I Take My Kids on Vacation One at a Time. It’s Been a Game-Changer for My Family.

From start to finish, that trip was light years easier than any family vacation we had taken as a family of four. Flying was less stressful with only one kid to pack for and entertain. Mapping out each day, with just one set of activity and food preferences to consider, was a cinch. And getting just one kiddo to bed in a hotel room was a breeze. From that Magic Kingdom getaway, an annual family tradition was born: Once a year, during our school’s interminably long two-week spring break, my husband and I each squire a kid away for a few days, basing the location and activities on their passions and current interests. (We swap kids every year.) And let me tell you, it’s on these trips that we’ve found ourselves in far more of those Momfluencer vacation scenarios. Here’s why.

They get to be the star of the show.

Much of the power of the one-on-one vacay lies in the ability to tailor it to each child, and the positive trickle-down effects it has on everyone.

Arlington, Virginia-based writer, editor, and podcaster Dan Kois told me that letting his kids take the lead on their one-on-one itineraries has led to some epic adventures. In 2019, he handed his then 11-year-old daughter, Harper — an “organizer who likes being in charge of an experience” — a map and said, “Tell me where you want to go.”

It turns out her dream destination was… Pittsburgh.

Kois says Harper delighted in navigating the entire road trip, telling him what direction to go and when to exit the freeway, whereas her older, shyer, more introverted sister “would have been like, ‘I don’t want to look at this map. Can we go to a bookstore or go see a play?’”

This past spring, my husband traveled with our 12-year-old. (I’ll call her Lisa.) Lisa is a die-hard animal lover who enjoys daring activities. Together, they spent time at an animal sanctuary for homeless dogs, cats, and bunnies in Zion, Utah, followed by an excursion that featured intense rock climbing.

Meanwhile, I reunited our 9-year-old (we’ll call her Maggie) with a dear friend who moved to Dallas, followed by a trip to New Orleans. Maggie, who recently fell in love with the clarinet in fourth-grade music class, had suggested, “Let’s go somewhere we can hear music in the streets.” We enjoyed live jazz, took a praline-making class, and did a ton of walking — none of which would have appealed to Lisa in the least.

At Brennan’s, a French Quarter dining institution which, like many NOLA restaurants, features Creole dishes like turtle soup on its menu, the manager handed Maggie a raw shrimp kabob to feed to the “pardoned” turtles lazily swimming in the courtyard fountain. These details would have sent her animal-rights-crusading sibling into a tailspin. But for Maggie, who cares about animals but also loves cheeseburgers, it was a fun, likely once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Besides avoiding any “I don’t want to ride horses/eat BBQ/visit the manga museum!” sibling squabbles, curating activities based on what lights a specific child up “makes [them] feel so seen and important,” says Toronto-based certified peaceful parenting coach Sarah Rosensweet. By rappelling down a mountain and letting a 100-pound Great Pyrenees named Klondike sleep in their hotel room, my husband, who’s somewhat afraid of heights and not big on animals, “sent the message that he sees her for exactly who she is…that he takes her seriously, that her interests are important, and these things will help her to develop healthy self-esteem,” Rosensweet says.

One-on-one vacation devotees will also tell you about the serendipitous discoveries that happen when you follow your kid’s lead. Lisa’s love of climbing, for instance, ties back to our Disney trip six years ago, where she rode her first rollercoaster, a huge grin plastered across her face. That was our earliest indication of her thrill-seeking tendencies and guided us towards rock climbing as an activity she’s enjoyed for years. Had our youngest been there, I’m not sure that waiting in line for an hour to ride Space Mountain would have been doable.

In Pittsburgh with podcaster Kois, Harper’s navigating skills ultimately led the pair to a hotel that happened to be hosting a bodybuilding conference, where “all the furniture in the lobby was covered with white sheets, and on the sheets were a bunch of tanned buttprints,” Kois says. “Gross, but also insanely memorable.” To this day, “whenever we see someone with big muscles, we definitely reminisce about that night.”

It deepens your bonds.

Kois admits he and his wife had an ulterior motive when they started their individualized trip tradition over a decade ago when their kids were in elementary school. (Now 19 and 16, their most recent one-on-one trips have involved college tours.) “We had a relationship as a family of four, and my wife and I had a relationship, and to some extent, each of us had a relationship with each kid, but those were sort of the weakest bonds,” he says. But during the daily grind moments when either parent ended up with just one kid, like shlepping to soccer practice, “there was a lot of direct connecting in a way you don’t do in a big group of four when it’s more about keeping everyone happy as a unit.”

