5 Benefits of Traveling: Take Your Little One on A Holiday Break

Both you and your children need short breaks to unwind, refuel, and fully reconnect. Having a daily routine is beneficial in many ways, it provides a feeling of safety and comfort. However, from time to time, it is also valuable to break those routines and go out of the safe zone. Having a break and moving away from daily responsibilities such as going to work, or school is an opportunity to learn, explore and improve more. 

The importance of school and education for young children is undeniable. Yet, creating an unstructured time by encouraging them to go out of their comfort zone, travel, and experience new things is also highly necessary for young kids’ development. One of the most effective ways to create an unstructured, and rich experience is traveling. There are many reasons to take advantage of the holiday break by traveling.

1. Improved cognitive abilities 

Traveling is an opportunity for your little one to have a new experience. All these new stimuli that come with traveling wires a new connection in the brain. Young kids’ brain structure is much more flexible than adults, and this flexibility provides them with an opportunity to form the basis of more developed cognitive abilities. So, the learning process continues even on holiday for young children. Tasting new food, hearing different languages, and observing new environment provides new information that they’ve never experienced before. The more they experience new things, the more their neural connections and cognitive skills improve. 

2.  A chance for self-discovery

Each encounter with a new situation, person, or place brings out a different aspect of the self. This applies both to you and your children. Regardless of age, people tend to explore themselves. Offering your children more examples expands their options for creating a dream or goal. One suggestion for you to encourage self-discovery is to point out the environment discreetly and explain the details. For example, if you’re in a new location, talk about landscapes, famous people, historical places, and other features of that specific place.

3. Enhanced emotional skills 

Children may feel lonely during the break because they are used to seeing and engaging with their peers every day. One of the ways to help your children to improve their emotional skills is to create a space for feelings. Most of the time, routines and daily structured schedules encourage us to think rather than feel. As a parent, you may be thinking about daily chores, work, and school requirements, which causes you and your child to live in an automatic mode. Travels and little breaks are good opportunities to move away from responsibilities, be in the present, and talk about feelings. Spend some time with your children during travel to assist them to learn, understand, communicate, and control their emotions by accepting all feelings without passing judgment. 

4. Developed social and communication skills 

Traveling encourages the social and communication skills of children. In their daily routine, they have a limited social circle. Engaging with similar people continuously limits their ability to socialize, because their way of communicating becomes effortless and fixed based on their environment. On the other hand, by traveling they have an opportunity to meet new people and form new ways of communication. They may struggle to communicate with their foreign peers, but it’s a good thing that promotes their social skills by letting them explore new ways of listening, sharing, and communicating. 

5. Strengthened family bonds

Often, you spend more time as a family while traveling than on a regular day. Spending time away from home breaks your family patterns and brings out different sides of each of you, which helps you to see each other from a new perspective. For example, since you might be prioritizing schedules and responsibilities on a regular day, your child may see you as an authority figure. Traveling together, away from all those responsibilities, may transform your parent-child relationship into a whole new form. Learning more about each other and creating different ways of relating deepens your bond as a family.

To make the most of these benefits of traveling, it is important to ensure that your family feels comfortable and safe. One way to have a comfortable travel experience is to be prepared in advance. By being prepared, you can rent your baby gear in advance, and get your order delivered to your location, airport, hotel, or famous landmarks along your trip. So that you can minimize the potential stress factors and enjoy your family trip.