Traveling Can Change Your Child’s Life

I remember when I was nine my parents took me to Cancun, Mexico. When I was there, I was shy and stubborn. I did not want to try any of the “weird-looking” food and I sure was not going to try anything that seemed even remotely dangerous to me. After a few days of being there, my parents took me and my siblings to a park where they allowed people to swim with dolphins. What they did is have the people lay on their bellies in the water and then the dolphin would come up behind you and push you by your feet. Well, I was not having any of that! I told my parents that it looked scary and that I would not do it. That is when my mom told me something that changed the way I viewed things from then on out. She told me “This could be your only chance to ever try it. If you don’t do it now how will you ever know if it was something you actually love?”

After she said that I decided to give it a shot. And you know what; I loved it. I realized at that moment how stubborn and narrow-minded I was being. I even tried some of that “weird-looking” food and enjoyed it as well. I wish that I would have been open to new things at the beginning of that trip because I am sure there would have been so many more exciting things for me to remember today as well.

That trip did more than break my stubbornness; it allowed me to see a whole world outside of the one I live in. It was at that moment that I discovered my love for traveling. If it was not for that experience I do not know where my life would be headed. I have been to tons of extraordinary places in my lifetime and I plan to go to more and more as I grow older.

My parents were able to take me to many more places as I grew up, and I remember every single one of those places. Although it was not necessarily the place we went to that matter so much; it was the incredible bond and happiness that traveling brought to my family. Those trips with them are one thing that I would never trade for anything in the world. It is like the saying goes, “Moments may pass, but the memories will last a lifetime."