10 Myths Debunked About Traveling with Teens

Many parents have thrown their advice into the ring on how to travel with teens. Some are convinced teens a pack of spoiled parent-devouring monsters while others work tirelessly to keep their teen amused and happy. I’ll be honest–many of the ideas I read seemed more appropriate for younger children or toddlers than for teens. We all parent differently. I’ll compare 10 ways I agree or differ with other cyber ideas on traveling with teens.

1. Wifi. This is not an area up for discussion with anyone in our family. Regardless of where, when or for how long we’re away, it isn’t just the teens who want fast wifi, we all want it. We not only inquire about wifi at a potential hotel or home rental, but we have about 10 clarifying questions. What’s the upload and download speed (in homes we as for a photo to prove that), where is the router is located, is it a shared or independent router, and the list goes on. We are diligent (psychos) about our wifi speed. The girls needed good wifi for their online courses and I had my Netflix shows to stay current on, important stuff.
2. Global roaming. Another yes. This is how we communicate with each other and people at home. Teens maintain friendship differently than we did.  It’s important to my 13 year old to maintain her year-long unbroken Snapchat streaks with her friends. If they can stay connected and current, it reduces their fear of missing out (FOMO). When we traveled around the world, everyone had their phone and we had free global roaming with our carrier, in nearly all the countries we visited.

   

3. Screen limitations or mandatory times to be unplugged. Almost every parent suggested this. I tend to value my life, so we don’t do that. To me that sounds like a toddler restriction and not one for an emerging adult. Sounds brutal, I wouldn’t like it. There are unplugged times when you are on the other side of the world, because of the time change. When the real world is more interesting than her boring friends at home, she will be present and involved. Normal phone manners always apply–not at meals or when you’re part of a convo with real 3D people.
4. The Buy In. With few exceptions, posts advised to get your teen to help with the planning so they feel excited about the trip. If they’re interested they’ll be precious little to keep them out of the planning and if they’re not, making them research anything won’t be an automatic buy in. Our teens don’t like to leave any of our traveling up to chance. I wouldn’t know how to extricate our kids from the planning process–they’re making pitches for different countries, and places, activities they’ve discovered online. Some kids will jump in once on the trip, but don’t want the extra work–too much like school. You can’t force or cajole a buy in.

   

5. Food Wars. We don’t do those. We’ve been to almost 70 countries now, and we never push them to try new foods. They aren’t toddlers and will if they want to. We have 3 kids with very different risk-taking interests when it comes to food. One of our girls will try anything except deep fried insects, the other will try anything but no meat, and the third ate only spaghetti and ice cream for 402 days. Respect different comfort levels and stop over-encouraging them, they hate that.
6. Give them Space
   I was reading this everywhere in articles. What does this mean? On a cruise ship or secured hotel property, ok. Or is everyone renting 4 bedroom homes like at home where kids have their own bedroom and en suite? Are we the only ones staying in more compact city homes in European and Asian? We’re often in cultures extremely different from our own, some of them extremely male-oriented. It’s not like you can tell your daughter to go out for a walk in Turkey to cool off and get some space. Do you stalk/walk 10 paces behind them with a hoodie over your face? Perhaps counter productive. Some parents said send them out to a club. Nothing about that seems like a good idea. How about hells naw to that one, too. Your teens may need to develop new ways of coping with frustration that doesn’t involve retreating to their private wing. If by giving them space it means they crawl on to their own little mattress in their corner of their shared room and put on some noise cancelling Bose and watch a few episodes of New Girls until they are in a better mood, go forth and have space. I’ll even respect that space by tossing some cookies over there from a respectable distance.

   

   

7. Pools.  I’m reading anywhere that if you have teens, just make sure there’s a pool. When our kids were younger, pools added huge entertainment value, but as teens, pools don’t hold the same kind of magic. They are more aware of sun damaging their skin, the pools are usually filled with screaming younger kids, and the hot tubs (honestly) if not kept up properly, are a cess pool of germs. They do like specialized hot springs pools or water parks, but they don’t need water to be entertained.

   

   

   

8. Museum is not a swear word. Our girls love museums when they were younger and they still do. We don’t have to beg them to go, they beg us. When we get to a city the first thing they do is find out what the best museums are and they negotiate how many we can fit in. Favorites for our teens: science and industry, art, air and space, natural history, ramen (wait that one is mine).
9. Sleep
   Finally, something the entire parenting world agrees on. Let them sleep in. Teens need sleep to help them grow, rewire their brains. We always let them sleep in unless we’re catching a plane, then they sleep on the plane. Half a day with a rested teen is better than a full day with a tired one. We (parents) will usually fit in coffee, trip to the bakery, and an additional small museum before they’re awake. Everyone’s happy and getting what they need.
10. I’ll end with this. On teens being ungrateful and difficult to manage while traveling. Weird. This has not been our experience at all. We love traveling with our teens.