Taking your children to travel is not to practice spiritual practice

Mrs. T and I met at an event. Her daughter was playing with Sidi Zimi, and we two mothers started talking. We are both people who love traveling and have been to many places and had a lot of fun chatting. Mrs. T suggested that we take the children to Hangzhou together on the weekend so that the children can play together. I responded enthusiastically. I like Hangzhou very much. Getting from Shanghai to Hangzhou is very convenient by train and bus. We go there several times every year to enjoy the green water and green mountains, which makes us feel empty. Mrs. T said: \”I will book the hotel. Our company has negotiated prices with many hotels, which is very cost-effective.\” Two days later, Mrs. T came to me and said: \”The hotel has been booked. After the discount, it is 2800 including breakfast. \”At first I thought 2,800 was the price for two days. With a child and a family of four, I could bear the pain. When I was about to make a reservation, I realized that 2,800 was just the price for one day. WHAT? I\’m a person who doesn\’t care much about face, so instead of being coy and hiding, it\’s better to confess directly. I said: \”For me, a 2800 hotel in Hangzhou is too expensive.\” It is a very happy thing to travel with friends and talk about it, as long as they have similar consumption levels. Traveling with pain and discomfort will result in falling out and not even being friends. She said: \”We usually don\’t stay in such expensive hotels when we travel by ourselves, but with children, we always have to live better. The most important thing is that this hotel is very famous, and it also provides afternoon tea with macarons. It\’s a very big children\’s playground. I read the reviews and it\’s great.\” I know that traveling with a child who can crawl on the ground at any time is indeed a lot of inconvenience. I don\’t have the strength yet to treat a 2800 hotel as a casual daily entertainment. Nowadays, domestic independent travel can be divided into two extremes, where every penny must be counted. It can be divided into eight-petal flower budget travel, and \”parent-child travel with children\” where money is spent like water. Taking your children to travel around the world, staying in ultra-luxury hotels, and buying ultra-luxury experiences has become a new way of comparing wealth, just like whether you take your children to the Mathematical Olympiad, English, piano, Chinese studies, or ballet. Parents take their children to travel. It is said that the original intention is to cultivate their children and increase their experience. But what can be cultivated by staying in a globally integrated luxury hotel? Do you have advanced luxury consumption awareness and ability? In recent years, traveling with children has become a trend. I once saw an explosive article that summarized several major benefits of traveling with children. One of them is: before the child is 2 years old, the infant ticket is only 10% of the adult fare. Therefore, children must travel by air before they are two years old. The longer the flight, the cheaper it will be. I was a little stunned. I don’t know whether to write a reply and tell her that there are still many airlines in the world. Babies who do not occupy a seat before the age of 2 do not need to buy a ticket, and they can also book baby seats and baby meals. According to this logic, traveling with children is not only \”saving money\”, but also taking advantage of it? In fact, children under the age of two are very unsuitable for long-distance travel. Because at this time, children do not have the ability to challenge the outside world, let alone the desire to explore the world. What they need is safety.Sense and regularity, eat on time, go to bed on time, sleep on your own familiar bed, and smell your familiar smell. The bumps of travel, the unfamiliar sense of space, environment, sounds, and smells will all give them a fear of insecurity and make them nervous and anxious. Letting them travel at this time, for the children themselves, is just a matter of endurance without choice, and cannot cultivate any knowledge, let alone pattern. Even older children, four or five years old, are not interested in the culture, history, traditions, or even scenery that adults would like. This is not a question of cultivation, but of nature. Sidi is 7 years old and has been to more than a dozen countries. Zimi is 4 years old and has also been to seven or eight countries. If you ask these two little girls, \”What did you like most about this trip?\” they will all agree, and the answer is the same: \”hotel swimming pool!\” And the mark they use to divide areas is also a swimming pool. \”New York is that place without a swimming pool. The swimming pool in Paris is very small. The swimming pool in Queenstown has colorful mushrooms in the water. There is a huge swimming pool in Kuala Lumpur. There is a petal-shaped swimming pool in Koh Samui…\” Starting from this year , Sidi began to slowly become interested in some humanities, arts, and natural phenomena. You will ask why and start to think for yourself. It turns out that in primary schools around the world, students start entering first grade from the age of six to seven, which really makes sense. Sidi started traveling when she was three months old, and Zimi took her first flight just 19 days after she was born. We have been to many places together and had many experiences. According to popular sayings, I can be considered a \”hot mom\” who travels with her children. But La Ma herself said, I don’t think traveling with children, especially children under the age of seven or eight, will add much rich experience to the children’s lives. I am even more opposed to it. After I entered elementary school, in the name of seeing the world and cultivating sentiments, I took time off to travel with my children, either during off-peak hours or on business trips. Children go to school not just to learn cultural knowledge. What is more important is to form a sense of discipline and learn to abide by the rules. Because a child’s life circle is family and school. Asking for leave frequently will make children think in their hearts that there are no rules in the world that need to be followed, as long as I want to. Someone must have asked me: \”You are so opposed to traveling with children, why do you still take children with you?\” I travel with children for two reasons, objective and subjective. The objective reason is that for a mother who is raising her children alone, if I don’t take them with me, I don’t know where to put them? I have never used a live-in full-time aunt. My mother is in poor health and my mother-in-law is beyond her reach. No matter how playful I am, as a parent, my responsibilities always come first, so when I go out, the easiest, safest and worry-free way is to take them with me. The subjective reason is actually for myself. During the trip, all the details that children will not remember, but Lu Zhonghan and I, as adults, will remember them and leave them unforgettable in our hearts. One day, the children will drift away and leave. One day, we will be so old that we can only sit on the recliner and reminisce. Those bits and pieces are our lifetime wealth, and they will never be forgotten.Will be erased until the last breath of my life. In life, all money, material things, status, fame and fortune are things that are not brought with you in life and will not be taken with you in death. When we left, the only thing we could take away was our own memories. In my memories, you and our family, the laughter, the crying, the desperate quarrels, and the suffocating hugs. Lu Zhonghan agrees with my point of view very much, so my family’s travels are carried out in groups at home. It started with two of us, then three of us, then four of us, sometimes with our parents, then six of us. We have been working hard, hoping to organize a trip to a certain country with my parents-in-law. Meet and become eight of us. Lu Zhonghan has to go to work and has limited holidays. Sometimes I would leave alone with the kids or come back late. But neither for me nor for the children, it cannot be considered a holiday when Dad is away. The holidays are just a time when our family is reunited, and nothing can be lost. We live in an era of power with economy as the foundation, interests as the main line, and power as the backbone. Every bit, every bit must have its practical and useful meaning. Taking children to travel does not derive all kinds of meanings. It can cultivate children’s temperament, pattern and experience. You can not lose at the starting line, you can compete for first place. But I can really confirm that even before a child is 18 years old, if he has not seen the Louvre, the Pyramids, the sunrise at the Dead Sea, the sunset in Santorini, or Disneyland in Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, he will not be able to see it. You really won’t appear to be any less knowledgeable or well-organized than your peers. Although Freud said: \”Life can remember every second that passes, what we forget is just the clue to find this memory.\” Children can indeed gain knowledge, undergo tests and benefit from travel. But in terms of life growth, these benefits are really incalculable and can basically be ignored. Taking a child with you is a journey, not a practice. There is really no need. You have to go through all the trouble and hatred to find the meaning of taking your children to travel. There is no need to compare with each other. If you don\’t have the conditions, you will blame yourself. The world is so big because our hearts are small. When our hearts grow big, the world will become small. To cultivate your children, you should first cultivate yourself.