Splitting up for extended “duo time,” as he calls it, was a way to tap into that special connection. Their inaugural crack at one-on-one trips was low-key — He took Harper to Charleston, South Carolina, simply “because we found a good price on flights,” and Mom drove to nearby Baltimore with their daughter Lyra — but it had meaningful, long-lasting results.

Harper, only 7 at the time, “still remembers specific details about the Charleston trip, both good and bad,” including the pedicabs they used as their primary mode of transportation and “the big fight we got in in a restaurant when we were both tired.” These intimate shared experiences “became a foundation for the next stage of our relationship as she started to become her own person,” he says. “The trips started to become milestones by which we would track our evolving relationship. She and I were out on these adventures, really getting to know each other.”

Erika Velez, Psy.D., a licensed child and teen psychologist and parenting coach in Miami, says kids often cite the more mundane details of family trips, like sharing meals or morning cuddles in a hotel bed, as highlights. (That goes for moody teens who moan the entire time, too.) “Being present with them,” Velez says, “tends to be what is cherished most.”

Jam-packed itineraries or exotic destinations aren’t necessary. “It really is about the extra quality time together,” Velez says, so even if you can’t leave your city, “maybe just make them king or queen for the day and plan activities within your budget.”

For families with more than one child, these trips circumvent the kind of sibling conflict that can stifle opportunities for family bonding. “With sibling rivalry, a lot of the fighting is about jockeying for position,” Rosensweet says. Anything that gives each child alone time with a parent “helps them feel secure in their relationship with you and, in the end, can be beneficial in improving the sibling rivalry.”

Similarly, for single parents with more than one kid, exclusive getaways give each child center-of-attention vibes that may be logistically impossible at home. Memphis mom Crissy Lintner, 44, says this, combined with a five-year age gap between her kids that makes trip-planning even trickier, inspired her to bring her war history buff son, 13, on a multi-stop visit through Florida this summer, including the Jacksonville Naval Museum, NASA and the beach. As his 8-year-old sister, who prefers arts-and-crafts over war history, hangs back with her grandparents and cousins, Lintner is excited to shower her son with “100% of my attention” and hopes “it will be something that brings us even closer.”

You can still expect some turbulence.

Despite the perks, any family travel can still come with baggage. “Family vacations are really just family relocations,” Rosensweet says, so if your child thrives on routine and struggles with transitions at home, a little emotional dysregulation when traveling is normal, even if it’s in their dream setting and you’re in Best Parent Ever mode.

Kois points out that head-butting is bound to happen whenever you spend an extended period driving, flying, sleeping, and eating with another human. (He knows this more than most; in his book How to Be a Family: The Year I Dragged My Kids Around the World to Find a New Way to Be Together, he recounts how he and his wife spent 2017 globetrotting with their pre-teens.)

“I’ve seen my kids at their absolute best on these trips and at their absolute worst, and vice versa,” he says, citing various TSA catastrophes and a stay in New Zealand last summer with his younger daughter for the Women’s World Cup. A week in, “we both hit a wall with each other and could not face hanging out with each other in the tiny Auckland hotel room.” To release some steam from the pressure cooker, they mutually agreed to spend a morning alone — Kois browsed nearby bookstores; Harper spent “some quality time on Snapchat reconnecting with friends.”

As for Maggie and I, our only hiccup occurred when I spontaneously pecked a boisterous trombone player on the cheek in a Bourbon Street jazz club, and she whisper-screamed, “Mom, STOP, you’re MARRIED!” (In my defense, the lyrics were, “Kiss me, pretty baby,” and I was unknowingly sitting in the front row hot seat where this exchange happens nightly.) Other than that, our private escape down South was filled with powdered sugar-drenched beignets and all those cuddles that Velez mentioned. It was our chance to create private core memories in, as Kois writes in his own musings on the topic, “an unfamiliar family configuration…a chance for two human beings to build a relationship that had nothing to do with anyone else.”

Photo credits for pull quotes and headers: Getty Images.

Leslie Goldman, MPH, is a freelance writer specializing in health, women’s issues, and parenting. She is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan, O, The Oprah Magazine, Women’s Health, Parents, and more. Follow her on Twitter @lesliegoldman.