If teens don’t want to travel -do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

Not PP you were responding to, but I have an 18 and 13 year old, and they would never dare say they don't want to go. Sometimes they get grumpy, but nothing that a fun excursion or fun food won't fix. I work hard to include activities they'll like, and the expectation is that we're a family unit and we do things together. The college freshman will still accompany us this summer, as far as his internship will allow.

All my friends have teens, and they ALL, without exception, accompany their parents on trips and have fun on vacation.

So I don't know what's wrong with your teens, PP, but your situation is not the norm.

You either can’t read or have comprehension problems. The thread isn’t just about whether teens have fun on the trips, it’s also about navigating their pre-trip antics and pushback, which is completely normal behavior for the average teen as they develop and establish their independence. Nothing is wrong with anyone’s kids, so you can stop that dumb nonsense right there.

You live in la-la land and smoke drugs if you stupidly believe that none of your friends kids have ever complained about a family trip. They all complain at some point and you and your friends are lying to each other, which given your sanctimonious attitude, is not surprising.

Also it’s not surprising that your kids find it difficult to voice their own opinion and don’t “dare” speak against your wishes about anything, much less a vacation, as it’s clear you would just disparage and discredit them. I feel bad for your kids, being invalidated by you all the time.

Go to bed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

NP here. Maybe, maybe not. My teen still likes to travel with us. And when my siblings and I were teenagers, we still liked family vacations, too. So I’m sure some teens complain, but it’s by no means a universal problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

NP here. Maybe, maybe not. My teen still likes to travel with us. And when my siblings and I were teenagers, we still liked family vacations, too. So I’m sure some teens complain, but it’s by no means a universal problem.

No one said it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

NP here. Maybe, maybe not. My teen still likes to travel with us. And when my siblings and I were teenagers, we still liked family vacations, too. So I’m sure some teens complain, but it’s by no means a universal problem.

No one said it is, and that’s the point. All teens are different, and it’s stupid to say a parent is “doing something wrong” or something is “wrong” with their kid just because a kid is being normal and may not want to travel on all the family trips, even if they enjoy themselves on said trips. That’s typical teen behavior and to be expected at some point, if you have a normal child.

The ones to worry about are the kids who blindly go with whatever the parents want 100% of the time. That’s ALWAYS a sign of much deeper issues right there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to take a trip where they will spend the whole time whining and complaining. Is there a destination/way of traveling that they will enjoy? For example, my teens would hate going to museums in European cities. But an active trip to the jungle and Mayan ruins in Belize was a great hit.

This exactly how we approach travel. Last summer I really wanted to go to Italy but when I mapped out the trip I realized this was a me trip. I changed the plan to an active outdoors vacation with hiking, snorkeling and some other things and it was great.

OTOH, I have made mine go on the occasional weekend trip that was based on my interests though I did build in at least one activity for each family member. I would not do that for more than a few days though. Nothing worse than spending g a ton of money and being miserable or having miserable kids who put a damper on things.

[Anonymous]

I travelled a lot with my DS from 6 months on, mostly international, a few times a year. Around Christmas, we did the warm weather resorts in the Caribbean. Around his preteen years, he stopped getting excited about spending time on a beach, water sports, resort life so we stopped those. Then the pandemic hit. Last year we did a Philly Boston NYC trip over Dec holidays because he likes big cities and transportation, science museums and I like art.
Now at 19 he wishes we would have done more warm weather resort vacations. He definitely remembers all of the trips we took. They are my best memories also and we sometimes say “remember when…….?”

I think you’re probably dealing with teenage behavior. If it’s that they don’t want to do anything but play computer games, I’d drag them out anyway. If they want to have more input on what to do, where to go, let them. It gets a lot harder to try to plan vacations after high school so I would try to keep doing trips together, but see if you can plan them together.

[Anonymous]

My teens can’t veto our trip plans, so they go.

[Anonymous]

Have you tried something like a cruise? We took two teens to Alaska on a cruise and it was a great experience. On at sea days, they could sleep in and then hang out with other teens playing ping pong, basketball, screens etc. We had family dinner but they enjoyed the freedom of grabbing a plate at the cafeteria on their own, movie nights at the hot tub with friends. It was a great blend for the whole family.

[Anonymous]

I drag them everywhere. They will thank me one day. For now, they are not thrilled about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

We have 4 kids (tweens and teens) and they’ve never complained about travel. They love to travel!

But we don’t drag them into countless museums or run them ragged from dawn til dusk.

Have you asked your kids where they’d like to go? Maybe they’d prefer a week in the Caribbean rather than museum hopping in Europe?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

We have 4 kids (tweens and teens) and they’ve never complained about travel. They love to travel!

But we don’t drag them into countless museums or run them ragged from dawn til dusk.

Have you asked your kids where they’d like to go? Maybe they’d prefer a week in the Caribbean rather than museum hopping in Europe?

This is a pretty obnoxious comment. It's great that your kids love to travel, but not everyone is running their kids ragged or dragging them to museums for them not to like travel. I have two boys - one 18 and one 16. The 18 year old loves to travel and always has. He will go anywhere, but doesn't really like lazy vacations - he likes to do things. The 16 year old is a total homebody. He has been this way since he was about 10. He's a little anxious, doesn't really like crowds. He just feels "safe" at home. He also is a typical teen who likes hanging with his friends most of all, so that doesn't help things. That said, we offered to do a short trip with a friend and he didn't want to do that either. So is this bad parenting, or just his personality?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

This isn’t true. It’s a totally normal phase of being a teenager to not want to go. They want to stay with their friends and not be with family and that’s OK! It will pass.
I have had more than a handful of teenagers and usually it hit around junior or senior year of high school. One never complained. And, yes, they were trips where we did things they enjoyed (or should have). Whether we forced them depended on the circumstances. I certainly wasn’t going to let them cancel my trip but if they could go to camp and we could save money and not listen to the complain, then I feel no need to drag them along.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you are doing something wrong on your trips.
As your kids what kind of vacations they are in to.

Clearly you haven’t had the pleasure of parenting teenagers yet. You’ll see, lol. You’ll be eating your words!

We have 4 kids (tweens and teens) and they’ve never complained about travel. They love to travel!

But we don’t drag them into countless museums or run them ragged from dawn til dusk.

Have you asked your kids where they’d like to go? Maybe they’d prefer a week in the Caribbean rather than museum hopping in Europe?

I don’t believe it. You should count yourself as a lotto winner then!

[Anonymous]

Can you involve them more in the planning to find out what they are interested in? I have also reverted back to some of my toddler parenting tools. Instead of asking broad open ended questions that allow them to say they don't want to do anything they have to pick from 2 or 3 specific things/places. I have also adapted to planning more down time. It frustrates me to be in some amazing location just stilling in a hotel on my devices but my family just needs some of that. It makes the overall trip more pleasurable for everyone.