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Melanie Van Orden,
Jet Set Now Editor
May
1
Jet Set Families | Longterm Travel with Kids
May 01, 2008 by Melanie Van Orden
Several years ago, Jason and I had a rock band that we were attempting to turn into a viable career. We poured all of our extra time and money into the endeavor, and spent three solid years pursuing that goal. Eventually, we realized that we would probably have to spend at least another seven years touring and building our fan base in order to begin making a real living as an independent band. (Ten years seemed to be the magic number for independent music biz success.)
When that realization came to us, we decided that being full-time band members wasn’t for us. We wanted to start having kids sometime in the next tens years, and constant touring, smoky bars, and living off Ramen Noodles didn’t seem to be the best environment for raising a family.
Even when we began experiencing music biz success, we thought we would probably have to tour most of the year to keep the success going. At the time, I thought there was no way that I could ever want to raise a family on the road.
Now, years later, we find ourselves in a similar pickle. We love our international travel lifestyle and can see ourselves living this way indefinitely. But what about our future kids? Do we have to limit ourselves geographically once we start raising a family?
If not, how can we avoid the “third culture kid” phenomenon where kids who grow up moving from country to country feel a loss of identity, isolated, and homeless into adulthood? How do we handle long-term travel with kids in foreign countries? And what about giving birth in a foreign country? (Yikes!)
In the years since our band days, we have learned that we very often limit our thinking far short of the possibilities in life. In keeping with that realization, I believe that we don’t need to limit ourselves to one geographic location in order to successfully raise our future children into happy, healthy and loving adults. In that spirit, I have started a new category on our website called Jet Set Families, a resource for anyone interested in healthy long-term travel with kids.
I will interview families living abroad, talk to adults who grew up traveling from country to country with their parents, and break down child psychology and development research into everyday language. I have a masters degree in clinical social work (psychology), so that will help me translate the psychobabble into plain English.
All of the things I will learn for Jet Set Families will help Jason and I fulfill our dream of long-term travel with our future kids. What about you? Do you want to live a jet set lifestyle with kids? Do you currently travel with kids? What are your biggest concerns about having a jet set family?
Photo credit: adwriter
Filed Under Jet Set Families, Misc.
Comments
16 Responses to “Jet Set Families | Longterm Travel with Kids”
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This is great stuff Melanie. Lissie and I came to the same realization with the theatre world that you did with the music industry. We’re currently working on our own version of what the two of you did, so I am very excited to be able to follow you.
Since we plan on having kids in the near future, this will be useful too!
I’ve got a feeling that by the time most people actually decide ‘now is the moment for kids’, there is also a tendency to want to settle a bit, at least to find a decent base from which future, smaller travels can take place. Either that, or to pick one easy but still exotic place like BA and decide to call it the new main base.
I guess I’m saying that 3 to six month mini retirement type trips might loose their appeal when kids appear, and other travel or live abroad options will take their place.
When I thru-hiked The Appalachian Trail (hiking 6 months from Georgia to Maine), there was an entire family (a mom, dad, and 3 kids) thru-hiking too. I don’t know how they did it, but seems like an amazing experience for a kid to have.
They have a website with their journals. It looks to me like they are still having adventures. http://thegarland5.com/
i grew up as a semi-gypsy. my argentine momma and colorado poppa had us touring/moving constantly (north, central, and south america). i feel privileged to have had the experiences but want to do everything i can so that my kids feel like they (and i) have roots. your families are so large and tight-knit that you may feel anchored enough to be wanderers…i’m interested to see how it works out for you!
xo,quel
Great stuff, Melanie! Right now, my family and I are pretty settled in New Jersey - well, we’ll be looking for a new home in the next year at least as we prepare to expand the family.
But who knows what the future holds? Maybe we will be a traveling family? Maybe we’ll just travel for pleasure? Either way, I’m really interested to see what comes out of Jet Set Families! Best of luck with it, and with you and Jason!
Brian
@cory huff - I hope we can figure out how to have “families on the road” together! Wow, how exciting that you and Lissie are thinking of kids in the NEAR future! Say hi to Lissie for me.
@Ben - I agree that the “nesting instinct” is a strong influence on parents and may make them decide against a jet set lifestyle. This instinct is beneficial to the kids, because they need to feel like they have roots and a culture to call their own.
But I want to find a middle ground between living in one place all the time and constantly traveling to a new country every three months for Jet Set Families. I think that spending half the year on the road and half the year at a consistent homebase that you return every year could be a healthy compromise.
I want to help parents fulfill their dreams of a jet set lifestyle while raising kids that avoid the “third culture kid” phenomenon.
@Adam V - Wow, what a cool site about a jet set family! I will definitely be contacting them to see if I can interview them for the Jet Set Now site or podcast.
@Raquel - Thanks so much for sharing your jet set childhood experiences. It must have been tough to feel like you had no (or very little) roots while growing up. That’s exactly what I want to help parents avoid! I’m not sure how we can do it, but maybe we can all figure it out together!
