Family of Six goes on Yearlong Journey around the World

For many parents, a weeklong trip to the beach is about all they can handle. Feeling a little adventurous and you’ll book a short European vacation, hike the Grand Canyon, head to Alaska, or road trip cross country. We look forward to our family vacations but often choose destinations that require minimal planning , give us many options on ‘kid activities’, or are very safe and offer many of the comforts that we have at home.

So what would you say about a family of six that plans to spend the next year trotting the globe with planned stops in twenty countries including Namibia, Cambodia, and Chile? Certainly this is a very ambitious itinerary even for two well seasoned travelers but with four kids aged 4 to 13 this seems insurmountable. When I first heard about the trip, I had lots of questions and was fortunate to get the opportunity to talk to Anne, chief cool and calm Mom of the family, about their trip.

“Experience Life Around The World”

The family plans to travel, meet locals and other travelers, and for the most part experience life as it is in the countries they are visiting. Other than choosing the destination, setting travel dates, and purchasing ticket, the family has done relatively little planning on what they will do, where they will stay, and how they will get around once they land at a destination. They plan on doing volunteer work in India and meeting up with a church group in Australia, and hopefully meeting up with local travelers to get the inside scoop on day trips that are off the beaten path. They have some more details planned for their first stops in New Zealand and Australia and have done some extra planning on their month long tour of China. They’ve researched where and how to get travel visas for the countries they’re visiting and have booked enough time at specific cities to insure that this and other logistics in getting to their next destination can be completed without panic. Other than that, the family is ‘mostly winging it’.

Choosing their destinations

Anne and Tom engaged their kids to help set their travel destinations and parts of their itinerary. They pulled out a world travel guide and let their kids put post-it notes on countries and cities they wanted to visit. They then narrowed down the list based on some practical considerations, like finances, their desire to see ‘great places’, and a general theme of slowing down and experiencing life. “Our kids are not motivated by theme parks and their interests surprised us”, says Anne. Their oldest wanted to learn to surf and so that activity made it into their Australian travel itinerary. Tunisia was chosen based on one of their children’s interest in history.

Prepping for the trip

Although the family has done relatively little planning especially for a trip this long and hitting so many destinations, I suspect that they’re doing the 100 yard dash during these final days before they head out. They leave for New Zealand on September 1.

The most important prepping is really part of the family’s culture. The family isn’t afraid to move and they have lived in at least three different US cities. They’ve also taken the kids on long family excursions including a 3.5 week trip around Spain. The kids are encouraged to keep a daily journal of their travels. They have also been given exposure to different ethnic foods but they are prepared to eat rice as a staple. They encouraged their kids to watch Globe Trekker. Tom is a business road warrior and speaks several languages, so he was assigned the task to learn basic Mandarin. So I guess you can say that family members have the DNA for travel.

There are some practical matters. They have some experience with home schooling but needed to sign up with an accredited home schooling program to insure that their children had official records of their studies and that the program including specific milestones. They had to research the details on getting visas and realized that they would have to apply for many of them on the road since some countries only put out visas for travel 3 months ahead. They made sure that they could see things at a reasonable pace and avoid travel burn out. “You don’t want to end up feeling I can’t go see another museum or temple”.

Security and safety is their biggest concern

I spoke to Anne the day after the terrorist arrests were made in London so I wanted to know how she was handling both security and safety. The safety of their kids is their biggest concern and educating their children on safe travel behavior has been part of their prepping for this trip. This goes well beyond looking both ways when crossing the street, for example, they’ve explained to their kids how causing a commotion or worse, throwing a tantrum in public is a major distraction and makes them an easy target. The older children will be responsible to buddy up with their younger siblings. They are considering altering their attire in certain situations. They have other practical (and not so practical) suggestion in Tom’s Blog entry 6 Tips for Keeping Your Kids Safe While Traveling

Keeping tabs on six in the world

Anne explained to me that one of the best ways to get children interested in travel is to give them an appreciation for the arts. Reading through Sixintheworld.com, there are often little tidbits of helpful advice and anecdotes on parenting, family travel, and fully experiencing life. They will be updating the SixInTheWorld site with entries and photos about their travels, so stay tuned. New Zealand, then Australia, then China…