The parental experience is a sequence of transfiguring sceneries. The physically challenging, kinaesthetically involving nature of toddlerhood becomes more organized and action-packed childhood. And then there is the mighty and usually confusing, land of teenage years. In a flash the family vacation that used to be all unadulterated joy and the source of easy fun turns out to be a diplomatic mission with the promise of conflict. The excited kid who used to hold your hand in awe as he or she discovered something new is gone, gone, gone, replaced by a young adult who appears to be rigged with a phone, who speaks in an esoteric language using monosyllabic words and eye-roll, and whose level of energy is also frustratingly out of reach. The dread of most parents is that the days of the happy family holiday are done, to be replaced by glum muttering and a distinctly noticeable change in the group of the desire to go anywhere but where they are.
Although this is not an inexplicable perception it is a misconstrued picture of the opportunity in question. Family adventures with teenagers do not stop; you just switch to a new form of exploration, which is now more complex and significantly more gratifying than ever. It is not easy to accept that the old playbook is out of date. And you are no longer the tour director of a shell of inert children; you are the senior partner of a travel arrangement with an emerging young adult, in the process of realising a complex of inner worlds, internal pressures of social mores, and coming to terms with the self. You have to move out of mind set towards control, towards collaborating, towards decree towards diplomacy to succeed. As far as a family in Lahore goes, this provides a very special perspective on staffing a generational and cultural divide between the generations, providing an opportunity to get your teenager into the world not only as a tourist on a vacation, but rather a growing globally aware citizen. The guide is intended to serve as a fully comprehensive playbook to this brave new world of parent-adolescent family travel, where you will find the tools, tactics, and mentalities that will help you not only to get through a vacation with your teen, but to excel through it, deepering the bond and leaving behind the memories all the more valuable with having been built under the aegis of mutual respect and a shared learning experience.
Unless one wants to book one flight and end up at their destination, it is necessary to learn how the teenage brain works on vacation. Adolescence is given impulse mainly by the strong biological need to gain independence. Staying together, sharing the same vacation plans, some structure of itinerary, imposed closeness of the family version of a pre-planned trip may seem a direct attack against this budding independence. Telling a teenager to line up in front of this museum and that historical monument can seem more like infantilization, something reminiscent of the childhood he or she is so eager to forget. As such, any effective travel plan should incorporate in it a strategy to feed this desire to be independent and not starve it. It is about making purposeful opportunities, where they can exercise their own judgement, come up with personal choices and also a sense of ownership to the experience being made.
Second, it is important to consider the fact that the digital and social life is not negotiable. The reality inside the phone is as real and as important to a teenager in the 21 st century as the real world around them. When one has parental instincts to go full on and administer a strict regime of digital detox to make them engaged and present, it tends to usually turn around and make them resentful and feel that they are missing out on their safety nets. It should be not prohibition but integration. The winning balance of a good trip consists in realizing they need to be connected but at the same time make them such memorable instances of mutual experience that they will be compelling enough to keep them off the monitor.
Moreover, a teenage world is controlled by a well harnessed sense of what is cool and the fear of being bored and the fear of being embarrassed in front of others. It can be a real agony to be spotted doing something they consider to be lame or that is done by little kids. This is what makes the default family vacation program a rather unsuccessful one. What at the age of eight they found delightful in the quaint puppet show or the mellow scenic boat tour probably would have been answered with a wastingly determined glance of distaste. The operations should have some spice, some adventurous, cultural or authentic content that attracts their developing preferences. The travel experience should be that of which they can share with their friends at home proudly and that which helps them to increase their social capital and not the one that reduces theirs. The project of traveling with a teen, hence, is mainly to help them transform their role, where they are taken on a vacation, in the passive role of observe and into the active participant role of shaping the journey.