@Brian Jude - I wish you all the best in your plans to expand your family. How awesome! Maybe you’ll join us in the jet set, maybe not, but we love having you around for the ride either way!
Traveling as a family is better than traveling as a couple or a single!
I did it as a child growing up and we are almost 2 years into an open ended trip around the world with our family which started when my child was 5. It is the best decision we have ever made!!
I think your impression that 3rd culture kids is a negative is in error, as some of the greatest people I know grew up as 3CK’s. Some of the greatest people on the planet had that kind of upbringing and it added to their upbringing, not subtracted. Also the internet is making 3CK, so much different than the isolating past when the studies where done when expensive phone calls and letters were the only way to connect.
Much depends on how you do it, but in this day and age, with technology keeping everyone easily connected, things are different and easier. One can easily have roots while being mobile. My child talks to her grandparents, cousins and friends almost every day via webcam free skype calls and we take classrooms of kids along with us. We have had a blast when relatives have visited too, sharing our world with them.
I can not think of a better way to bond as a family and to raise a global citizen who is ready for the 21st century! Put your fears to rest, this is a good thing, perhaps the best thing that you can give your child today. I think it is a trend that more will do and education is changing as well with the internet, using lot of collaboration amongst students around the world.
Our child’s education is our main motivation for living a mobile lifestyle and it has been an amazing experience thus far…beyond our dreams.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wn9rDTZj-m4
I think it is normal to have worries, but you will find that it is a fantastic way to raise a child and your family and individual children will be extraordinarily enriched by travel. I have never met anyone raised in a loving, traveling family who was not terribly grateful for such a rich childhood.
@soultravelers3 - What a pleasure to have you comment on the blog! Please keep it up, we need your experience and perspective. I’m so glad that you are finding your jet set lifestyle to be so wonderful and beneficial for raising your child.
I agree that being a third culture kid can be a wonderful enrichment of your life. It’s just that when I did some research on the subject in some large groups of TCKs,I found that many of them suffer some painful effects from their wandering childhood. I’m not sure what the biggest reason for this is.
Perhaps you are right about the internet bring the world much closer and alleviating many of the problems of being a TCK. Also, maybe the TCKs that suffer the most had parents that didn’t expend enough time, attention and effort in creating a sense of “home” while traveling. I don’t know. That’s why I want people like you and people who grew up as TCKs to educate us! My future children will thank you!
I’d be really interested to learn more about the psychology behind this from your trained perspective, Melanie. Having seen what has and hasn’t worked so well with friends children, and now with two youngsters of our own who have at least 4 cultural influences (mum=Scottish, dad=English, born=Germany, friends=international) I’ve a few views of my own.
Absolutely, this is such a gift, and advantage, for our children in the long-term. But it does give them extra pressures that they have to deal with, and extra pressures that parents put on them perhaps unnecessarily.
For me, a solid grounding in what is their single ‘mother-tongue’ is critical (even with parents of two different nationalities). I see parents trying to help their children learn an adopted language, at the expense of their own. So not only are you confusing them with your weaknesses, but you’re not proactively sharing your stengths. Even advice from our local kindergarten was to invest in this short-term gain. Instead, we’re helping our kids to learn German from the experts - the Germans! - and making sure they can imagine, express themeselves, and be creative in English.
Thanks Melanie for your kind words. We are about to get much more mobile for the next 7 months, so I will have less time on the internet until next fall. I certainly will add when I can.
I think this is going to be more of a trend and the popularity of Tim’s book 4hww shows that.
I did lots of reading about TCK’s while planning and did think of this issue. We moved a lot when I was a child and I feel it was a great advantage to me. I am more flexible, adaptable, willing to risk and can mix with people from all kinds of backgrounds.
I do think one needs to be aware of the issue and find ways to promote the advantages and make less of the challenges. I really think it is quite easily done today.
I also agree that one needs to be aware of language issues and there are some great books on raising bilingual children. My daughter was raised as a bilingual from birth, so living in a country where her second language is dominant was always part of our plan.
My husband is not a native speaker, so this was no easy feat. She started out as a trilingual, but we soon found out that was harder than we wanted to work, as keeping languages fluent takes much work and much harder for monolingual parents. ( Just as musical instruction is much harder for non musical parents).
I have or will be adding books on raising bilingual kids to my book section on our website.
My daughter is getting a biliterate and bicultural experience through the local school that she could not get at such a level any where else. She was a very fluent, high level reader and writer in English ( her dominant language) before she started to learn to read and write in Spanish.
That is important as is keeping up in both languages. I know UK families here in Spain who have lost some of their native tongue. We met Swedish boys in Greece who lost their native tongues completely ( they were 9 and 11 when they moved to Greece!). Kids can learn language fast, but also lose them just as fast. So language is another area to consider with travel or mobile life.
Yes, kids add to the challenge of mobile living, and the more kids, the more challenge, but it certainly can be done.
