Making the Most of Your Trip: Sightseeing

Keywords: sightseeing, travel

By Stacy DeBroff

Be careful when traveling that special outings you do are age-appropriate for your kids. When my daughter Sacha was three, we were visiting my husband’s parents in South Africa and decided to take her to see a game park. I had her up front in the slow moving jeep safari, with both my husband and I exclaiming about each new animal we spotted, “Look, a zebra! A rhino!” My daughter finally called out, “Look, Mommy.” I was so excited to see the animal she had found. It turned out that she was pointing to an emergency hazard button on the dashboard. We realized that she just was not old enough to appreciate it. —Amy, mom of Sacha, 8, and Libby, 6

• List what you want to see and do during your stay, organized into such categories as “not to be missed” and “would be nice if we have time.”

• To avoid disagreements over what everyone wants to do, have your partner take half the family out sightseeing while you take the other half somewhere else. The smaller the group, the easier it is to keep moving.

Stacy, heralded as a “parenting guru” by the Wall Street Journal, authored four best-selling parenting books (Simon & Schuster) and launched Mom Central, Inc. (www.MomCentral.com), a company devoted to providing savvy advice to simplify and enrich the lives of busy Moms and their families. Stacy appears as a regular parenting expert on national TV show, including NBC’s Today Show, CNN, The View, Tyra Banks Show, CBS’ Early Show, The Daily Buzz, Mike And Juliet, Fox & Friends, and the Rachael Ray Show. Stacy also serves as a corporate spokesperson, trendspotting for the media on behalf of over 30 national brands.

In the 1990’s, Stacy founded and ran as an attorney the Public Interest Office at Harvard Law School. Stacy lives with her husband, Ron, and happily engages in imperfect parenting of their two teens, Kyle and Brooks, in Boston, Massachusetts.