6 Ways to bond with your daughters while traveling

As a mom, finding ways to stay connected to our daughters as they become adults can be a challenge. They have so much going on in their lives, and it gets harder everyday to maintain ongoing family activities. When budgets are tight, it can be even more difficult to find ways to motivate young adult kids to hang out with their parents and truly enjoy each other’s company.

Here are six ways to help create a magical getaway and strengthen your bond with each other, as your girls become adults. We found our solution at the Dolphin Bay Resort & Spa in Shell Beach, California. If you can arrange a visit, the resort provides the ingredients for a perfect getaway geared for moms and their girls.

1.   Pick an outdoor destination. Motivate everyone to get out and enjoy time together. Enjoying the unusually warm weather in Central California gave me a great opportunity to steal a few precious days with my young adult daughters.

2.   Bring movies. You can control the entertainment and avoid the dreaded problem of spending hours choosing something to watch. Many resorts offer a far better selection of movies and are more affordable than pay-per-view.

3.   Include activities you personally enjoy. Help your daughters see you are still a kid at heart. Activities like hitting the beach, climbing on rocks, looking for shells, watching clouds from the sand, can help your young adult kids see the kid inside you. And it won’t embarrass them. That’s a bonus!

4.   Give them alone time so they look forward to the time you spend together. Don’t over schedule your days. Your kids are older now and may well want some time alone. A manicure or a trip to the gym might give them a sense that it’s their time as well as our time. The break will be appreciated by everyone and make coming back together that much more fun.

5.   Budget for activities, not food. Most mom-daughter trips require a little budget consideration. We enjoyed room service, but focused on the kid menu or dessert. We chose a magnificent destination that included a full kitchen. Being able to cook easy meals and snacks gave us the chance to enjoy local activities without stretching our budget.

6.   Use smartphones for pictures. If they’re going to text, at least it will be about the trip. We stopped to enjoy the resort’s photo opportunities, ocean vistas or just a silly moment and captured the moments on our cameras often. Rather than institute a no texting rule that would’ve been unrealistic with older kids, I tried to give my girls enough pictures and activities that any texting still focused on their trip.

Photo source: © Some rights reserved by RalphTQ, Flickr

What else would you add to this list? How do you bond with your older kids?

Anne Leedom

Anne Leedom is the publisher of ParentingBookmark.com, a website offering expert strategies on raising caring kids. She frequently contributes to national media and works with a variety of travel destinations to offer ideas on how to connect with kids through the wonder of travel and adventure. For more information visit ParentingBookmark.com.

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