Adventure in comfort

Luxury and family-friendly travel don’t always go hand in hand. But travelling with children doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the finer things in life. Tanya Chaffey from Chaffey and Turner Travel Associates is UNO's new travel columnist, this time offering her expert advice on navigating luxury travel with the whole family.

photos SALINA GALVAN + supplied

Embarking on travel with children creates life-long memories that you and your family will treasure for years to come.

It does, however, require a bit more planning to balance relaxation with family-friendly needs. Here are a few tips to get you going.

• When it comes to choosing which destinations to visit with children, look for spots that offer both premium amenities and child-friendly activities. Think resorts with dedicated childrens' clubs, private villas or hotels offering family suites and family activities.

Luxury resorts in places like the Maldives, Bali or the Caribbean offer specialised kids' programmes and family activities, ensuring there’s something for everyone. Also, consider destinations with easy access to nature, such as safaris in Africa, or mountain retreats in Europe, which can engage children while offering relaxation for parents.

• Invest in private tours or excursions. A private guide for a day trip, a yacht charter, or even private spa treatments can offer both family-friendly activities and some quality adult downtime. This can be especially helpful if your child has specific interests or needs (eg a zoo tour for animal lovers). Luxury hotels sometimes offer VIP access to major attractions, meaning you can avoid long lines and crowds, which makes it easier with children.

• Many cruise lines offer amazing inclusions for children, like standing waves, rock climbing walls and even dodgems. And the wide variety of cuisine onboard means there will be options for even the fussiest eaters. Be sure to enlist the help of a travel agent, who can suggest the best cruiseline that will work for you and your family.

• When booking flights, ask your travel advisor to book with an airline that has child-friendly amenities (like bassinets, entertainment and children's meals). Many airlines offer priority boarding, extra legroom, and specialised children's kits to make the flight more enjoyable.

• Finally, even with the best planning, travelling with children can bring surprises – meltdowns, sickness and the like – so remain flexible. Having an advisor on hand means there is always someone available to accommodate last-minute changes or requests. But staying relaxed and patient is the key to enjoying the experience!

Tanya Chaffey is a specialist for premium travel for the Bay of Plenty. Having been in the industry for 17 years, she’s explored 65 countries, with many more on her bucket list, and is a master at planning journeys off the beaten path.

She visits hidden gem destinations and finds experiences that give her an incredible perspective on the culture of a place. One of her best travel experiences was visiting Paro Taksang, or Tigers Nest Monastery, in Bhutan and most recently visited the Five Stans of Central Asia.

No matter your travel plans, whether it's a multi-generational trip of a lifetime, or a romantic seaside escape, the team at Chaffey and Turner Travel Associates will make your holiday special.

A fine balance

Holly Brooker from Parenting Place offers a parent’s gentle guide
to reining in screen time. 

While there are real benefits to all those handy screens in our lives (connection with faraway loved ones, online grocery shopping and relatable parenting memes would be my top three), there are also down sides. When screen time isn’t balanced with the other things that make us happy humans (things like exercise, sleep, time outdoors and, most importantly, face-to-face connection), the benefits are overpowered by the negatives.

Recently, the annual Nib Insurance State of the Nation Parenting Survey, which canvasses the issues and concerns of parents around New Zealand, released more research results showing what parents are struggling with the most.  

The results reveal that 70 percent of parents and caregivers are concerned about their kids’ tech use, with 24 percent revealing they are “extremely concerned”. However, two-thirds (66 percent) of us admit we rely on technology as a distraction for children. Easy babysitter, right?

Are we addicted? 

What is interesting about this research is that parents admit lacking discipline when it comes to their own screen time and their inability to model healthy device use. 

In fact, a whopping 50 percent of the parents surveyed said they themselves felt addicted to their devices. I’m sure most of us can relate. We are living and parenting in the thick of a digital era and can feel this constant push and pull as we use tech while also trying to maintain balance for our families.

The family hui 

I’m a big fan of the “family reset”. There can be more buy-in when boundaries are discussed as a family (in a family meeting or hui), and there’s an opportunity for kids to identify the positives and negatives they see from device use and feel heard as they voice their opinions too. Be honest, share your own thoughts and concerns – it’s great to share how too much screen time affects us as adults as well.  

If tech time has crept in as the default activity at your place, you might want to chat with your kids about ideas for offline things to do. Joining your child in these activities can help them transition back into the real world − whether it’s a board game together, a walk to the park to kick a ball, or doing something creative together. 

Walk the talk

The thing is, kids learn by what they see more than what we say. So if we keep harping on about the dangers of screen time but are constantly on our phones ourselves, the message is murky.  

I’ve found that turning notifications off, deleting social media apps and news apps with never-ending feeds, and even using grey scale has helped me rein in my screen use and makes my phone less enticing!

Putting limits in place

Limits are good. While we can’t live in a screen-free bubble, we can put boundaries in place around when, where and for how long our family can use devices. We can also have family limits around what content our kids are consuming.

Every whānau is different and parenting isn’t black and white. How much access to technology you want your kids to have is something you get to decide for your family, and limits might vary according to circumstances or change as your kids get older. 

When we set limits, it can take a bit of work to stick to them and continually reinforce them. Patience and consistency are key here. Kids are wonderfully adaptable – they will adjust to the new framework and find fresh ways to spend their time. They’ll also benefit hugely from the developmental opportunities that time offline can bring.

Trust your own instincts, weigh up the pros and cons, and figure out where your family values lie, then set the limits you want for your family. And apply them to yourself, too.

Then, when all of that hard parenting work is done, sit down with a cuppa to enjoy that gripping show on Netflix you’re hooked on. 

parentingplace.nz