6 tips to keep teenagers happy on vacation

By Holly Johnson, TravelPulse (TNS)

You planned the perfect vacation for your entire family, and your teenagers were more than happy to put their lives on hold to come along. But now that you’re a few days into your trip, they’re acting uninterested and staring at their phones for hours on end.

That last part is bad enough on its own, but their whole attitude is just killing the family vibe.

This is just the reality of traveling with teens, at least for a few hours here and there. I have certainly dealt with teen attitudes while traveling with my two girls, who are ages 13 and 15. They’re pretty good most of the time, but we’ve definitely had unsavory moments during our travels with them to more than 40 countries over the last 10 years.

Fortunately, there are some moves to make that help keep hormones and bad teen attitudes at bay on vacation. Here are some of the tips I use to keep my teens happy as we travel around the world.

Resist the urge to overplan

It’s easy to avoid planning too much when you’re visiting an all-inclusive resort or renting a beach villa, whereas you may be tempted to plan a bunch of activities if you’re opting for a sightseeing trip somewhere new.

With my teenagers, I have found they’re fairly eager to do one big “activity” every day, whether it’s a hike through the mountains or a guided tour of a popular museum. However, they get crabby when we try to see or do too much in a single day and they don’t get any downtime.

With that in mind, I try to plan one big family event each day for each trip we take to a sightseeing destination. I fill the rest of the time with activities for myself and my husband only, and I leave plenty of free time on the agenda each day.

Leave them alone

This brings me to my next tip — leaving them alone. My husband and I tend to let our kids stay in our vacation rental alone for at least a few hours per day, whether it’s during the evening while we dine or during the day while we sightsee or get some fresh air.

Giving kids some alone time (and screen time) gives them space to disengage and relax while preserving the rest of their mental energy for family time. Of course, you need to be comfortable leaving your teens alone for several hours at a time for this tip to work, and we all know this is perfectly fine for some teenagers and not others.

Lean into teenage interests

We also let our kids get involved in the planning process, usually by asking what they want to do in destinations we’re planning to visit. When we travel to Europe, for example, we ask them about art they want to see, museums they want to explore or historical sites they may have learned about in school that should be on our radar.

When we take a warm weather trip, like visiting an all-inclusive resort or going on a cruise, we ask about the excursions they want to do and try to get them excited about the journey and destinations they’re visiting.

Say “yes” every day

I have also found that teenagers are much happier on vacation when they get some “wins” under their belt throughout the trip. For us, that happens when we (their parents) say “yes” to a few things they want every day, whether it’s a stop for gelato, a new shirt or a pair of earrings from a local store.

We don’t say “yes” to everything since that would derail our family travel budget in a hurry. However, saying “yes” here and there keeps them happy for longer periods, and that lets my husband and I enjoy the trip for that much longer.

Do something they love

Also consider planning a trip around something your kids love, whether it’s a sporting event, a concert or a show. In our family, for example, we have traveled in and out of the United States for concerts to see artists like Noah Kahan and The Luminners (my teenager’s favorites).

We also planned an entire trip around a Harry Styles concert in New York City once, then used the opportunity to see Broadway shows and check off some other sightseeing boxes while we were there. When we were in Italy for fall break this year, we surprised the kids with a day of riding coasters at the country’s biggest theme park, Gardaland.

Also in this vein, my kids just love cruises to the Caribbean where everyone gets off and on the ship in the same place (unlike in Europe and other destinations where there are multiple points for embarkation). Having the same people on the ship for the entire cruise makes it so much easier for them to make friends during the trip, and they love going to the onboard teen clubs and forging connections with other kids. My kids are always asking when our next cruise is, so I go out of my way to plan a few of them over school breaks each year.

Travel with friends

Finally, consider the prospect of planning a trip with family or friends. This can work especially well if you book a trip with another family that has adults and teenagers of their own, as long as everyone gets along.

We have done this several times in the past, both for all-inclusive resort trips and cruises and both times we traveled with other families where we were friends with the parents and the kids got along. It’s always nice to give your teens some built-in friends to hang out with on vacation provided you know another family with a similar travel style and travel budget to work with.

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