The greatest gift I’ve learned with age (I’m 43) is that the time I spent traveling as a teen has impacted how I parent my kids. At this age, I reflect on my time traveling with new perspectives and grace.
Before having kids or meeting my husband, I was lucky enough to travel through Japan, Peru, and Europe. In those adventures, I discovered the following to be accurate, a bar-is a bar-is a bar, also everywhere you go, there you are.
The most significant experience I had traveling was the time I spent living in London and working as a nanny for an upper-class British family. The story I wrote about that experience was published here. It was in London where I discovered that farm work (what my parents did for a living) was vital to local economies and essential to feeding entire global populations. It was a big lesson to learn at only 19.
Now that my kids are older, I imagine we’ll take big trips together. I will encourage them to travel on their own, as I did. Mostly, I’m committing to helping them realize the power of adventure.
Did you get a chance to travel before you had kids? If so, will that experience shape how you encourage your children today?
