When do you stop bringing your kids on vacation?

[Hannathy]

I went with my folks all thru college and occasionally after. My DD is going to college this fall and I fully expect to take her with us for as long as she wants. Now if she is 30 and has a better job than her old folks then she can pay her share but I hardly think just cause they go to college they need to be kicked completely out of the nest. Seems kinda mean to me.

 

[sunnyday123]

I don't think there is a rule about when kids stop traveling with their parents. I imagine that by the time they're college age, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to join us on family trips, but we travel without the kids even now so there will certainly be trips that they aren't invited along for as well.

I agree with this. I don't see myself saying, "You've reached X age now, no more vacations with me!"

For what it's worth, when I was 19, ( in college,which I paid for, and working part time ) my parents and brother went on a cruise. I was welcome to go, if I paid for myself. The entire trip.

Needless to say, I stayed home. My feelings were incredibly hurt.

 

[Nancy]

I see it being a little of both. DH and I went on our own trip this June..no kids and mine are 17, 20 and 22. This coming up trip in 3 weeks is the whole family and we are even treating the 2 boyfriends. I hope that this is how we will always do it..some alone trips and some family trips.

Family trips don't have to be every year..but once in a while it is nice. And when somewhere down the line there are grandchildren involved I can't wait to take them all.

 

[tvguy]

My kids went with us last week on our vacation, they are 19 and 23.
However, my MOM paid for the trip, and went along too, and I'm 53!
She's in good health for being 87, and has decided to "start spending my inheritence while she is still here to enjoy it too". 3 years ago she took all of us for a cruise around Hawaii for DW and my 50th birthdays and our 25th wedding anniversary.

 

[Blueeyes101817]

My brother is 24 and I am 26--If my parents are going on a trip that we want to go on, we go, but we both pay our own way. They take trips by themselves as do my brother and I (separately) But some trips (like traveling to football games) my dad and I just go on.. so i guess it all depends on the trip!

 

[resol37]

I'm 27 and still go on vacations with my parents. Granted, I'm not included in every single vacation they take (which is to be expected), but we're going to WDW in November together along with a great aunt and the whole family (brother, sister-in-law, aunts, uncles, cousins, kids) rents a beach house in the Outer Banks every year in the spring.

I pay my own way to Disney World (with the exception of travel - we drive and my parents pay for all the gas) and at the beach my parents and aunts and uncles pay for the house rental, but everybody pitches in equally for food and any activities like going to the aquarium.

 

[PolyAddict]

Change is hard

We took our first vacation with only our ten year old this past May. Our DD's 18.5 and 17 stayed home. I miss the days whe i could pack them all up and enjoy things through their eyes. Kids grow up and honestly we really enjoyed having only one child with us. They do tend to nickpick each other with all of them around. This next trip DD17 will have just graduated High School and may skip our yearly trip to vacation with friends. So we may be looking at single child trips for a while and then moving on with just ourselves...this is both sad and exciting to me!!!

 

[disfan07]

My brother is 24 and I am 21 and we are going to WDW with our parents in december. We are also taking my brothers finace who is going to be 20. And my parents are paying for it all.

 

[Becky2005]

I don't really think there is a trend. I think it's whatever works for your family.

I am pretty sure once I was 18, I wasn't expected to go on family trips anymore. I didn't go away to college though but was working while going to community college, etc... and I know I couldn't have really afforded to not go to work or take time off classes (I went through the summer months too).

Now fast forward & I went on vacation with my parents when my oldest was 9 months old to visit my sister. Then this last June, we all trekked out to CT for my niece's wedding.

We are planning a family vacation to Disney next year with my brother & sister (and families) but my parents have no desire to go to FL so they aren't coming with us.

We have no rhyme or reason to the way we do the vacations, it's whatever works at the time for whatever it is.

 

[ksjayhawks]

We took our dd on vacations with un while she was in college. We will do the same for ds. Some time in the future we will plan and pay for an extended family trip with dd and ds and their familes.

