Beyond Family Vacation: Creating New Memories with Adult Children (and How to Make It Work)

The empty nest phase doesn't mean the end of meaningful parent-child connections – it simply marks the beginning of a new kind of relationship. As summer vacations end and college drop-offs happen across America, many parents find themselves reminiscing about family trips and wondering how to maintain closeness with their now-adult children.

Travel creates a unique opportunity to reconnect with adult children in ways that regular family gatherings often cannot. When we remove ourselves from daily distractions, responsibilities, and established home dynamics, we create space for authentic connection. Whether you're navigating an estranged relationship or simply want deeper conversations with your grown child who's busy with their own life, a shared journey offers neutral ground where new understanding can flourish.

Success comes from thoughtful planning and approaching the experience differently than family vacations of the past. Understanding your adult child's travel personality (Are they adventure-seekers like my younger son or museum-lovers like my oldest?), involving them in destination decisions, setting clear financial expectations, and creating space for organic conversations are all crucial elements. Most importantly, treat them as the adults they've become – not as children who need constant oversight. Some of my most treasured moments with my sons happened unexpectedly, like a 1:30 AM heart-to-heart in an Irish castle after a false fire alarm. These shared experiences create lasting memories that strengthen your bond for years to come, and might even inspire your children to pursue their own love of travel – as my sons now do independently. Whether you're healing past wounds or simply creating new chapters together, travel offers the perfect setting to truly see and appreciate the adults your children have become.

Ready to reconnect? Consider planning a trip with your adult child – it might become one of the most meaningful experiences of your relationship. The memories you create will last a lifetime, and the conversations you have might never have happened any other way.

Chapters

• 0:00 Summer Reminiscing and Empty Nests
• 1:32 Benefits of Traveling with Adult Children
• 3:42 Understanding Travel Personalities and Preferences
• 6:15 Setting Clear Expectations and Finances
• 9:46 Creating Meaningful Conversations During Travel
• 14:33 Treat Them Like Adults, Not Children
• 16:54 Creating Lasting Memories Together

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, summer has wrapped up here in the US. Basically, school is starting back and summer is over, and usually summer means summer vacations, right, and it got me reminiscing a lot about when my kids were younger taking, you know whether it was family vacations or even just traveling with them, and having that opportunity to do that because of the timing of school, right. And now nowadays, since I travel mostly alone, I don't usually do much in the summers. I save a lot of my travel for what we call the off season. But I really got to remembering and reminiscing about traveling with my children, and I know there's a lot of you out there that are probably empty nesters or soon to be empty nesters. I actually spoke with just a few this week that are sending their kids off to college this week. So it's a bittersweet, they say. And you know, I just thought this episode would be just really good timing for those that still want to be connected with their children, and I want to share a little bit about how you can still travel, even though they're grown, with your adult children.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Welcome to Solo Travel Adventures. I'm Cheryl Esch and, yes, although this podcast is mostly about solo travel, I did have an episode back in number 74. It talks about when a friend wants to join your solo trip. Well, you may actually want to travel with your adult child to present an opportunity to reconnect. Maybe you're estranged from your children or you don't see them a whole lot. I will say travel is a beautiful way to reconnect with your adult children in a non threatening way. A lot of times, if you maybe invite them to your house, there are other things that are distracting them or they might. In my case, when I was an adult child, often if my mom wanted to talk it meant I was in the hot seat or I was in trouble. So we don't want to have that sort of bad press, so to speak, on you know, getting together with our children and maybe you have a beautiful relationship with your adult children, which I do as well but they also maybe they're married and they have kids. But they also maybe they're married and they have kids, and so it does present more challenges to actually get them away separately for some conversations or travel. Travel is a beautiful setup because it pulls everybody, each of the parties, away from any kind of distractions. It gets you away from your day-to-day meeting. You don't have to say, oh, I had this phone call, or I have to go home to do this, I got laundry to do, whatever it is that might pull. You know, the responsibilities that we have as adults, right, can pull our attention. So traveling together with your adult children or child really takes all of that away, and so it does present more opportunities for you to connect, to have conversations, to really get to know your adult child a lot better.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Now there are some things about our children that will never change, right. We look at them as our children, our little ones, right, and they have personalities, right. So that's something that likely won't change even as they become adults. And so maybe you miss that or you're not sure what they have grown into as an adult and want to rediscover that and so. But before you plan a trip with your adult child, I would try to have a good understanding. Number one as to you know, know what the personalities are like. Remember, go back and think about you know when you traveled as a family, what were their tendencies? What were they like in other cultures? If you went overseas and or, how do they travel, how do they like to travel? What did you notice about them? Do they get car sick, so maybe a road trip is not the best idea for that person. So getting to know what they are like and how they travel.

