Vactioning With the Reluctant Traveler

Robert Hicks was ready to go home before his family was even an hour into their vacation.

It didn’t get much better during the 12-hour drive from Texas to Colorado or during the family’s stay in the mountains.

Robert, who is 3 1/2, fretted about whether the hotel would be nice. He was afraid of the animals at the zoo. He loves trains, but screamed his lungs out on a steam train ride that his parents had arranged especially for him. “It was the vacation from hell,” Linda Hicks said.

“When I said we were going home, Robert’s face lit up he was so happy,” said Hicks, a Midland, Tex., attorney.

“We call him our little old man,” she said, laughing. “He doesn’t like new experiences.”

It’s tough to travel with kids under any circumstances. With a fearful child who would much rather stay home, a trip can be downright daunting. Bored adolescents can be just as difficult on vacation. So are children of all ages who find something to complain about at every turn.

Sound familiar? At one point or another, every family must deal with a reluctant traveler. As Robert Hicks bawled loudly on the steam train, his mother turned to the carload of tourists surrounding them. “Aren’t family vacations fun?” she asked.

“Everyone broke up laughing,” Hicks said. “They’d all been there.”

That’s why no matter how frustrating or how reluctant the kids are, don’t feel it’s necessary to hang up the backpacks and stay at home.

“Remember that kids who learn how to travel effectively are learning how to move about in the world,” said Dr. Bennett Leventhal, a child psychiatrist and chief of the University of Chicago Department of Psychiatry. Leventhal himself has traveled with his share of bored teens.

“Don’t make a big deal about it if they’re bored,” he said. “They might not be bored but they’ll tell you they are.”

No matter what the reluctant traveler’s age, Leventhal and other experts suggest that it helps to let them have a say in the planning. Make sure there are plenty of kid-friendly activities on the schedule.

Show fearful kids pictures of where you’ll be going and what you’ll be doing. “Give them lots of reassurance that you’ll be with them,” said Sharon Berry, a child psychologist at the Northwestern University-affiliated Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

A few trial runs might help, too. If the kids aren’t accustomed to crowds and the family is heading toward some busy tourist sites in a big city, visit a popular local attraction first, said Los Angeles pediatrician Jeffrey Fireman.

Fireman made the mistake of spending long hours exploring New York with his wife and their two grade-school children for several days last summer. “It was stupid,” he said. “The kids were bored.”

Always be willing to adjust the itinerary and your expectations. The big hit of Robert Hicks’ trip wasn’t the mountains and certainly not the train ride that his parents had expected he’d love. It was the fake waterfall and the goldfish in the hotel lobby.

Meanwhile, Fireman booked his family into the Waldorf Astoria, thinking the kids would be impressed by the grandeur. “All they cared about was that there wasn’t a pool.”

Traveling with kids always requires patience. Reluctant travelers need even more. Just ask Gillian McNamee. She spent many hours in a South American hotel room with her young daughter playing Barbie before the preschooler felt comfortable enough to make some forays out into the strange city. Their first expedition? “To a store that sold Barbies,” laughed McNamee, a professor of child development at Chicago’s Erikson Institute, which specializes in research on children.

“Little routines and familiarity are important to fearful children,” McNamee said. That might mean packing a stock of Barbie dolls, Power Rangers, hand-held computer games or the same breakfast cereal as at home. Favorite music or books can help, too.

Be sure to acknowledge the child’s fear--whatever it may be--and tell him you want to help him cope.

See if there’s a reason for them to be afraid, Leventhal said. Are they worried about a plane crash? An earthquake in California? Is the visit to someone they don’t like?

“Tell them that you’re their parents and you’ll make sure they’ll be safe,” Leventhal said. It sounds simple but a talk like that can make all of the difference.

If they’re frightened of a particular activity--sliding down a water slide, riding a ski lift, taking a canoe ride, give them permission to sit it out, if possible. “If you force them, it will be a long time before they trust you and everyone will be miserable,” said Maureen Mepham, a veteran nursery school teacher who has lots of practice coaxing nervous preschoolers to try new things. She recommends waiting until they’re ready, even if it means reshuffling the schedule.

There’s no rule that families must be doing something every minute on vacation. “People underestimate how important it is for kids to spend time with their parents,” Leventhal said. “Even adolescents like it.”

Linda Hicks likes that advice. She and her husband Jim abandoned the idea of a frenetic trip to Disney World in favor of more relaxed family vacation at home. “We were all much happier,” she said.

Taking the Kids appears the first and third week of every month.