If we travel with dd and family now, they pay their way and we pay ours. Of course, we occasionally treat for dinner or snack and so do they.

 

[dislaney]

I hope our kids will travel with us for awhile longer. We also sometimes take trips without the kids but I sure would miss it if they didn't come along on some of our trips.

 

[jsmith]

We do some of both-we have taken couples vacations-a week in Hawaii or such-since our children were old enough to spend that time with their grandparents-6 and 10. The flip side of that is that we just took our 21 year old to Vegas and we are planning a cruise for my in laws 50th that will include my sister in law and her SO, Hubby and I, #1 Son and his wife, #2 Son and his GF and my mother.

 

["Got Disney"]

My kids are 17 and 14 and want to travel with us forever......we are a close family so all we will have to do is say lets go on vacation were paying and along they will come ...of course as long as I dont take them to Legoland at age 18

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

Our 19 yr old college son comes with us for our summer trip. Just back from Disney last week. He says he will ALWAYS go to Disney with us until he is married. He said he may still go then! DD is 15 and of course still comes along. DS plans to go with us to NYC next summer too.

Most of his college friends go on trips with their families in the summer too.

DH and I may take an "alone" weekend trip this fall.

 

[Katy Belle]

My dh and i have planned out a 15 year budget for our family. We budgeted one biggish vacation a year. The kids are included until they graduate from college, under-grad, and we assumed 5 years for under-grad. If they are married before that, then they will pay for their own vacations.

 

[joviroxx]

We do both and have always done both. Growing up there were family trips and everynow and then a "parents only" trip. Still the same now that we are all married with kids. There are family only trips, Entire family with gramps trips and adult only trips.

 

[powellrj]

My kids stopped wanting to go with us before we were ready! We have a huge age gap between our kids. I am not sure if that has anything to do with it. My oldest stopped wanting to go with us when he was around 16. He always made sure he was busy in the summer with jobs and summer school JUST so he didn't have to go with us. He would stay at my parents house.

My middle DS is now a sophomore in college and this was the first family trip he missed. We planned a huge family trip to WDW taking my DS and his DW who had never been before. We also planned to take my parents. I had all the plans made and then a few days before we left, he informed me he couldn't get off work so he wasn't going. Then my dad told me that he really didn't want to go and he stayed home with DS. Once we got there, oldest DS told me he made plans to visit army buddies and wasn't going to the parks with us, so it turned out just my mom, DH, DD and DDIL were the only park visitors. While we had a nice trip, it wasn't quite the family trip I had in mind.

DD is only a freshman in high school so I hope she will travel with us for a few more years, but she is getting busy with her own life. She was gone almost all summer with camp and mission trips and going with friends, so I can see that she maybe too busy to travel with us in the not too distant future.

 

[ilovefh]

I'm 29 and still vacation with my family every year, sometimes more than once a year. Typically we split the cost. Parents and DH and I split the hotel (DVC) and my sister pays for the rental car that we share with her and her boyfriend. Normally for Christmas my parents will buy us one way plane tickets and we buy the other. We buy our own park tickets and food except for a few meals that they treat us to.

I don't know how it will work out this year since we moved to Florida, but they are coming down for a quick trip in a few weeks (Mom, Dad and sister) and we'll join them when we can.

They do take trips without us though too. They went to Vegas with my Aunt and Uncle and they occasionally go to WDW alone since they are retired and their schedule is more open than ours is.

 

[ilovejack02]

When I graduated from h.s. I stopped going on all trips and also started going alone places without them. I am 37 now and we still travel together some. If they invite us and we get a rental house usually they will pay and we pay all expenses for ourselves and some for them too to help pay back them renting the house.

My oldest stepson is 21 and I always invite him on family trips, but of course never on parents only trips.

 

[damo]

My kids are 21 and 24 and I love to take them on vacation. To me, those are the best vacations.