Traveling With Kids

2025-10-13

I remember why I used to travel and enjoy it immensely. I enjoy eating really delicious food, meeting new people, encountering new cultures, and seeing interesting stuff. Some trips are just one or two of these. I remember going to Zion National Park and seeing some wonderful nature, not a lot of good food there. Going to Japan checks all of the boxes. I really enjoying eating new foods, chatting with strangers, and being outside of my comfort zone.

But with two young kids kids all of those equations change. Being on the flight is stressful, even if everything is going alright, because anything can go wrong at any minute. Any bus rides, car rides, or train rides are similarly hard. Getting to a nice hotel is good, but we all (a family of four) need to sleep in one room which is tough. Putting the kids to bed is hard, they wake each other up sometimes, and even when they are both down we dont really get to relax.

Also all of those things that I used to do, eating new delicious food, talking to strangers and having conversations, encountering new cultures, and seeing interesting stuff is all out the window. Even at a nice restaurant I have to hand feed at least one kid, sometimes two. My wife and I take turns eating. I do not have time to talk with strangers. I can no longer enjoy museums, movies, night markets, or those types of things. And we do see interesting stuff but in a more generally hurried and stressful way.

So my wife and I are re-evaluating, why do we travel? We can expose the kids to new things, but they could see new things 10 minutes from our house. How could we reduce the stress and hurried-ness? Would car trip be better than plane trips? Should we stay local? Should we just go to entirely new places for novelty if we are going to be miserable anyway?

I am not sure, there are all new questions. But I have heard one thing from older parents is that it gets easier with older kids. We are in the ‘very young kids’ stage (at 3.5 and 1) and so those ages aren’t the most condusive to traveling. Maybe in two years (5.5 and 3) we will be in a better situation.

-Gary