The first holiday without parents
Many parents face the challenge that almost overnight their young and vulnerable children have become young adults who no longer want to be overly protected and who are striving to find their own way wanting to explore the great, wide world on their own.
Often young people tell their parents that from now on they want to go on vacation alone or together with their friends and refuse the annual family holidays – that’s the beginning of a long discussion about the first holiday without parents. As a parent, you face many challenges: on one hand, it is important to trust your child and to support their development in order to give them a good start into an independent life; on the other hand, every mother and every father is afraid and wants to be sure that their child is in good hands, well cared for, not doing too many stupid things, but still having a lot of fun, in other words sliding into the world of grownups without major problems and difficulties.
A good educational decision is to allow the child a language holiday as their first holiday without parents. In this way, the teenager learns a new language and gets to know a new culture, being able to enjoy a vacation without parents, but is still embedded in a safe and protective environment, since language courses usually take place in the mornings and leisure and cultural activities are organized in the afternoons by the language school, even included in the course price. Staying with a host family is highly recommended; this accommodation option ensures adolescents the support of a family, but still gives them enough freedom to plan their day, making sure that the first holiday without parents is a great success.
For most young people, their first independent vacation is a formative experience that they will remember a lifetime, and a language stay abroad is the perfect way to combine the interests of young people and worried parents.
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