How to Get Kids Excited About a Trip Before You Leave

The worst thing you can do before a family trip is keep it a surprise until the morning of departure. The second worst thing is announce it six weeks out with full details and then field the question "are we there yet" on a daily basis for a month and a half before you even get to the airport.

There is a middle path and it works really well.

Tell them early but give them a job.

Kids who have a role in the planning are invested in a completely different way than kids who are just passengers. The job does not have to be significant. "You are in charge of finding one restaurant we all go to" is enough. "Pick two things you want to do and we will do both" is enough. If they are old enough, let them research and plan a day, with a budget.

Before our Japan trip, our son spent three weeks researching restaurants and watching Somebody Feed Phil. By the time we boarded the plane, he knew more about regional ramen variations than I did. He is ten. He was also the most engaged traveler in our family for the entire trip because he had skin in the game.

Make the countdown mean something.

Not just a number ticking down on a calendar. One small activity per week leading up to departure that connects to where you are going. Watch a movie set there. Cook one dish from that country. Find it on a map and trace how you get from your house to the airport to the destination. These are not homework assignments. They are just fun, and they make the place feel real before you arrive.

Show them a map, not a spreadsheet.

Presenting a day-by-day itinerary to a child in any text-based format accomplishes nothing. Showing them a map with pins and saying "we sleep here, then we go here, then we end up here" lands immediately. Kids understand space and sequence. They do not understand columns and rows.

Give them something that belongs only to the trip.

A journal. A cheap camera. A sketchbook. Something that is theirs and only comes out for travel. Kids who have a way to capture their own version of a trip remember it differently than kids who are along for the ride. Our friend's daughter still has journals from trips she took at six years old. The memories in those are more specific than anything I could have told her to remember.

The goal is not to manufacture excitement. Kids are already excited about trips. The goal is to turn that energy into something useful so by the time you land, everyone feels like a participant.

Ready to plan your next family trip?