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When a busy family life all starts to get a bit much for you, it’s great to spend a week in the sun. Lounging around by the pool or on the beach, relaxing for the week, is a great way to recharge your batteries. The kids will love the chance to get away and play for the week, but could you be making better use of your holiday time. The benefits of travelling are numerous, but a beach holiday doesn’t bring many of them. Your kids could learn so much by travelling to different countries and experiencing cultures that are wildly different to their own, but they aren’t going to find that in a holiday resort. I’m not saying that you should never take your kids on a beach holiday, but if you’re doing it every year, these are the things that you could be missing out on teaching them.
Perspective
When you’re visiting other countries in Europe, the people living there will enjoy a lot of the same luxuries that you do at home. If this is all your children ever experience, they might start taking the things they have for granted. Of course, they will be aware that there are people around the world that are less fortunate than themselves, but they won’t realize the gravity of it. When they see these things on television, for example, they will still feel quite removed from it. It doesn’t seem real. If you take them to these kinds of places and they can see how people live first hand, it will give them a lot more respect for the things that they have and make them more grateful for the things that they have.
History
A good knowledge of world history is an important part of a child’s upbringing. They’ll get some of that at school, but when they’re looking at it in textbooks, they probably won’t get that excited about it. However, taking them on cultural trips around the world where they can see that history up close will hopefully get them more interested in it. Tricking your kids into learning during the summer holidays will stand them in good stead for a number of reasons. It can help them to pass exams at school, at it can also give them a better understanding of current events that might have their roots in the past.
Wildlife
The chances are, your kids are aware of the dangers of climate change. They’ll learn about it, but only in an abstract way. Perhaps one of the reasons that people don’t seem to worry about it so much is that they aren’t thinking about the real world, tangible effects of it. We get told about the wildlife that we are using, but if we never see it, it’s difficult to worry about it. If you take your children to countries where they can see some of this majestic wildlife, they’ll really understand the scale of the problem and some of the wonderful things that we could lose if we don’t tackle the problem.
Tolerance
Parents are fighting an uphill battle against intolerance in their children these days. There are so many inflammatory ideas in the media that they are exposed to all of the time. How are they supposed to know whether these opinions are to be trusted or not? Well, you can tell them that it’s important to be tolerant of other cultures, and the people that live there are no different to them. But the best way is to show them and let them realize that themselves. By interacting with people from all over the world, they’ll be able to break down those barriers that they might feel back home. Being able to communicate with people from all walks of life will help them in future when it comes to finding jobs.
Languages
A teacher standing at the front of the class teaching kids how to order some chips in French isn’t that inspiring. Some kids have a natural talent for learning languages but others might struggle. The best way to learn a language properly is to fully immerse yourself in it. Travel is the best way to do this because it allows your children to put into practice all of the things that they’ve learned at school. Languages are so important these days because, in a globalized economy, employers love somebody that can speak more than one. With such fierce competition out there, knowing a second language can be the difference between success and failure on job applications.
Don’t be scared off a good beach holiday, sometimes it’s exactly what the whole family needs. But don’t go for same holiday year in, year out. Your children will thank you for it one day.
This is a collaborative post.
Welcome to Birds and Lilies! I'm Lou: mother, blogger and freelance writer. This is my lifestyle blog, where I talk about motherhood, infertility and IVF, beauty, my love for food and wine, as well as my thoughts about stuff, and our real-life and travel adventures.
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