Let your teenagers lead the way on the next family trip. Photo / Getty Images
Teeangers can be tricky to please but if you’re determined to create a holiday everyone will love, Rebecca Foreman has some advice.
We all know the scene: you’ve planned the holiday to pixel-perfect detail, researched in every spare moment, booked the resort, colour-coded the activities… and then your teenager takes one look and sighs, “Do we have to do that?”
It’s heartbreaking on several levels; the wasted time, the crushed enthusiasm, and that creeping reminder your kids are growing up, and time with them is shifting into something rarer and more fragile.
So lately, in our family, we’ve flipped the script. We’ve handed the travel-planning reins to the kids. Fully. Destination, hotels, activities, even the map reading. Whether it’s a long weekend at a Reflections Caravan Park in NSW, a week deep in Chiang Mai, or a campervan crawl along the Great Ocean Road, the teens have taken charge. And yes, there have been moments of mild panic but also some of the best holidays of our lives.
As a parent, if you plan everything, become the CEO of Holiday Happiness, and that’s no holiday at all. Picture it: waking early to rouse teenagers, overseeing packing lists, managing itineraries, bookings, insurance, suitcases, snacks, all while monitoring moods to check if everyone is “enjoying themselves”. Honestly, it’s exhausting.
So, we shifted gears. We set the briefest of briefs, then stepped back. One January in Chiang Mai, our teens split five days between them: hotels, meals, activities, all logged in a Google Doc and WhatsApp group. Our role was simply to be there and enjoy their efforts.
A year later, in Queenstown, they stepped things up a gear and curated a seven-day jam-packed itinerary of jet-boats, snowboarding, bungy jumps and canyon swings. The result? Screams, laughter, pride and an unnecessary number of Fergburgers.
Recently my daughter and her bestie planned a four-day long weekend at Reflections Hawks Nest, for me and my husband, and suddenly we were roller-skating, tobogganing and sand-dunning just like teenagers again.
When they plan it, they own it and you morph from “planner-in-chief” to “cheerleader/survival coordinator”.
My advice is to set clear boundaries, especially around budget. In Chiang Mai, ours was five nights, six days, A$250/day.
Create a shared Google document then let them fill it with details for hotels, dates, costs, transport, and activities.
Explain the rules up front: “You choose most things. We’ll pay and book. But we’ll revisit anything unsafe, too good to be true, or wildly over-budget, unless it’s so good (once in a lifetime activity like segwaying around Uluru) it deserves debate.”
When travelling, acknowledge that things will go sideways. A road will be closed. A bungee jump will be far higher than you envisaged. Someone will get sick. But, that’s the fun and part of the journey.
My daughter lobbied hard for zip-lining. My son wanted to go waterfall climbing. Dad suggested golf (we… politely filed that under “maybe later”). The teens pitched, debated and it was decided.
I would never have chosen bungy jumping, not in this life, not in any parallel universe, but there I was, taking an 8.5-second free-fall so my daughter wouldn’t out-brave me. And honestly, I’ve never been prouder. Not just for doing the thing, but for showing her I’ll leap into her world – literally.
Who knows, next holiday they might pitch Samurai swordsmithing in Japan, stargazing with Māori astronomers at Lake Tekapo, or falconry in the Abu Dhabi desert. But what I will say is, yes to it all (budget permitting). Let their flavour shape the menu and trust me, they’ll surprise you… and themselves.
This is the scary part: stepping back. Our role isn’t gone; it just evolves. You become the backup driver, the quiet adviser and safety net.
In Chiang Mai, my husband twisted his ankle on a dodgy footpath. Zara instantly flagged down a tuk-tuk and escorted him back to the hotel while I hunted for ibuprofen. A tiny crisis, handled like pros, together. In that moment I saw something ignite in her. She went from someone I used to carry on my back up hills to someone with her own set of wings that could fly on her own will.
During the same trip, halfway through, my son rerouted the entire plan to Pai after a friend’s recommendation. The budget still worked, he found a wooden hut for us to stay in and the experience got richer. They experienced a taste of backpacking in real life, not just on phone screens.
You let go, but stay lightly alert, keeper of daypack, water, money and the occasional “Explain this choice again?”. Then watch them soar.
After all this work, here’s what you gain: teens who are actually invested. “Do we have to?” becomes “Can we please?”. Ours started sending us links of places we’d never have found. My son and I are now planning a trip to Chongqing while my daughter relentlessly sends me Instagram videos about Lord Howe Island.
What they gain: independence, planning skills, budget sense, resilience and ownership of memory. On a Great Ocean Road campervan trip with friends, we watched our kids set up camp by the end like pros, plug in electricity, connect water, empty the waste cassette and cook up tortillas in a kitchen the size of a shoebox.
You get to sit back. You get the joy. You get the story that begins not with “I forced them” but “They chose this and we rocked it together.”
So yes, hand over the reins. Let the teens plan. Let them lead. Let them dig, dream and occasionally detour. Somewhere between zip-lines, jet-boats, Google Docs and three-hour mountain drives, you’ll discover the magic doesn’t happen to them, it happens with them.
And you? Sip your espresso, snap the photos, nurse your tiny thrill of fear-excitement and just enjoy the ride. Because when they suggest planning the next holiday, you’ll already be quietly ready… Let the takeover begin.