Family vacation age limit

A vacation always sounds alluring. Time spent away, perched beach-side with a sugary drink in hand. Tanning your skin, if you’re like me, until it turns an alarming shade of bronze-meets-burnt-bacon. Letting the responsibilities of everyday life melt away into a plastic pool-chair.

This is the definition of a relaxing vacation. And this is ruined if you go on a vacation with your family.

As a kid, family vacations seemed fun. Amusement parks! Beaches! Weird-looking animals!

But as an adult you can no longer count on your short attention span to avoid all the little things about your family that annoy you. Which raises the question: at what age should you stop partaking in family vacations?

Now you may be thinking, “I love my family. I want to spend my two weeks of precious vacation with them!”

Listen: I, too, love my family – in small doses.

I love being able to leave the room when my sister yells at me for borrowing a dress. I love being able to ignore calls from my mom when I know she’s going to ask me about why her email isn’t working. I love going to sleep without the sound of my father’s deviated septum rattling the walls.

In my everyday life I can escape these things. On a family vacation I cannot. To make matters worse, families only grow in size as you age. It’s never just your immediate relations hopping a plane to Hawaii anymore.

There’s brother Ben who brings along his vegan girlfriend. Then there’s cousin Jen, whose twin girls are gaptoothed terrors, pushing people into pools for amusement.

A vacation is intended to be a time of peace and relaxation – of which your family offers none.

If you do happen to be forced into a family vacation, there are some things you need to keep in mind. First and foremost, try to stay somewhere with a 24-hour bar. Also, whenever possible, get your own room. And, if worst comes to worst, plan an escape route – make sure the local airport has flights out more than once a week.

In order to preserve the fondness you had as a child for family vacations, stop going on them as soon as you’re able to pay your own way. Find some friends, a partner – heck, go by yourself. There’s a long list of options that are better than your family.