Traveling with Teens | Challenges we face and how to overcome them | School Work

May 6

In part two of our series Traveling with Teens: Challenges We Face and How We Overcome Them, we are talking about school work. As mentioned in our first post (head here if you missed that one!), all seven of our kids are in traditional school so when it comes to deadlines and schedules, there can be a bit more pressure and a lot less flexibility.

In case you jumped into this post, let’s get you up to speed.

This series of blog posts was inspired by friendship that started on Instagram where three moms started to connect over all things traveling with teens. From questions to encouragement to sharing ideas and war stories, we started talking in DMs and quickly realized we have a lot in common. We figured if we can relate on so many topics, likely others can too.

With that in mind, we decided to an IG live and we had so many comments and questions from other parents that we hosted another. The lives and all the information shared led to creating this blog series so we can share our thoughts with you!

Let’s meet the moms who are so passionate about traveling with their teens!

Contributing to the conversation are Laura with Travel 80 by 80, helping families with teens travel internationally with intention, Jen with Go Family Adventure who shares her experiences to inspire other families with teens to get outside more and reconnect while enjoying the great outdoors near and far and me, Juli, author of this blog, Celebrate and Explore. With my two teens and husband, we travel every chance we get to create deeper family roots so we can stay connected despite the fact that both kids will be off to college soon.

We share all our adventures on Instagram, so be sure to follow along for more personal stories and travel ideas.

Jen with Go Family Adventure — Find Jen @gofamilyadventure

Juli with Celebrate and Explore — Juli is @celebrateandexplore

In case you missed the first post in this series, you can read it by clicking the button below!

Q: My kids have a demanding work load at school. How do you work around school schedules/school work loads?

Education is every parent’s top priority. Below we share our experiences on how to balance travel and education and offer a few tips to make sure you avoid problems while you are gone.

As we mentioned above, all seven of our kids are in traditional school and because we are not allowed to pull kids out to travel while school is in session, we travel on breaks so there is often little to no work required at those times.
Summer work can be a different story. If you child is an incoming freshman or taking AP classes, it’s likely that they will have required summer work. It’s also likely that you’ll be traveling with your teens during summer. The good news is reading, annotating and worksheets can be done in downtime of travel like commuting or quiet days at a hotel/place of stay.
One lesson some of us have learned the hard way is: Be careful for 1/2 days and exam days. Don’t schedule flights on those days for high school students. These can often be days that they have to turn in projects, assignments and/or required to be there for exams. High school is not as flexible or forgiving as elementary and middle schools.
Another tip is to watch for changing schedules especially in times of C*vid. Our best advice is to turn in assignments early if you have to miss school.
If you are pulling kids out while classes are in session, be mindful of the work that the teachers have to do to help kids prepare to leave. Give them plenty of notice and show patience, kindness and appreciation. A little gesture of thank you goes a long way!
Check with your school in advance to see if there are documents/forms that need to be filled out if you are taking them out of school on school days and do this weeks in advance to avoid delays or denials.
Check to see what consequences are if they have too many unexcused absences. Some schools charge fines or report you to the county. If you ask us, fines or jail time are not worth an extra day of travel. We’d rather adjust our plans to avoid missing school!

Teens love getting outside to take pictures! *Photo courtesy of @kendralpk via Unsplash*

Final thoughts:

Life is really stressful for this generation of teens. They are bombarded with information and expectations that we as teens never faced. It’s important to find ways to help them balance all their responsibilities and activities and we often find that if we can do that before we travel, they are able to relax more and disconnect from all the noise. It’s sometimes hard for them to see that in the beginning of a trip but all seven of our kids have come back from time away saying they were grateful for the break from it all.

Need more ideas on traveling with teens?

Check out these blog posts from Jen and Laura.

Check out Jen’s blog on *How to Make a Whirlwind Adventure Memorable*. Sometimes it’s all about making the most of the time you have!
Photo credit: @gofamilyadventure

Want to escape to Exumas, Bahamas with your teens? Read Laura’s post about this idyllic location and plan your trip today!
Photo credit: @travel80by80

Let’s continue the conversation….

Next in the series we are discussing all things pushback. It’s part of the teenage M.O. and it’s something we all face. Check out the post Traveling with Teens | Pushback to see you are not alone and ways we have combatted the opposition to leave home for a vacation.

Tell me more about pushback

Celebrate your teens, explore the world together!