Why You Can Still Travel With Kids | Sitting Down With Iz Harris
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One, two, three
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Oh, we did it! One, two, three. Wait. That was at the same time, wasn't it
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No, not even at all. Hey guys, today I'm sitting down with Iz Harris, who is one of the founders of Bright Trip
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and she has an entire course on our platform about how to travel with kids
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and so today is just going to be like a super casual interview it's kind of a long form thing
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where we're just chilling and talking and we can hear all about isa's experience traveling with kids
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and talking about where she learned all these things and kind of what's in the course so i'm
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just gonna quickly cut into that interview and let you guys enjoy you had kids when you were
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really young and you had traveled before you had kids, right? Yeah. So, but not, I traveled way more
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after kids than I did before kids, you know, like even in the first few years after kids
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I had more travel experience than I did pre kids. Did you think that that was going to be the case
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No. I mean, I didn't think our whole life was going to be the way that it was, but
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you know traveling and traveling overseas it wasn't something I grew up doing it was not a
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part of my world it was not a part of my uh upbringing at all and so I don't even think I
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had the like ability to foresee the way that our life has gone and like how we've raised our boys
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and how we have traveled the world with them I just had no frame of reference for something like
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that at all. You know, I didn't even know, like, I didn't know about vloggers or travel bloggers or
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anything like those things that were happening. I was so naive and unaware. Do you feel like
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family travel or travel with kids is like properly represented in social media? Or do you feel like
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it's often like faked or like, like, do you think it's, I don't know, do people have accurate
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expectations of what it's like? You know, that's a broader question, which is more actually, do I
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think travel is accurately reflected? And the answer to that would be no. It's actually something
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that I think inspired the start of Bright Trip. And I think I'm correct in saying has inspired
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team members like you to come on board. The idea of like portraying travel in a way that
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is relatable to real life travelers. And that includes real life parents who travel
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I don't fault the creators for that, you know, like they're putting their lives out there. And
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so of course, everything has a little bit more of a kind of tied with a bow, uh, thing. And I
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I do think I wanted to kind of break that. And I didn't, I didn't know not to, I didn't know
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enough about being online to edit moments out. So like this moment behind me, actually
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I don't know if you can see, but like we're in the white cities of Spain and O had just like on
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camera grabbed the orange juice and he completely dumped it on himself. I don't know. It didn't
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cross my mind that I wouldn't include that in. So no, I don't think it's accurately reflected
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but part of that is like how are you gonna you know think to grab a camera when your kid's having
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a tantrum because they will when you're traveling you know so part of it is just like it's kind of
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difficult to capture and part of it is just the way social media is you know we don't talk about
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like the the messiness and actually like that is something that in in our travel with kids course
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was a major focus, was the messiness. Like things you don't really hear about
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like, you know, that there are going to be, you know, sick kids and accidents on airplanes
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And like you will end up with like spit up or some other fluid all over you at some point in the middle of a flight and we really looked at kind of our years and years and years of travel experience with these boys
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and pulled from that to try to present like an accurate almost like arsenal of tools
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for someone to go and and do this on their own. Do you think that the misrepresented version of
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travel with family or kid travel, uh, makes it more daunting for parents to travel with kids
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since they feel like it has to be like done in this picture perfect way. Yeah. I think that
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that makes it more daunting. And then we say multiple times in this course and on this channel
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and as a company, like we're not talking about just overseas. Like we're talking about like
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setting up a tent in your backyard. That can be your practice run, like going on a two hour road
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trip to a town you've never been to, uh, for one night, you know, overnight stay. There are so many
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practice runs and there's so many budget friendly ways that you as a family can travel that apply
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all the same like rules and stepping stones and mindsets. And, um, I think that that's something
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too like where families don't feel like they can travel whether it's a budget thing or a logistics
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thing or they're just scared you know and so they don't even try this this like smaller trips the
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road trips or the day trips or the you know overnight trips how did you navigate like you
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said you traveled more after you had kids which you didn't expect and so for people who are like
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having kids and nervous of like, how soon can I travel with little ones or how am I going to pay
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for this? Or like, what are things that you've learned that could be helpful for them
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Oh man, I think back to our first trip and, you know, our son, our older son has autism. So
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um, we were traveling with our, um, this is our first overseas trip. So we went to Italy and our
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youngest was six months. Then Henry, our oldest was, he would have been three years old. He
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you know, had never slept outside of a crib. He had never, um, he was non-verbal at that point. So
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our communication was based off of these like picture cards. He had a big need for routine
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and, uh, a tendency towards kind of rigidity within that routine. And, um, I had no idea how
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it was going to go. And we, we get on this plane. I didn't sleep a wink. Like just don't even
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that's one of the things we talk about. Like travel with kids is a game of setting expectations
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and setting them nice and low. And that doesn't mean it's not going to be fantastic, but it's like
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you set yourself up for failure, expecting that it's going to be travel without kids
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And the same way that, that it's not going to be travel without kids in those, like, you know, you're going to relax on the plane. You're going to watch a movie. You're going to
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rest. Yeah. Those things won't happen, but it's also like, it's, you know, you, it's true on the
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other side of things where it's like travel without your kids also means you're not seeing
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that place through their eyes and you're not seeing them like play with like local children
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in Italy on a playground and like not even mind a language barrier. And you're not talking about
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them, you know, these places with them for years to come. So, you know, it goes both ways, but
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um, but that trip, it was such an incredible thing. I have this memory of getting on a train
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and we were using this like picture board schedule to help Henry, you know, understand like after
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like after you have to sit and eat, we'll go on the train. He was obsessed with trains. So we were
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just like okay we can like hop these villages and use the train as a way to
