A Mother-Daughter Test: London, Together

'Traveling with children seems to operate on a continuum that begins with plane discomfort for the gravely pregnant and ends with teenagers taking ski trips without you. It’s the various in-between stages that currently occupy me: the necessary Children-as-Extra-Luggage travel, as I once did on a book tour with a 5-month-old, coordinating feeds between readings; followed by attempts at Traveling Despite the Child, which my husband and I once did in Japan, hoisting our 10-month-old in a backpack and dining in our hotel bathroom while she slept. And then there is the interminable Where Else Could We Possibly Go? stage, a yearslong stretch of visits to the in-laws, house rentals in places where you won’t bother other people, forays into Disneyland. Into this category fall the whiling away of two-week breaks, babysitter vacations and four-day weekends that constitute the academic calendar.

All of these middle phases involve compromises. The hope is that despite them, participants young and old manage to eke out some modicum of enjoyment, drawn into one another’s world by the sheer force of parental or filial appetite, tolerating or tantruming through the rest.

But when, I wondered, would my children want to do more of what I want to do, or vice versa, and when might those tendencies magically converge? At what age can a child truly appreciate the cultural value of an international journey, on mutually agreeable terms?

As spring break approached this year, I thought I might have finally hit that moment with my nearly 9-year-old daughter — especially if I left my two smaller children, boys whose predilections would confine us largely to playgrounds and ice cream parlors, behind. Perhaps I could take Beatrice to London, a city I lived in 15 years ago and have traveled to frequently since, as a test case: Would she be old enough to appreciate my London — a city of quirky bookshops, World War history and street scenery straight out of “Bleak House” — and also make it her own? By pursuing our shared passions for books and theater in a city that specializes in both, might we achieve that elusive family-travel synchronicity?'

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/travel/a-mother-daughter-test-london-together.html?hp&_r=0