“Why go if they won’t remember it?” is the most common objection I hear to traveling with children of any age, but especially babies and toddlers. And like most things with parenting, I feel like that objection just misses the whole point.
In the same way the point of signing up for a sport is not that they will end up an Olympian but maybe, I don’t know, have fun? Find themselves? Learn discipline and bodily joy? The point of traveling is that it changes you. It exposes you to new ideas, people, things, images, sounds, foods. It makes you who you are, whether you remember going or not.
I’ve also found that toddlers DO have a remarkable memory for things. They may not be able to place an experience chronologically, or have the language to talk about it correctly. (Using conventions “last week” or “yesterday” for anything in the past, for example.) But they remember, especially when prompted.
We visited this splash pad over a year ago but when we pulled in to this playground my toddler was psyched to see it up and running again. “I’ve been here before!!!”
Memory and experience builds upon itself, like a muscle. For the littlest among us, it’s how we form a sense of self and how we process the world. It’s how you know exactly where everything is in your kitchen, even if you don’t use every ingredient every day. You’ve done it enough to know that it’s there, or can use context clues and connections (“X needs to be kept cold,”) to figure out where it’s located. The same is true of travel memories, and like everything, you need to teach your children how to remember.
Choose small souvenirs that you can incorporate into your life.
It’s part of what brings me, and probably you, joy. Setting the table with our handmade table runner from Peru, walking by a framed postcard from Spain, opening the spice jars I bought in Italy. This is the small ways that spark joy in my daily life, that remind me to bring what I learned from my travels into my own life.
It can also be an aesthetic, the way I modeled our bathroom from the same one at the Rockhouse Resort in Jamaica with bright teal tile so every shower feels like a vacation. Or just a gentle reminder of a different way of living, like the rejuvenation from a quick mid-afternoon siesta like the Spanish.
The Rockhouse is adults-only, but they have a sister resort in Negril I’ve got my eye on for next year’s spring break.
Maybe it’s because I’m a little magpie myself, obsessed with tiny trinkets, but I have a soft spot for souvenirs when we travel places. I’ve been collecting enamel pins since I was little. Beyond that, I try to pick things for the kitchen or home that I’ll see every day. For my toddler, we’ve done:
- Postcards: We write notes to friends (and ourselves) and send them.
- Stuffies: Many hotels we’ve stayed at have given them to us! We name them by hotel or destination, ie. “Cali” from California, “Carl” from the Ritz-Carleton.
- Books: If they’re on-theme and we like them. At Polly’s Pancake Parlor in N.H., we bought Tomie DePaola’s Pancakes for Breakfast. My toddler often asks for “Polly’s book.”
- Crafts: Gather various paper goods throughout your trip (tickets, brochures, and so on) and make a collage or scrapbook-style craft together. Bonus as this can help slightly older toddlers practice their scissor and glue skills!
- Hotel Keys: I punch a hole in the card and put them on a key ring to look at. Some also get donated as “credit cards” for various pretend play enterprises.
The goal with any souvenir is not to buy it because we have to bring something back, but to use it as a cue to tell the story or process coming home through play. (Example: “I wonder if Carl misses the pool? Remember when…”)
Print out your travel photos and make them accessible.
I’m the memory maker in our family, so I know how much work this is. But it brings me great joy to curate our photos in different places around the house, to print them out and put them in photo frames. Once they’re printed I let my toddler help me choose which ones go up in certain spots, or in their room.
I also love making photo books—it’s a creative outlet for me. Several places now do board books, and so I’ve made a few on Shutterfly for past travels for my toddler, especially to places we’ll go again and again like grandparent’s houses.
We keep books all over the house, but the photo albums are all in a certain place. We’ll wonder over periodically and look through them and tell the stories together. Just when I think they’ve forgotten our Disney trip, we’re flipping through and my toddler is squealing about how they met Pooh at breakfast. I melt. (And they say don’t meet your heroes!!)
Tell and re-tell your travel stories.
At the end of every day, after shutting out the light, whoever is doing bedtime reads a book or two and then snuggles in for each person to say what they did that day. This is one of my favorite, favorite rituals as a family. My partner and I do rose-bud-thorn at the end of every day, and this is our way of introducing that to our toddler.
I often spin our day into a grand and epic tale of adventure, even if we just went to the grocery store. It always surprises me what my toddler chooses to bring up at that point—sometimes it’s a very mundane moment, sometimes it’s a school story I hadn’t heard yet—and I’m hopeful that this practice cements the memories of the day and helps them process a little better. I know the rose-bud-thorn does for me.
I’m a writer, though, and spinning stories is part of my job. If you need more of a guide, I’d suggest checking out books or media about the place you visited after you return, especially nonfiction books with pictures. It doesn’t have to be super-place specific. For example:
- For a camping trip, read The Hike by Alison Farrell
- For a beach trip, read At the Beach by Anne Rockwell
- For a trip by airplane, read A Day at the Airport by Richard Scarry
Incorporate travel memories into your pretend play.
I’ll say this a million times, but playing with your kid can be so, so fun if you let them lead. Remove the rules of how life works and just get silly.
Big-giggle play is my favorite. What I usually do if we’re at a lull or haven’t started is just set the scene. Like, “I’m sitting on the sand. What’s that? Oh my goodness, there’s a big wave coming, better run!” My toddler usually picks it up from there.
Or sometimes I’ll play one of my favorite Bluey games and pretend our bed is a hotel bed, and I’ll call housekeeping and ask for a “normal pillow, not one of those wiggly ones.” My toddler will “bring” me the pillow (it’s them, I gently put my head on their tummy) only for them to wiggle around. I act all over-the-top indignant and say I’m going to speak to the manager! Great giggles all around.
You can, of course, do more mundane play, like sitting on the couch pretending to be in an airplane, or turning a play kitchen into a hotel restaurant. All of this is great fun and usually details from our travel will pop into the play, like seeing Jeff the lizard by the pool one day in St. Martin. (Livin’ the dream, Jeff.)
Thanks for being here.
New England weather may be fickle but if it’s after Memorial Day, WE ARE GOING TO THE BEACH. Yes, fully clothed.
The more practical side of this is that the more you travel, the easier it gets. Our toddler knows the “routine” of traveling now. They understand what going on an airplane means. That doesn’t mean it is always smooth and easy, but there’s more excitement than anxiety from all of us as a family, because it’s something we’ve done before, even if we’re going somewhere new.
More than that, it’s given *me* so much more confidence as a mom. I’m no longer as flustered in public when we have the inevitable toddler meltdown. I have our packing process down to a science. That’s not to say it’s easy, but that for me, running headlong on the beach because my toddler “spotted Burt Dow” is so joyful my heart squeezes. The more we go, the more I find it easier to say yes to things, to want to hop in the car for hours just for a weekend.
Here’s to the yes’s that make life joyful,
Kayla
If you liked this post, please consider supporting my work. I’m just a mom in the thick of the toddler years trying to create core memories for our whole family while minimizing meltdowns—I sincerely hope this helps you do the same.
This post was originally published on Travel with Toddlers. Subscribe for more real-talk travel advice, toddler-friendly itineraries, and tried-and-true gear recommendations.