This teamwork process should start way back, when you are planning to walk away. This is where you win the war before this is ever engaged i.e. the first battle. By far the best approach to your aim of promoting buy-in is to get your teenager a real stake in the planning process. It is rather impractical to just adopt the ready itinerary and put up an opinion to them. Rather, open the map and provide them with applicable meaningful choices. This can be done in macro or micro level. At the macro stage, it would be possible to draw up three possible destinations within the family budget and time frame which would enable them to do the research and from what you have drawn up, cast the deciding vote. As an example, our Lahore family planning an overseas destination may have an option of the Istanbul historic and cultural fusions, the adventurous beauty of Northern Pakistan, or the urbanism of Kuala Lumpur. Assign them the works to seek travel vlogs and read blogs and give the advantages and disadvantages of each.
At the micro level, in a particular destination of choice, give them full ownership of a part of the traveling. It may involve taking the burden of organizing a whole day including the morning activity and the evening meal upon them. Or make them the official Minster of Food that has to use online resources to learn all the restaurants, street food stalls and cool cafes for the whole trip. Once a teenager has also put in his or her own time and energy in planning such an activity, they are just infinitely more bound to go in and actually participate positively. This is also a lesson in budgeting invaluably, logistics, and research.
The schedule must be viewed as an agreement not as an order on the sides of the parents. Treating it as one-a-kind (one for you, one for me) can do miracles. Certain morning activities, such as visiting an art gallery or historic location the parents want to visit, can be precisely exchanged with an afternoon activity of the teenage girl or boy: crawling flea markets in search of vintage clothes, visiting a popular skate park, seeking the most Instagrammable dessert location in town, etc. This model appreciates the interests of all people as acceptable and develops a spirit of compromise. They should also be cleverly included in budgeting. Older teenages should be allowed to take their own lunches, snacks and souvenirs by providing them with daily allowances that will enlighten them to take independent and smaller consumer decisions and they will not have to beg money with every little acting stuff or snack. Lastly, focus on establishing the trip ground rules such as how the planning and culmination of a trip will be done together. Conduct an honest discussion of expectations of screen time, safety measures and possible curfews. When a teen believes that he/she was a part of the process of rule making, the rules will seem much more like a fair bargain to him/her than some arbitrary prohibition.
Selecting the destination is a major issue since it should be a place where the interest of the teenagers should be nurtured. To the adventurous, daredevil teen, think of trips that present a body challenge and fun that can be felt. Whether to Hunza or Skardu, in Pakistan, such a journey can still be pitched like the voyage of discovery, and wild jeep safaris, hikes to glaciers, and expeditions in the beautiful Attabad Lake will give them spectacular content to show their social media. It provides a luxurious form of adventure on an international level with theme parks, indoor skiing and dune bashing deserts. To get closer to nature Costa Rica, a land of ziplining through the canopy tours and surfing instructions is terrific, and Queenstown in New Zealand, the undisputed adventure capital of the world, is best of all, but the long journey of getting there makes this a trip that should go only once in a life.
To the more metro-orientated teenager who lives off of cultures, vibe and fashion, a city break is perfect. However, it has to be the kind of city. Tokyo is a paradise of the teenager, truly entrancing in its futuristic technologies, pop culture, peculiar fashion as well as it cannot be overstated how fantastic the food is, all in a context of one of the safest urban areas not just in the world but also the entire planet. The other gorgeous option is Istanbul which is modern and cool with an ancient history in there. A teenager is able to spend time in the maze of narrow alleys of the Grand Bazaar, visit fashionable cafes of the Karakoy district, and experience the rhythm of the existence of a city that is located between two continents. Cities in Europe such as London or Berlin are a solid choice as these destinations are famous worldwide, having high-quality music scenes, street art and food markets which may be interesting specifically to a teen travelling without parents or relatives. A successful city break involves not getting too caught up into the formal museums but rather exploring the neighbourhoods which make up the city, the living breathing areas.