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like help him adjust and feel comfortable and feel excited and it just blows my mind like it all of the ways that he rose to the occasion and exceeded our expectations and actually thrived on much of
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the chaos and newness of that experience. And it honestly grew me up in a lot of ways as a
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parent. And it, yeah, it shifted our entire, you know, family culture and future. So I think
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my advice I guess would be give it a try it might not be for you like that that's okay too but at
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least give it a try and go in with reasonable expectations that it's not going to be travel
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without kids but that a lot of beauty comes from it being travel with kids you know that would be
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my advice and you know I break down more of the step by step and like the like here's what you
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should have with you here's what you should pack here's how you should pack here's what you should like get in terms of like toys or snacks or like these are the most important things
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Here's how you should schedule things out. Those are all really, really important. But the biggest thing is giving yourself an opportunity to figure out if it is something
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that you want to be a part of your family culture, you know. I'm curious if you've seen benefits post travel even like obviously on the trips, you get to
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experience these things and learn things with them. But, like, do you see any effect in, like, who they are as a person when you're at home, like, from your experiences of traveling
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Yes. One of the major things, and it wasn't just us, it was Henry's teachers and his therapist as well, that we noticed was he would always have a massive surge in learning and curiosity and kind of awareness of his surroundings and, like, comfort within those
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but also both of them actually have really benefited from the show that can be travel
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Both of them, you know, kids really, really love routine and they like their routine and they like
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you know, our youngest actually almost more than Henry, like clings to his routine
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What happens is normally when we're traveling, those things kind of go away. I noticed that
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they're way more adaptable. They're way more like, uh, way less reliant on kind of those routines
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and things going a certain way because travel, just like it pushes us to be a little bit more
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like comfortable with going with the flow. It pushes kids in the same way, you know
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and we address that too, where it's important to be aware of both sides. Like again, they
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yeah, they come home and there's these amazing benefits of them being a little bit more laissez
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fair but then it's important to remember that they are experiencing the same kind of chaos and
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stress that we experience when we go to a new place and to build in kind of breaks and moments
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for them to process that whereas most of your travel experience happened after you had kids
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i was the beneficiary of my parents taking me when i was really young and so yeah i can i know that
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your kids will be so grateful in the future. And like, I feel like even from a super young age
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it helped me have like this global perspective that was much more than just like my little
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hometown, you know, even small trips that, that are like still within the U S or still within my
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own country or whatever. Um, yeah, they're so helpful. I love hearing that. That makes me so
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happy. Um, I think that's such a fascinating experience to have had too, you know, it's
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it's so different than my upbringing. And I do wonder like, what is this going to be like for
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them? Like that certain things are normal that just absolutely weren't for me. I just, you know
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they're going to have this kind of awareness of how small they are in the world. And I think
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that's probably the thing that excites me most is just having that perspective of, um, our culture
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is our culture you know our societal culture even our family culture but it isn the culture I feel really excited about them being exposed to that notion early on Do you feel like um there are any like cornerstones or things that you kind of
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feel about yourself were shaped by your early travel experiences? Yeah, I, I think so. I come from a very like homogenous state of belief system and like
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ethnicity and everything and so being like traveling from a really early age all over the
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world and seeing that like not everyone believes the same way I do and not everyone looks the same
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way I do it made it so that when I did come back home and interacted with people who looked and
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believed and acted like me I I still operated with a different understanding that like this isn't
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the universal one way that we all talk to each other. And this isn't just the one way that things
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work. And so, um, I think it's a perspective that like, yeah, has definitely influenced
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I mean, how I approach my own beliefs and, and things like that. So I definitely feel like
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travel from a young age has like shaped, yeah, things as deep as my belief system for sure
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You know, we talked a little bit early on in this conversation about that idea that like most people
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feel like the, the travel is dead once you've had kids, like it's over, it's done with, you know
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unless you have a family member that can like cover the kids or, you know, childcare, some setup
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One of the things that I wanted to encourage in, in sharing our travels and creating this course
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in documenting, you know, travel with kids in my show with Eater and having that included
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was this idea that you can still do this and that you can still have that part of yourself
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and that part of your identity. And that doesn't need to end just because you brought two little, three little, however
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many little lives into this world. For me, it's been so empowering to keep that part of myself
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And is it more chaotic? Yes, especially when I'm producing something like that is journalistic in nature
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It is much more chaotic or I'm producing a course. It's much more chaotic
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But the benefits far outweigh, you know, the negatives. And and I think what I would say is as we've learned, we've gotten so much better at it
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And we are like truly like a well-oiled machine now. and I just like have so much pride in these moments where I see my kids like literally
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running down you know the like runway what's that called like the little ramp
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they like the airplane their little yeah they get their ticket scan they run down they find
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their seats they're like counting the numbers they get buckled they're waiting they know that
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they can't have their screen until we're like up in the air because I really want them to take in
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like the moment of takeoff and all of that and Henry knows turbulence and all of these things
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like there's just so much wonder and there's so much wonder in seeing it through their eyes
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And, uh, I would encourage anyone to give it a try, give it a try, but take our course because
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you will learn a lot of do's and do nots, but give it a try, give it a try in a small way or a big way
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Just see how your kids respond and they might really surprise you and you might surprise yourself
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you know thank you so much for for talking to me today i think that everyone will love this
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of course thank you uh for making great stuff and being a part of the team thank you guys for
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watching if you want to find that whole course you can go over to brighttrip.com and find the
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travel with kids course we also have a bunch of other stuff on the platform and so we'd love to
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see you over there see ya
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