Let Kids Plan Family Getaway with Online Resources

A hazy day on the lake

Here’s a summer project to enhance your relationship with your teens and to enhance their online research and budgeting skills. 

 The fact is, teens’ digital life is dominated by texting & gaming. While more than half share content online, the girls are most likely to post pictures and the boys are more like ly to post videos.  

While teens love the internet, they spend far less time browsing there than adults.  Are they getting as much out of the internet as the time they are putting in?  Do they see the correlation between what they do online [their digital life] and what they can do in their analog life?  Here’s an idea for a practical exercise in how the internet can help them make plans and how you can all enjoy family time together.  Allow your kids to plan a summer family getaway.  Let THEM make the plan, with as few limitations as you are comfortable with and let their imaginations go wild. 

There’s lots of help online to plan a vacation with teens, just search “Teen Travel”.   Or Put it in their hands and let them plan a getaway from scratch.  Some things to consider:

• Pick the weekend, including days & dates, up front.  When you go makes a difference in availability, rates, etc.  This has to be one of the basic guidelines.  For example, you might say, leaving Thursday, July 29^th at 7pm and returning Sunday, August first at 7pm.  Let them know they don’t have to use the whole time [may want to save a night’s hotel stay by leaving Friday morning], but that’s the ‘vacation’ window.
• Give them a budget.  Make it realistic.  This will be the single most important driver to the getaway they choose.  Depending on the age of the ids, you may want to give them clearer guidelines on the budget which can help:
• Is it a competition or a team project.  Decide if you want each person to come up with their own idea to research, budget and present to the group.  The advantages are that you will get more choices and you may want to vote on one for this trip and hold onto the others for future getaways.  Or you may want to use this as a team-building exercise and have each kid assigned a part of the trip to research and report back to the group. In any case, make it THEIR project.  Mom should not be leading the project/assigning tasks. 
• Parents always have veto power.  State that right up front.  It’s still your job to say yeah or nay, considering family finances, safety and your goals as a family.  Use this veto power sparingly. 

 Budgeting  — This is one thing they may never have done before.  They’ll need basic guidance.  The budget will be key in determining whether they choose flying the Concord to France or driving to a nearby lake, or something in between.  Give them an outline like this:

 Walk them through some of the things they’ll need to look up online:

• Mapquest a driving vacation.  How far is it?  What’s the average price of gas?  How many miles to the gallon.  Multiply to find the cost.
• Are pictures available that they can show to the rest of the family when they make their presentation? [If everyone is making their own plan?]
• Activities you can do when you get there.
• What’s the ‘Plan B’?  If they pick an amusement park, what else is there to do in the area if it pours rain that weekend?
• Don’t forget the multiplication.  If the admission to an attraction is $40 and there are 4 people going on the trip, they’ll have to plan for $160 not $40 for the activity.
• Suggest they make notes on additional considerations.  For example, if their plan involves fishing, do you need fishing licenses and what will that cost.  Will you pack the tent or bring the tent?  If they want to rent a lake house, what’s the security deposit? 

 Finally, don’t start the project unless you are willing to follow through.  This is a teaching/learning opportunity with the bonus benefit of some great family time at the conclusion. We recently took an weekend lake trip, which was about 4 hours drive from our house.  We found an inexpensive hotel that took pets, it was clean and had a friendly staff, indoor pool open until 11pm with a free breakfast in the morning.  We stayed 2 nights and rented a pontoon boat one day [no dogs allowed] and stayed out on the lake all day, swimming and fishing, talking and playing cards.  A quick getaway that we all agreed was the best vacation we had in a while.   Enjoy your family.