Have Kids Will Travel

We dressed up
for travel in the '60s.
(Yeah, that's me.)

My parents first took me to Europe when I was 3 years old.  Surprisingly, I actually have some memories from the trip.  Are they false memories created by seeing the photographs while growing up?  Maybe, but I don’t think so.  Those were not the digital days when photos could repeatedly be viewed with the click of a mouse.  Those were the days when dad, maybe once a year, would schlep out the slide projector and the enormous, pull-down screen and stage a family slide-show evening.

Probably the most positive benefit from taking the trip at age 3 was that when we went again a few years later, the experience was already familiar.  And so the sensory images build upon one another.

Knowing that my mother survived taking me to Europe at age 3 was not convincing enough for me to take my children at that age.  I was terrified:  the long plane ride!  the jetlag!  their picky eating habits!  their temper tantrums!  When I finally did summon the courage to take them, at age 6 and 9, I realized those concerns were relatively minor compared with the extraordinary experiences we had and the memories we made.