Education matters

After nearly three weeks of travel with my teenage sons, we are all ready to resume normality. That doesn’t mean we haven’t had a good time. On the contrary, I think this has been one of the best holidays we have ever had. It just means that the familiar context of a life that we long to get away from before a vacation begins to seem appealing as it gives us a grounding and a context from which to plan, build and grow from.

We are all slightly more interesting people as a result of our shared experiences and we are certainly closer as a result of them. However… more than that … when we do go our separate ways again in a few days, we will all have grown as people ever so slightly and we all know each other a little bit better, which is, I believe, the beauty of travel as a family.

Yes, there were the standard tantrums and traumas, lost luggage and stubbed toes, but there were also the laughs and the collective times that will undoubtedly be regaled in fits of laughter the next time we all meet up. Family holidays, whether you choose to sit around a pool on a package holiday or trek through the wildernesses of distant lands, give children and parents a chance to experiment with who they really are as people, encouraging development and growth because just by being away from the everyday, you are taking opportunities to try new things. That to me is the best gift that a parent can give a child; the opportunity to experience more of the world than they are used to.

It was Mark Twain who said that it is far better to travel than to arrive. And whilst I understand the sentiment, I also disagree with it as well. Travelling is fun and alien and an opportunity in itself to experience new things, but to arrive, well that is the beauty of the experience altogether since it is in the arriving that personal growth begins. 

On this vacation, the initial day or two after arrival was a period of adjustment as my boys still hung on to their phones and the digital world that they are intrinsically a part of but as the opportunities of arriving in new places and what each one had to offer opened up to them, their desire to sit and stare at screens faded.

Don’t think for one minute that they didn’t return to them! Of course they did and when Wi-Fi was weak there were a few sulks. But the thing is, you can’t check your Facebook when you’re dodging waves, climbing beach hills or dunking your little brother in the pool and I don’t think they particularly wanted to either; and all this happened naturally. I didn’t have to threaten phone curfews once because as they began to enjoy what was around them, the real experiences of life entertained and uplifted them enormously and that was a sight to behold. 

This wasn’t spectacular parenting, by any means it was simple science, adaptation to be exact. In the environment of a family holiday with all its dynamics and personal growth, in order to survive, you have to adapt and whilst the digital world has its place, it isn’t as big a place as the potential experiences of life unfolding before you and that is where the magic lies.