Tara Cannon and her husband Rann began traveling with kids when their firstborn was just 4 months old.
Now, their two children are 19 and 17 years old, and she’s taken them to about 30 countries — many of which they’ve traveled back to multiple times.
Cannon blogs about family travel on her sites, Pint Size Pilot and the Better Beyond.
In a conversation with Business Insider, Cannon revealed the biggest travel mistakes she’s made with her kids, from when they were babies and toddlers to teenagers.
Traveling too fast with babies was a mistake, Cannon said.
Cannon said she regrets traveling to too many places in a short time when her kids were babies.
“Prior to having kids, we were used to trying to pack in as many places as possible,” Cannon said. “So if we went to Brazil, maybe for 11 days, we’d move four times just to make sure we could see a bunch of different places.”
But with babies, it’s not so easy to explore several places that require travel days.
“The buses, taxis, and planes are hard on babies and parents,” she said. “As much as I hated keeping to a schedule, messing with a schedule makes things messy. So what we learned in that period was to have fewer transitions.”
Instead, Cannon recommends spending at least a week in each destination and renting a car to explore at your own pace.
With toddlers, Cannon regrets planning more than one activity per day.
Cannon told BI that taking the kids out for multiple activities in one day was a mistake when they were toddlers.
“You can typically do one thing successfully before things start to unravel and tantrums erupt,” she said.
With school-aged kids, it’s a mistake to pack your itinerary, she said.
She said that as her kids reached school age, planning more than one activity per day was easier, but it was still a mistake to pack the entire day.
“A nonstop itinerary without breaks 100% sucks the fun out of travel, and I am very good at accomplishing this,” she told BI. “Kids, like adults, need downtime to just be.”
Cannon also added that long tours with school-aged kids are hard.
“But if I can find a short tour with an engaging guide, they are worth their weight in gold,” she added.
With teenagers, Cannon has forgotten to consider her kids’ personal interests.
Cannon said traveling with teens can be more challenging than with younger kids “because they have different interests and keeping them off their phones and engaged becomes a little harder.”
For example, Cannon said she eventually realized that her son loves hiking and isn’t into exploring cities.
“I would sometimes get frustrated because he seemed so indifferent in Paris, for example. He would take maybe five photos in three days,” she said. “It took me ages to notice that he would take 50 photos on a hike.”
Now, Cannon lets her kids plan a day of exploring during the trip.
“It’s interesting how differently they plan it,” she said.
Cannon said her daughter likes to find hot spots on social media.
For example, in Florence, her daughter Ella planned a day full of photo ops, from a vintage photo booth to a perfume store with an extravagant entrance for portraits.
“We do totally different things than I would’ve planned because she’s looking at things through a different lens,” she said. “But if I engage them, it’s less boring for them.”
Don’t forget to consider your kids’ personalities at any age.
From selecting destinations to activities, Cannon said it’s not just about taking her kids’ interests into account but also their personality traits.
For example, she said that while her son loves hiking, he’s not comfortable in all natural environments.
“Unlike the rest of us in the family, Lucas has zero interest in ever visiting a tropical forest or jungle again,” Cannon told BI. “I can trace this back to a guided Cloud Forest hike in Ecuador in 2017.”
Cannon said that Lucas grew up watching nature documentaries, so he is acutely aware of how dangerous certain types of wildlife can be.
“During the hike, the guide encouraged us to touch the top of a leaf. Lucas, however, decided to also touch the underside and narrowly avoided a poisonous caterpillar,” she said. “From that moment, he made it clear that he didn’t consider these environments ‘safe,’ though we assumed he’d eventually get over it.”
After the tour in Ecuador, the family of four took trips to the Peruvian Amazon and the Costa Rican rainforest.
In these destinations, “he carefully avoided swarms of army ants on forest floors and bullet ants on handrails,” she said. “His feelings never changed.”
These days, Lucas doesn’t accompany the family on jungle or rainforest excursions.
“Lucas still travels a lot, but to places with fewer creatures that can harm you,” she said. “Ella, by contrast, can’t get enough of the jungle!”
The post A mom who’s been traveling with her kids for 19 years shares the biggest mistakes she’s made since they were babies appeared first on Business Insider.