In the case of the teenager who feels burned out by school and by the demands of the social scene and who just wants to take a break, the concept of an all-inclusive resort can be very effective, as long as you pick the right one. Its worst nightmare will be a resort full of young children. It is an attempt to identify a property, like those properties available in the Belek or Bodrum area in Turkey that has teen-specific facilities. This implies an adequate teen club (not an extra room shared with the kids club) that includes video games stations, lounge, and a pool table. It implies a vacation centre that offers a vast assortment of sporting amenities, decent quality Internet connection that can be used on the beach and, possibly, an alcohol-free, supervised, teen nightclub at night. This provides them with a very important social release, a source of meeting other individuals their age and taking a break out of the family grouping and spending few hours a day and this can be the make or break to their overall attitude and desire to interact in family time.
There is no on/off switch to diplomacy. The dynamics of the trip on a daily basis need some sort of diplomatic execution. There is nothing more potent in your arsenal as the giving of structured independence. This is not as being permissive as letting a fourteen year old go walking off into a foreign city at night. It entails letting them have a lengthy leash. This may begin in small steps: allowing them to visit the snack bar of the resort by themselves. It can progress to allow them to investigate a closed, secure space, such as a particular shopping mall or a pedestrianized market square, an hour at a time, with a designated meeting place, a fixed time and a means of communicating. Such gesture of trust is immense in the life of a teen and in most cases is returned with a better and compliant attitude.
You also have to come to terms with their demand of Wi-Fi. It is their attachment to their world. The easiest solution is to buy a local SIM card with a data package that will not eat into your budget or a portable Wi-Fi hotspot by the time of your arrival. This eliminates this friction between them wanting to know the password at each coffee shop. Incorporate their digital life in the journey. Make them use their phone to make the experience better. Assign them the responsibility of the family photographer, map expert, or the vlogger of the day and have them documenting the day events, or, music director, to prepare a vacation playlist. As such it transforms the phone of distraction to a phone of contribution.
When it comes to the schedule, it is also important not to over schedule. Teens, as well as adults, require some time off. A tight schedule that stretches all day to night is a formula of fatigue and unhappiness. Include unstructured time in each daily schedule, and do not plan any activities to exercise unstructured time when she can go to her room, listen to music, read or just literally relax without any pressure being exerted on her. This is in respect of their need of individuality space and emotional control. Equally, make food your bridge. One of the best ways of connecting is trying out the food of a new destination. They are the owners, so they should lead, and food blogs or social media can help them to discover stylish or curious eating spots. This is a common search to the ideal meal and sometimes the best and most memorable moments during the journey. And most importantly know when to choose battles. The hoodie on a hot day, the pouted face in a family portrait, the wish to wear headphones to listen to their favourite music or their deliberately turned-down nose at some stranger: it is usually not an attack on the person or an indication of a spoiled vacation. They are nothing but the mentions of being adolescent. By learning to give up on the little things, one will have the opportunity to save the energy and goodwill towards the things that are worthwhile.
To sum up, a vacation with an adolescent is a radical shift of the childhood years of vacation. It is the journey, in which the role of parents changes to become a co-creator, in which the role of the parents turns into a reliable mentor. It is not competence in conducting and controlling an ok journey, and having everything in order, but being able to find in the little achievements of relation, of mutual esteem. It is being done through engaging them heavily in the way that the planning is done, through giving them freedom through structure to satisfy their powerful desire to be independent, through respecting the digital and not trying to wrestle with it, and through creating something that presents them not only with active engagement but also with free time. The payoff of this intelligent, compassionate attitude is enormous. Not only will you have a more enjoyable and interactive vacation, but also you will be creating a new more mature relationship with your child. What you will be giving them is the experience of exploring the world through their own eyes and having you there to guide them and experience the world together as an explorer as well. This is the key to turning that feared vacation of the teens into the rite of passage into adulthood and how to make it a shared history of adventure that will be part of the foundation story of your family in years to come.
