Family Travel That Helps Your Kids Become Global Citizens

Helping our kids become global citizens through travel is one of the best gifts we can give them.

As we all realize by now, in today’s reality of the Internet and global economy, our children’s success depends on
understanding different cultures and how to collaborate with people from different backgrounds.

Family travel from the youngest age helps foster those skills :
– helps your children take their first steps out of their comfort zone.
– has the power to educate, encourage, nurture critical thinking, breed cultural tolerance and inspire social responsibility.
– as they begin to study geography,through interactive travel they’ll realize that a country is not just a place on a map. It’s made up of people with feelings, problems and different ways of doing things.

Here are some suggestions for family travel spanning birth to their 18th summer. Then you let them go.

Birth to Age 3
Because children this young will retain very little and because of the amount of paraphenalia you may have to bring along, it’s best to stick to a baby-friendly resort with sand beaches, a family cruise in the Caribbean or Mexico, or visiting family where home comforts are readily available.

Tip: It’s definitely not too early to start the passport process – you never know when you’ll have to unexpectedly hop on a plane. Remember, even newborns require their own passport to travel outside of your own country.

Preschool
You may be surprised how much fun a city vacation can be for this age group, especially when you’ve involved them in the planning process. Urban centers like London and Paris already have in place for their own families a wealth of interactive, explorative and purely physical activities.

Tip: Choose accommodations near a park so that you can schedule in regular playtime and your kids will come to recognize and even play with neighborhood kids.

In London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park awaits the fantastic Tumbling Bay playground. Paris’ Luxembourg Garden is a colorful garden of swings, slides, climbing webs. And in Toronto, after a short ferry ride from downtown, Toronto Island’s Centreville Park is a fantastic fun day with 30+ rides, a 1907 carousel and a hobby farm.  If you travel over Easter, what fantastic fun for your youngsters to scavenge for colourful and chocolate eggs at real castles or in the Eiffel Tower park.

Consider these European locations and events that tie in to much-loved fairy tales:

The Fairy Tale Forest of Efteling theme park (above) in the Netherlands features well-known characters, buildings, and even musical toadstools straight out of Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault. In the German region of Bavaria, make a magical road trip through the homeland of the Brothers Grimm along the Fairy Tale Road and the annual Fairy Tale Festival (below). Here they can begin to understand and experience the cultural origins of Mother Goose.

Elementary School
Kids are now more aware of the wider world opening through studying geography. Your family trip to a place that has strong visual appeal such as Venice will help them to readily connect. Kid-friendly countries turn a spot on a map into a place made up of people with feelings, problems and different ways of doing things.

This is the age when budding passions are born. A budding biologist will be thrilled getting so close to nature on a family trip to the Galapagos Islands or Jean-Jacques Cousteau’s Fiji family dive and rainforest resorts.

Tip: They’re old enough now to put their personal stamp on what draws their attention so if you encourage them to keep a journal in writing or through photography or video, you foster a deeper sense of observation and critical thinking.

Hands-on activities such cooking classes broaden a child’s palate in an effortless and thoroughly enjoyable way plus they get to share the rituals of another culture while trying different ways of doing things. In Thailand, cooking classes of simple dishes are plentiful but so also are small restaurants that allow kids to watch.  Paris offers a more formal setting to upgrade a kid’s taste from, for example, devouring chocolate pudding to the skill of creating chocolat fondant.

Middle School
Travel to history-rich locations helps children learn more about the formation of their own country.  Bring textbook history alive at the easily found museums and sites and costumed re-enactments such as in Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, Washington DC.

Look also for ways for them to experience lesser-known historical journeys which reveal the universal theme of migration and struggle of those who helped birth our diverse societies.

At the Boston Museum of African American History, families walk the community trail of schools, past the homes and houses of worship of colonial-era free African Americans that led the nation to end slavery.

In Southern Ontario Canada, Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad trail follows her perilous, well-documented the north star escape route.

My then 11year old discovered an untapped interest in Black heritage and social injustice when she accompanied me on a press trip to Nova Scotia to follow the migration of the American Black Loyalists revealed in the just released novel ‘Book of Negroes’. Visiting the vestiges of those 16th century settlers, the excellent preservations and the existing communities of descendants opened her to a segment of Black heritage she would never have learned about in school.

Paris provides many connections to U.S. History, but the most surprising will come during a Seine River cruise past the Eiffel Tower to take in the Statue of Liberty, which was originally a gift from the French to the U.S.

High School
The teen years are ideal for deepening empathy and forming authentic connections to unfamiliar cultures. Virtuoso magazine recommends Africa because kids are more mature and can appreciate not only the spiritual nature of the African savanna but also the people they encounter. A visit to Israel offers a lesson in comparative religions and Peru to gain insight into South American culture and the still-tangible effects of Spanish imperialism. To demystify the burgeoning China, excellent tours exist that show its long lasting influence from ancient histories to the giant burgeoning before our eyes.

Tip: Family heritage tours make an ideal graduation gift that keeps on giving. Your child sets off to college and to build their own world armed with a sense of pride and perspective on their own identity. An exploration of the Black heritage in France and London is a favorite with many of my clients – young people are amazed and inspired by the depth of self-determined, life-changing experiences lived by their cultural ancestors.

How can you steer your child or grandchild’s global citizenship  the right direction?  Start with a conversation over the dinner table. Then have an indepth consultation with your travel advisor to discuss your family’s goals, values and interests.

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