda Eye Ward
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