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Teens and Family Travel

In her book See Jane Win, Sylvia Rimm asked women who considered themselves both happy and successful to look back on and describe their childhoods. In this manner, she hoped to identify common behaviors and attitudes that made a critical difference to these women's eventual success and happiness.

The second most frequently cited experience by Rimm's respondents, across all developmental levels and careers, was family travel. Participants said that family travel was a time of adventure and bonding. These findings fit in with our discussion of stretching your comfort zones together. Travel, by its nature, is an intentional stretching of the comfort zone, so it only makes sense that travel to new places as a family strengthens your connection to your teenager.

Kids who feel alienated from their families often discover aspects of deep kinship during a family trip, levels of connection that had previously gone undetected. This is especially so when the travel takes the family to a foreign culture. There are several reasons for this.

First, everyone in the family is more or less equal in their ability to learn and adapt to the ways, subtle and not so subtle, of this new culture. Sure, the parents are still the parents, but that doesn't mean they will be the ones to figure out the local train schedule, greeting customs, or how to order lunch. Furthermore, families are united together as they work to figure out and explore this new environment. This is when many of the at-home differences between parents and teenagers simply slip away.

Second, many people travel to learn about different approaches to life and to discover or reconnect with aspects of themselves. Some love the feel of their curiosity as it is stimulated by a new culture. Others rediscover a resourcefulness they had forgotten about. Some experience travel as a respite from long-held assumptions and the opportunity for reflection. All these lay the groundwork for new and deeper connections among family members, especially between parents and teenagers. Not only that, but it is during this family travel that you will see, often for the first time, some wonderful and unexpected qualities in your teenager, qualities that you were blinded to by the normal routine of home.

It's so bizarre, but when we went abroad with Jason, all his eating habits changed. At home he adheres to the typical male adolescent diet of burgers, pizza, soda, and the like. But when we were away, he insisted on eating all the local dishes and vehemently eschewed his normal diet. But the real crazy part is that as soon as we got back home to the States, it was right back to burgers, pizza, and soda.

And,

At home Sarah lives on the phone and the Internet, usually at the same time, and is totally dependent on us or friends for transportation. She would never think of using the local bus lines. But recently, when we visited New York City as a family, this all changed. Suddenly, she was an explorer. She got a map of the subway system and led us all around the city—Sarah and her map. Now we were dependent on her! This was a side to her that was brand new to all of us, but knowing it's there is a great relief, especially when we think about her going off to college next year.

Third, when you plan your travel to another country, consider making use of your teenager's expertise over your own. That is, if she has been learning a foreign language, visit a country where that language is spoken. It's great for her to have the experience of you turning to her for help on how to say whatever it is you want to communicate. You will both end up listening to one another in different and better ways. Or, better yet, build a trip around one of her interests and let her pull you along in her enthusiasm.

A couple of years ago, Barry got into learning everything he could about bullfighting. I think it was something he picked up from one of his history teachers. Anyway, at his bequest, we planned a summer vacation to Spain, all built around the traditional running of the bulls at the fiesta of San Fermin in July. (Don't worry, before we even purchased the tickets, we made him promise not even to ask us if he could participate in the run!) The whole trip was built around the themes of matadors and bulls, from a visit to the Bullfighting Museum in Bilbao to attending a bullfight at the bullring in Seville.

The trip was a huge success for all of us. Even before we left, we saw a different side to Barry because he did all the research and most of the planning of the trip. That was our agreement from the beginning. He was incredible. Hard to believe it was the same kid who has waited until the last second on every long-term project he has ever had. He printed out historical information on some of the events that we were attending so that we could appreciate them more. He even cranked up his efforts in Spanish to get ready for the trip—going from a steadfast B-minus student to an A student in one quarter. It was so relaxing, like having your own in-house tour guide.

We came back from that trip a much closer family, and that sense of intimacy has only faded a tiny bit in the six months since.

Of course, travel with a teenager is seldom all peaches and cream. There is the initial resistance to leaving their friends, to leaving behind their familiar daily routines, and frequently—though you don't want to hear this—the dread of spending unending days in the exclusive company of their family, especially their parents. Don't take their resistance personally or too literally. Instead, stay steadfast in your intention to have a pleasant family vacation and deal with each bit of resistance separately, as it comes up. If you keep in mind throughout the planning and the travel that your teenager's resistance has more to do with the discomfort that accompanies stretching his comfort zone, it will buoy you with confidence and vision to keep moving forward, even while you're doubting yourself.

Finally, the reason travel is effective is because it stretches everyone's comfort zones, which means you don't necessarily have to go to exotic regions all over the world to have this experience. Sometimes it's a weekend in the big city near where you live, or a weekend away from the city and in the country. In other words, it's closer than you think. Psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan postulated in his developmental theory that once a person reaches puberty, the strongest organizer of life is the avoidance of loneliness. Simply put, your teenager's friends are more important to her than she can say. Therefore, rather than trying to knock that wall down—Don't worry, Samantha will still be your friend when we get back. Besides, we're pretty good company ourselves—go around it. Whenever feasible, let your teenager invite a friend along for the trip if that's the difference between whether he goes on the trip or not. Or even better, invite the friend for a portion of the vacation. This strategy makes for a winning situation for you, your teenager, and your family.

Since the first year we got married, we have rented a cottage at a lake a few hundred miles away—just us at first, then after the kids were born, just us and the kids. We haven't missed a summer in twenty years. It's our escape and our time for reconnecting to each other and what is important in our lives, individually and as a family. But last year was a disaster. Billie, our oldest at fifteen, behaved like the quintessential teenager: moody, bored, angry, and for all intents and purposes attached to both the phone and his laptop. All he did was communicate with his friends back home. Finally, we took the phone and laptop away. Then the moodiness and anger escalated to new heights and he was like a time bomb. We all avoided him and counted the days until we went home. It wasn't a very rejuvenating vacation. More like something out of the National Lampoon vacation movies with Chevy Chase.

This year we still rented the place at the lake, but we made one huge exception to our only family rule: We let Billie bring a friend for half the vacation. In fact, we insisted upon it. What a wonderful addition his friend Will made to our vacation! Sure, he and Billie were often off doing their own thing—sailing, miniature golf, meeting girls—but when they were around the family, Billie was a joy. (Well, maybe not a joy, but nowhere near the pain in the neck he had been the previous year.) We chose quality over quantity time on this vacation and we'll do the same thing again next year. Already, Billie's younger sister, Sasha, is asking when she can bring a friend, too. I guess we've begun a new family tradition, at least until they're both out of adolescence.

This is not to say that you should include your teenager's friends on every trip you take as a family because there are definitely times when it's appropriate to be together just as a family. Still, though, bringing along the friend every now and again greases the wheels for more success during your family's getaways.