Seven Tips for A Successful Family Vacation When Your Teen Brings a Date

     Faith, hope and trust are the words that spring to mind when the friend an older teen asks to bring along on a family vacation turns out to be his or her “significant other”. We recently had our first instance of #1 son asking to bring the girlfriend along on a family hockey weekend located at Waterville Valley, NH.

     While the princess skated her heart out and spent time with her teammates at the pool and around the resort, the happy couple skied, window shopped, and whiled away the hours discussing politics and playing bananagrams.

     Overall the weekend went pretty well and we’d even consider doing it again. For those of you who are debating whether to the let your teen bring that special someone on a family trip here are seven thoughts to consider:

1. Consider the destination – can the teens safely have some freedom to explore on their own. You can bet they won’t want to spend all their time with you and you’d probably enjoy a break too. In our case, the self-contained nature of the Waterville Valley resort made it easy to give them free range.
2. Think about how much privacy you need and how much you are willing to give them (or not).  Choose your accommodations accordingly. In general, you should be planning on a suite, condo or house or a very large tent! We had a ski condo designed to accommodate 6. Parents got one room, the girlfriend and our hockey princess shared a room and #1 son got the pullout.
3. Check in with siblings, particularly if they are going to be sharing the room with the significant other. Make sure they welcome the added traveling companion and won’t mind sharing their space. Since the princess likes the girlfriend and was planning to spend most of her time with her hockey teammates anyway, it was a pretty easy decision as well.
4. Consider how long they have been together and how stable the relationship is currently. The last thing you want to have to deal with 100 miles from home is a break-up scene or lots of histrionics. In our case, the two have been together for a while and both are pretty even tempered, so we didn’t expect any problems.
5. Be honest with yourself regarding your own comfort level about hanging out with the happy couple. As it turned out, the princess was often at team dinners and we had an opportunity to eat out with the couple. This was an unexpectedly pleasant occurrence. We are starting believe they will actually become reasonable adults some day
6. Be prepared for the two of them to have a hard time deciding what they want to do. This one surprised us. But, they are still kids and both want to make sure the other is happy.   As a result, they tend to defer to one another so much that they sometimes make no decision at all. Of course, they are so happy just hanging out together it doesn’t seem to matter.   Be prepared to make them aware of what is available for them to do, but then let them make their own plans as much as possible.
7. Be clear in communicating expectations about how much freedom they can have, how you expect them to behave, and of course keep checking in on the cell or via text.  Make sure you have checked with the significant other’s parents beforehand so that everyone is on the same page.

        In our case, both kids have a track record of being respectful and trustworthy. If we had any doubts on that set of issues, the trip would not have happened. In the end, it worked for us to take the significant other on a family weekend ski and hockey trip. Rather than having to split up our family for yet another hockey weekend, we managed a family getaway +1.

     The destination, accommodations and the teens involved all aligned for a satisfactory trip. Both the kids are 17 years old and we probably would not have considered this strategy even a year ago. It requires some maturity on the part of the teens, parents and siblings but can be yet another option for parents who still want to travel with their teens.