10 Tips for Planning Successful Family Vacations

Unreasonable parental expectations and poor planning spoil more family vacations than obstinate children.

1. Make your first goal getting away from daily routines.

How many miles away or how elaborate your trip is secondary. Life at home is regimented and ruled by the clock. On family vacations, let your hair down. Give children choices. Participate in their activities. Allow them as much freedom as possible.

Participation gives children a sense of inclusion and accomplishment, helps motivate them, and minimizes their apprehension of the unknown. Show older children maps and brochures of hotels, airlines, and national parks, for example. When feasible, allow them to choose from several alternatives. Allow younger children to participate in seat selection on airplanes, choose floors in hotels, or select the color of rental cars. Allow smaller children to mail letters concerning the trip, open replies or press buttons on the computer.

3. Consider the optimum length of time to be away.

Longer is not necessarily better. Family vacations provide far more togetherness than being at home, more togetherness than some families are comfortable with. At home, there are acceptable "escape valves" such as separate leisure activities, multiple TV sets and children visiting friends, for example. Not so in hotel rooms and trailers. On long vacations, adults may become anxious about missing work. Children miss friends. Homesickness causes moodiness.

4. Don't schedule vacations to solve family problems.

Excessive togetherness may enhance disharmony in the presence of marital strains, excessive sibling rivalries, and children with serious behavior problems. 5. Before going on long vacations, go on short ones. Go overnight.

Some children, mostly toddlers, sleep poorly in new surroundings or suffer from motion sickness on long car rides. Older children with behavior problems can become even more difficult to manage in unfamiliar situations, in crowds, for example.

6. Establish ground rules before leaving home.

Holiday spirit makes it more difficult for parents to say no. Explain to children that they will see situations and activities that may be unhealthy, age-inappropriate, or hazardous for them, even though others participate. Example: eating food from street vendors in areas of poor sanitation, snowmobiling alone, or going on unsafe rides at amusement parks. Preset rules minimize tantrums and hurt feelings. Decide rotations for who sits where and who decides which DVD to play in the car, for example.

7. Have a "Plan B".

Call ahead to see if there are alternative activities at the beach or ski resort if the weather interferes with Plan A. Children do not do well spending most of a day in a hotel room. Neither do parents. Be flexible about aborting activities that are going badly.

8. Set realistic ratios between swimming and visits to museum.

But don't fret if children find cultural activities "boring." Such visits usually do have a lasting positive impression on them, as can be heard when they later tell (or boast) to their friends and their teachers where they have been and what they have seen.

9. Minimize taking children out of school.

Missing school for leisure travel sends wrong messages. However, taking children on a business trip to an interesting destination may be reasonable in families where one parent is frequently on such trips. Frequent absence from home of one parent appears to cause stress-related symptoms in the business traveler parent as well as psychosocial symptoms in their spouses and their children. Discuss such trips with teachers.

10. Consider taking your child's friend along.

Having a child's close friend on the trip can make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.