I took the passion test once and learned I had four passions in life. Two of them were to spend time with my family and travel the world.
Experience the World Around You
We Vote for Family Travel because it is the best way to experience the world around you. It’s the best way because you are doing it with the ones you love; the ones you are bonded to for life. When we experience new things with our spouses, kids, and/ or relatives, we are deepening our relationships with them. Some of my best memories as a child were the camping trips I took with my Dad and the RV road trips with my grandparents.
Sure you can buy your children “things,” but most of those “things” will eventually break, decay, become outdated or disappear. When you invest in travel with your kids, you are giving them lifetime experiences, memories, knowledge and cultural understanding that can not be gained from sitting in a classroom or viewing on Youtube alone.
Well, it took three years from that point for taking the passions test for me to actually get my very first passport. And of course, I took my family to get theirs too! I’ve always traveled with my family, but our trips up till then were limited to Florida. Getting that passport opened up a world of possibilities for us. It also led to us starting I Love Family Travel.
Many of my trips have a work component built in. (In fact, today I’m in Minneapolis speaking at the TBEX Conference for travel bloggers). However, while I am attending conferences & such, my husband takes the kids out to explore the destinations where we are traveling. I figured that this journey was more than just my own, but my family’s journey as well; and launching the site as a family was a way to bring in their perspectives and document their experiences along the way too!
Now we are even looking into the possibility of “WorldSchooling” our children, as we’ve seen how the children of families that travel are gaining a real world education that they can then use for the rest of their lives.
Children Develop Skills
Your children will develop their skills in communication, negotiation, stress management, crisis management, time management, budgeting, and more; all while traveling along with you to help guide them through it. As the old verse goes, “Give a man to fish; feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish; feed him for life.”
Family Travel does not have to mean spending 10 grand on an expensive resort or amusement park once a year when you can get vacation time off from work. In fact, there are many ways to experience travel together without having to spend a tiny fortune doing it. Trust me, the more you make an effort to begin traveling with your family, the closer you’ll feel to them and the more enriched your life will become.
Heather Lopez, aka The Social Commerce Mom, is a 30-something, married mom of two, ages 7 and 8. Heather leads Bloggin’ Mamas, a national network of mom bloggers, as well as several large FB communities centered around food, fashion, music, blogging, travel and business. She, along with her family, launched the I Love Family Travel blog last year to document their family trips around the US and abroad, as they satisfy their wanderlust.