Speaker 1: 4:41

So my examples are my youngest I've traveled with both my adult children and my youngest. When he travels he has to have activity. He is, uh, unlike my older son who likes to have downtime or likes to go to museums where it's maybe quieter. My younger son, nathan, is he just has to have activity to keep him going. That's just how he was wired, that's just how God made him and I love it. So when I travel with him and when we did our two-week road trip, it was a constant, just we were having to keep moving along. So road trip was good, except, you know, just making sure those stops incorporated some sort of activity for him. So understanding how your adult children, even thinking back to how they were as children, might give you some indications of how they would travel now. And then, number two if you plan to travel with your adult children, ask them for input on where to go, what activities they may want to do, etc.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Now something I have done with my oldest son, since we've done a lot of international travel together and it's so hard sometimes to pinpoint where you want to go. Right, there's so many places we both wanted to see in our you know, on our bucket list, so to speak, and so we had to come up with a place that we both agreed on. And sometimes we played little games with that. We would go off on our own and say, okay, you pick, pick five places you want to go, and I would pick five, and then we'd come together and see if any of them, you know, were overlapping. One time we also did pick one destination from each continent that you were interested in, but I think we allowed two for Europe, because there's so much to see in Europe, and then we brought them in to see what was overlapping there for us as well. And then during COVID, we were playing a game as to really what countries were open. So we kind of got limited there, but both had to.

Speaker 1: 7:02

He had some parameters, you know. So he expressed those to me, communicated those to me, and we made it. We made it work in deciding where to go that year. So that's number three actually, is setting expectations. Now, when I say expectations, not just about the trip in general, where you're going, what you're going to do, those should be discussed beforehand. But also make sure you communicate. If there's, for example, if you're the type of person that needs you don't want to do anything early mornings, or you need a daily, you know, just a chill time every day, right, or you don't want to be racing from place to place, make sure you both are communicating that with one another. But the other expectation that you need to set is financial. Now we're talking adult children. Adult children have their own jobs, typically, I should say, and so I've always made it clear as to what my children would be paying for.

Speaker 1: 8:06

My very first international trip with my oldest son, we went to Machu Picchu and he was just out of high school, but I still made him pay for his flight. We joined a tour group, so he paid for the tour group and then you know obviously his souvenirs and such. We had about two nights of a hotel that I took care of two, actually I think it was three and you know we did. We didn't rent a car or anything but in like. For example, we went to Ireland together and I did ask him to help pay for the rental car. So you make sure you put those expectations upfront so they know that mommy or daddy you know whoever they're traveling with is not flipping the whole bill right. They're not paying for everything. And even when we are in Ireland, my son paid for some of our meals. So we kind of went back and forth oh you pay for this one, I'll pay for this one. So we didn't say separate bills, we just because that's more of an American thing we just kind of took turns as to who paid for the meal.

Speaker 1: 9:17

So setting those expectations are important, setting up the times, as I said, like how much time are you going to want to spend in a certain place doing certain areas or activities. So make sure that is communicated beforehand. Number four is create downtime, create downtime. Now, I say this because often, um, I've had some people actually marvel at how uh close I am to my children and how, um well we communicate and just I love having discussions with them and I love to hear about their lives and some of that comes from, I think, for my younger son it's asking the right questions to get him talking and, you know, talking about, maybe, topics that they enjoy and seeing them come alive.

Speaker 1: 10:14

But you know, if you want to talk about some deeper things. For example, creating some downtime will allow that because, again, you don't have those distractions of other people or other things. One way you could do that is if you're driving I would say, only if you're driving in a country where it's comfortable for you to drive. For example, when I was in Ireland driving on the other side of the road, I was so hyper-focused on just driving that there was no time for me to actually have a conversation with my son. But they do say in a car is great because you're not really having to make eye contact, especially if it's maybe a touchy subject that you are wanting to talk about and dive into and understand their feelings. But a train would be a great option. Again, you won't have to worry about navigating, but also it kind of closes you off. They don't have any place to go, so, just like a car, they're kind of stuck. But I will share sometimes those moments are not planned and it's sometimes just serendipitous that these happen.