The experts say Mozart was greatly influenced by all the travel he did as a child and all that he was exposed to through those years of diverse experience in many countries. He lived a mobile lifestyle long before it was fashionable!
Today it is just as enriching, but available and easy for all!
Here is an interesting link to a blog about older kids and education from an expat who lives in B.A.
http://theworldisyourcampus.wordpress.com/category/argentina/
Most people would never think about uprooting older kids like they did, but it worked out spectacularly for them.
If there is a will there is a way.
Sometimes you can reinvent the wheel and make something even better. The internet is changing everything.
We are setting off to Spain in 5 months (after my wife finishes school). We have a 10 month old named queen Sophia the . We have spent a year and a half re-framing and actively designing our way of thinking. We found that most of this work was not changing our thinking but re-enforcing our belief system.
One of our pillar beliefs is ‘WE ARE DESIGNED FOR MOBILE LIVING’. I say ‘we are’ become many aren’t and that is in all perfection, OK. My wife and I are remarkably grounded people. We work hard at remaining solid, rational and sound thinking individuals. And what is interesting is we both have been raised in a transit lifestyle. I was raised in Foster care my whole life and my wife Evelyn was raise in a crappy situation where she had to move from home to home (like me) because of the poor choices our parents made. And by the grace of God we have been able to become very stable and internally beautiful people. And in the case of my wife… externally HOT too.
So we as adults have embraced what life has prepared us for, living mobile. The major difference is we now choose to move! This confidence, this harmony in our vision for our lives as individuals, as a couple and as parents become the “HOME” and security of our tribe (our family unit). We believe the human soul has to move. And we use our minds to train our bodies to obey the moving of our soul. So our creed is, as the soul goes the body follows. In our case it is going to Spain for now then Italy and later Greece. If another person soul’s move among their local community then that again is equally beautiful.
In terms of the kids … Here are 2 major pillars of belief that may help:
1. Inner hunter-gather
If you as Parents, together are confident, at peace and feel rooted together then your child will also. No matter where you live or were you’re going. Always remember… before airplanes, TVs, stores and yes even before low gasoline prices … humans are the descendants of either Adam and Eve or Nat the Neanderthal and in any case we come from and are still in our core a nomadic species. So tap into your inner hunter-gather and enjoy the life-journey, soul-journey or the world-journey or even the I gotta go and pick up milk and eggs journey.
2. Self-Image vs Self-Esteem.
To build a child’s self-esteem is to curse the child. To tell them they can do or be anything will cause them to do or be nothing. Develop their self-image; that’ll be a never ending source of assurance and power. The internal dialog of Self-image is I AM … ; internal dialog of self-esteem is I could be … ” To give a child a strong self-image is to give them a platform form which ‘Purpose’ can happen.
A great way to develop Self-Image in your child is by asking yourself, the parent, a pivotal question … is my child an obstacle or a participant in this journey?
For a great illustration that declares clearly that their child is a participant in their journey click: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wn9rDTZj-m4
Yes it’s SoulTravelers3’s youtube video.
Thanks SoulTravelers3, It is a relief to actually see someone doing what I have pictured for my children for many years. And now since my First Born is alive and well, that dream is now materializing. Of course instead of a violin, my Sophie will be drawing with her Daddy and dancing with her Mommy.
vargasarte.blogspot.com
Melanie - There is some great stuff mentioned in this post, I know personally we would be keen to getaway with the kids somewhere for while. However can seem to get a little tricky when you have financial commitments, with mortgages. Maybe I’ll get inspired at event that Tim Ferris is doing this Friday in Sydney.
Cheers, James
Wow! So many great comments! It seems there are a lot of you out there who share my interest in healthy longterm travel with kids. I can see that I will be needing to focus on this quite a bit here at Jet Set Now.
@Ronna Porter - Thanks for your insights. I’ll definitely continue to research the third culture kid phenomenon and how to avoid it. You’ll be hearing about it on the blog!
@soultravelers3
&
@vargas
&
@james of littlenomads
Good luck with all of your current or future travels, guys! Please continue to keep us updated on your travels with your little ones here at Jet Set Now!
Well, traveling with kids is great! We ‘ve now been home for about a year again after traveling 945days. Just traveling. No work. From Houston, upto Prudhoe Bay and all the way down to Ushuaia. Two kids (when started just 3 and still 6) with mom and dad in a Dodge and a 31ft Fifth Wheel exploring all the America’s. The speak English now (we are Dutch) a bit of Spanish, maybe a word or two Portuguese and we are trying to teach them some German as well, as as they are not yet third culture kids they do have family in Switzerland also.
945 days is a long time and in the beginning they said they’d never leave again…now they are dreaming again.
Home back 1 year seems a lifetime already and there will definitely be more traveling.
Hope to read more about traveling families soon.
Safe Travels and Happy Trails every one
Carla, Klarin and Fabian (boy, now 10) and Mighalle (girl, now 6)