Should I schedule daily activities for my family vacation?
It is a great idea to plan your daily activities. Here is where you need to underplan rather than overplan. It is a great idea to plan one activity in the morning, and one activity in the afternoon. The afternoon activity should be the child-friendly activity, so that when your child gets grumpy in the morning, you can say to them, You know, when we leave here, we are going to go to the zoo. Or When we leave here, we are going to go to a park, or someplace else that you have told them about because you have communicated with them about what is going on during the day. I like to find green spaces where they can run off some energy. I like to do cluster sightseeing. I am a firm believer that you do not run in New York from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building. It always drives me crazy that so many books, when they list family-friendly activities, they don't put them together - so if parents are going to follow their suggestions, they are going to be running around the city and are going to miss things. The biggest thing that I always try to remind parents is that it is not how much you do, but it is rather how much fun you had doing it. Kids like to go back to things, so if you have planned too many things, then you won't get to do it all. One of the major advantages of travelling with kids is that you pick and choose what you are going to see and do much more carefully.