Speaker 1: 11:25

One example of having a long awaited conversation that I wanted to have with my both sons but I had an opportunity while I was in Ireland with my oldest son. We were it was one of our first nights there and in Dublin and we were staying in this castle and probably around 1.30 in the morning-ish or so their fire alarm went off and it was a malfunction. We were told we could actually, I think, stay in the room. I don't recall really, but my son just literally jumped out of bed totally scared, because in Ireland their smoke alarms are very different sounding. They almost sound like, if you're familiar with, like the English or the British sirens that's kind of what it sounded like and that was their fire or smoke alarm that was going off. So it was a false alarm, but of course we're not going to bed after that. He even said that. So we started talking and I was given hours and time to actually be honest and share with him the whole story, going back even to the beginning of my marriage and really what happened through the divorce process. So he was grateful to hear that it felt good to kind of share the truth with him. Um, they were off.

Speaker 1: 12:53

We often shield our children from some of those things, but as an adult I think they can now, uh, look back and, you know, kind of see things differently and so those those kinds of moments have presented themselves to me, uh, during traveling with my kids. So again, take that opportunity, seize it if it's something you want to. You know something you want to share with your children. Maybe have them share something personal with you, but some of that might require asking the right questions. So what is the right way to ask questions? Make sure you're asking open-ended questions. If you have not learned that, so try to avoid any yes or no answers. Have them, you know, share or explain or describe kind of using kind of those words, of certain scenarios so you can understand them more. And then the final tip I would say is, if you plan to travel with your adult children, please talk to them and treat them as adults and not so much like you are the mom, hovering, worrying, asking, rolling your eyes or giving them those reminders oh, did you check in? Did you do this, did you do that Making them feel inferior or less like an adult. So treat them like a friend.

Speaker 1: 14:24

At this point, yes, you're still their mother and I sometimes have to toe the line as far as like how much freedom do I give them versus how much do I insert myself, so to speak, and you know, into their travels and, you know, making sure they're safe, because that's always a concern or worry. For example, my son, who my younger son by the time this goes live, he will have just just returned from Morocco, but as of today I've been just I've only texted him twice in the whole week. You know, once I said make sure you text me when you get there. That was very reassuring because he had several layovers and I wanted to make sure he got there safe, and right now he is on his way back. So I haven't heard from him.

Speaker 1: 15:18

So you know, moms get a little worried, but I tried to give him space and not, um, be too overbearing, so to speak, on being that mom, but rather just being hey, you know, I I did open myself up to him before he left and you know as far as being an expert traveler, so you know, for in his eyes and some other people's eyes but there are, of course, there's other people that have traveled more than me but I was giving him tips and just providing actual stuff. I was giving him tips and just providing actual stuff. For example, you know a power bank, or you know flip flops, and oh, a couple other things I gave him. I'm trying to remember. Oh, some other travel. Oh, a travel pillow, those kind of things, things that he had forgotten that he would probably need on this trip.

Speaker 1: 16:13

So I encourage you if you have adult children and you want to connect deeper with them, oh, the other thing I want to say is, when you travel with your adult children, you're also creating new memories with them, and these memories they will carry all into their rest of their, of their adult life, into their married life, even if they're single. When you travel with them and that's a huge blessing and I have many of those stories to tell and feel very blessed to have those stories that I shared these magnificent moments with one of my children and during travel. So know that that is that cherry on the top kind of bonus when you do travel with your children adult children, I should say and don't hesitate to even ask right, especially if your children are're adults but they're single, that's the perfect opportunity and they might tell you they're too busy, they're working so much. Really, encourage them to take some time, whether it's to travel with you or just to travel in general, because that's, you know, in their 20s, honestly, that's when they're going to have more freedom to do so, and I'm just thrilled that now my two children I haven't traveled with either one in a few years.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Actually it's been about two and a half years since I've traveled with either one of my adult children because they are off doing their own travels, some solo, but mostly with some friends. I'm elated that they are doing that and that I think, in the spirit of us traveling together when they were younger adult children, I really, I think, planted that seed in them and now they get to enjoy those fruits with their friends and I hope to someday be able to maybe travel with both of them together someplace. All three of us, I'm excited. They also the two of them actually just traveled together to LA a few months back to see a FIFA game together. So that also fills my heart because I see them doing something together. So I'm hoping this gives you some insight and some tips If you do plan to maybe consider traveling with your adult children. It is a beautiful way to connect and create memories with your adult children.