The wind doesn’t expect the trees to remember every gust blown through it’s leaves and the sea would never hold it against a rocky coastline if the majority of its waves crashed and were forgotten.
Should you travel with young kids? Should you travel with your very young children who may not remember where they’ve been, what they saw, or the food they ate? Good question. Let’s try to answer it.
We don’t travel the world with our very young kids with the notion that each and every sight, smell, and sound will become logged into their memories. Remember the leaves in the trees and the branches to which those leaves are attached. They are being shaped every day, with every gust. It is just happening and there is no off switch. Our kids are a lot like those branches and leaves, being shaped with every moment and experience we put in front of them. We don’t travel the world with our young children because we believe that a single family travel experience will necessarily, in and of itself, alter the trajectory of their lives or leave profound impressions on their body, mind or soul. No, we don’t travel with our little kids for those reasons. Instead, we hold their tiny hands through Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, down the steps to the metro in Barcelona, on a swamp boat in Louisiana, and worry about them slipping while navigating the switchbacks halfway up the side of Wizard Island in Crater Lake and then watch as they overcome fears to launch themselves into that same chilly body of water because we understand that the accumulation of diverse experiences, from a very young age, over a period of time, and surrounded by people who love them, will be a determinant factor in which way our children will eventually lean and how coarse or softened they will become as adults.
We make the investments of time, energy, and resources necessary to travel the world with kids because we believe in the weathering effects of it all, in the tiniest of moments experienced far away from home — like a 4-year-old girl running her miniature hands across the colorful broken tiles famously laid down by Antoni Gaudi — and in putting considerable stock in the unknown impacts of everything they see, smell, and hear while out discovering the world with us. We admit to not being able to quantify the exact affects in the present day, to not knowing which, if any, of the small events they will carry with them forever just as we don’t know which of those, if any, will move them a smidge this way or that. And so we try to offer our young children as many different experiences as we can, each stuffed with hundreds of moments in miniature, many of which will seem innocuous and un-photo worthy at the time. We’re okay with this because we believe in the possibilities that lie within each and every one, and that belief is reason enough to pack up the bags and go traveling with young kids.
Should you travel with young kids? Absolutely yes you should. Hold their hand, take the metro, jump in a lake and explore the world together.
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