We Took Our Kid to the Ends of the Earth. Here’s What It Taught Us.

One evening, my husband was scrolling through a running list of countries Wilder had visited on his phone when he looked up and said, “We should probably just go for seven by seven.”

Wilder was five and had already been to five continents. We had never set out to make that happen. We simply never stopped traveling after he was born. His first trip was at eight weeks old, and over the next few years, he joined us on safaris and expeditions across more than 35 countries, on expedition ships and overnight economy flights that left all three of us questioning our choices.

​By the time he turned seven, he had set foot on every continent on Earth. It taught us that traveling with a child changes less about the destination than about how you travel.

1. Start before you think you should

The most common thing parents tell me is that they’re waiting until their child is “old enough” to travel. Old enough to remember it, to appreciate it, to not ruin it. But every year you wait, the logistics compound: stronger opinions, harder bedtimes, more school to miss.

​Wilder’s first trip was to Portugal at eight weeks old. He remembered none of it. That wasn’t the point. We were learning how to travel with him, pack, manage jet lag, and stay functional on a transatlantic flight with a newborn. Those early trips were the practice runs that made everything after easier, and they showed us that starting early can change how you travel for good.

2. Find operators who remove the mental load

One of the most exhausting parts of parenting is the invisible labor: the planning, the logistics, the constant anticipation of what breaks next. The trips that gave us the most joy were the ones where someone else was carrying that weight.​

For families with young children in particular, a guided or all-inclusive setup is as much a parenting strategy as a travel one.

On safari in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park when Wilder was four, a team handled everything: the schedule, the driving, the meals. All we did was show up. By removing the decision-making, I was free to be present with my kid, and that made the trip better in the way that matters most.

​The same was true in Antarctica, where a crew leader planned every excursion, the ship’s chef knew Wilder’s favorite foods, and a scientist kept him engaged for hours making watercolor paint from sea ice.

3. Resist the urge to fill every hour

I am an overplanner by nature. Before any trip, I build color-coded itineraries with backup options and contingency timelines. More than once, I have needed a vacation from my vacation. Traveling with Wilder forced a correction I never would have made on my own.

On our Antarctica expedition with National Geographic-Lindblad Expedition Cruises, I returned from a morning kayak among icebergs to find my husband paddling solo. Wilder was passed out cold in the kayak, possibly the most spectacular nap location on Earth, while 30 adults stared in disbelief. At the time, I remember thinking about everything he was missing. Looking back, I realize I was the one missing the point.

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What kept him happiest on that ship was not a packed schedule. It was a rarely used yoga room, a small soccer ball we'd packed from home, and the freedom to slow down when he needed to. The same was true of a hotel pool in London. He didn't measure a trip by how much we accomplished in a day.

Over time, I stopped trying to maximize every hour. I left room for long lunches, unexpected detours, and afternoons with nowhere to be. The irony is that slowing down made me notice more, and that became the lesson. I remember the conversations, the small discoveries, and the quiet moments far more vividly than the attractions I rushed between.

Now I build empty space into every itinerary. It started because I was traveling with a child. It became one of the best travel lessons I have ever learned.

4. Let someone else’s agenda surprise you

I would never have gone to a soccer match in Amsterdam on my own. I am not inherently a soccer fan, and Johan Cruijff Arena was not in my research notes. But Wilder is soccer-obsessed, so we booked tickets to an Ajax match, and I spent two hours in a roaring stadium completely absorbed, surrounded by chanting fans, watching my son experience pure joy in a foreign city. I would have missed it entirely if left to my own devices.

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​The same thing happened with the All Blacks Experience in Auckland, a water obstacle course in Singapore, and the train museum in Switzerland, all chosen by him, all experiences I would have scrolled past. Handing over part of the itinerary to someone with completely different priorities turns out to be one of the better travel decisions I’ve made. It pushes us toward places we would not have chosen, and that is often where the trip becomes memorable.

5. Make peace with disappointment

The Waitomo Glowworm Caves had been on my list for years. I’d built them up across months of anticipation, and the tour was fine: brief, a little crowded, lit in a way that flattened the magic I’d imagined. On a pre-kid trip, I might have spent the rest of the day mourning the gap between expectation and reality. With Wilder, that option doesn’t really exist. You process, you move on, because a seven-year-old is already asking what’s next.

A few days later, a chocolatier outside Auckland mentioned a smaller, family-run cave nearby. I emailed the owner, got no reply, and we drove out anyway. He was home and took us in. The cave was pitch-dark and silent, the ceiling covered in what looked like a living galaxy of bioluminescent light. Wilder whispered, “Whoa.” It was better than anything I’d spent months anticipating. That detour worked because I had stopped trying to salvage the original plan, and it showed me again that the trip in front of you is the one that matters.

6. Spend on the experience, save everywhere else

People assume the kind of travel we do requires an unlimited budget, but the real requirement is discipline about where the money goes. We flew economy overnight from New York to Santiago for Antarctica. We share rooms (I can’t count how many times we ate dinner in a hotel bathroom while Wilder slept in the bedroom), travel in the offseason, and use credit card points. The unglamorous spreadsheet-level points-hacking covered all five flights in business class for our three-continent summer trip for around $5,100.

The experience itself is where we spend: the guided expedition, the remote lodge, the ship with the scientist on board. Getting there and space is where we save. Price the experience first, then work backward on flights and accommodation. That keeps the spending focused on what the trip is really for.

7. Stop waiting for the reaction

At the Eiffel Tower, Wilder stared up for two seconds and said, “I thought it would be bigger.” In Antarctica, after 12 days on an icebreaker moving through some of the most otherworldly scenery on Earth, I asked what he thought of it. He considered this carefully and said, “I thought it would be flatter.”​

Children don’t narrate wonder. They don’t deliver the cinematic moment of gratitude you’ve been building toward across 36 hours of travel. The experiences land sideways, later. He still talks about the hippos, knows exactly what a platypus looks like, and asks to go back to Antarctica. The point is the accumulation: curiosity, adaptability, and comfort with a world that is large and strange and worth exploring. That takes years to show up, and it will.

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