5 Reasons You Should Travel With Your Kids

Traveling with kids: for some, it's a nightmare, while for others, it's a dream come true. If you've been weighing the pros and cons of traveling with your kids, take a look at these five reasons that you should travel with them.

1. To teach them just how big the world is. With work, school, and family obligations, it's easy to get stuck in the rut and routine of daily life and forget that an entire world exists beyond the boundaries of your hometown. Traveling with your kids teaches them that there's a world out there, filled with people, places, and things that are different, interesting, and fun. It keeps their world diverse, open, and free.

2. To learn about yourself and your kids. The daily grind of life at home is very comfortable and can be mundane. There aren't a lot of opportunities to explore yourself. Traveling takes you out of your comfort zone, and thus, teaches you new things about yourself and your kids. You'll learn which family members eagerly seek adventure. Who prefers a schedule and who likes spontaneity? Where does each person want to visit at some point? You'll learn more about everyone in your family by traveling than you will by any number of conversations at home.

3. To make some incredible memories. Sure, you can make memories at home. We all have memories of Christmas at home, or that time baking cookies went totally wrong. But the memories made while traveling are of a completely different variety. When the cookies didn't turn out, you probably felt frustrated even if your kids didn't - that makes a great memory for them, but not so much for you. When traveling, though, everyone tends to have similar memories. The excitement, the newness, the fear when something went wrong, these are feelings that the whole family probably shared.

4. To teach them history, culture, and more. Travel can enhance your child's education in amazing ways. Seeing historical sites in 3D, learning about the cultures of foreign countries by being immersed in them, takes learning to a whole new level. It embeds the lessons deep in your child's mind and makes it stick in a way that abstract information in a book wouldn't.

5. To teach them the value of hard work. Traveling isn't cheap. Even a weekend away to a town just a couple of hours away can be expensive. Traveling with your children teaches them that it's just one of the benefits of hard work. It teaches them that if they enjoy what they get to do with you right now, they need to remember that and work hard when they're adults and want to continue that lifestyle.

Traveling with children has many benefits, even more than listed here. It's worth the time, expense, and effort to make it work. The memories made, lessons learned, and quality time spent together are wonderful gifts.