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4 Concerns of Full-Time RV Living with Kids

You’ve made up your mind! You’re going to give full-time RV living with kids a try and you’ve told all your friends and family about your big plans. The reactions were mixed.

Some relatives envisioned you living a sun-kissed Instagram dream, others picture you stranded on the side of the highway, homeschooling your kids by candlelight with nothing but tumbleweeds for company. 

Isn’t it funny how some people feel excited and fill you with encouragement when they find out your family is traveling full-time, and then other people look at you like you’re half-crazy and are at a loss for nice words?

In this blog, I wanted the biggest concerns people have regarding full-time RV living with kids. We’ll be talking about navigating relationships on the road, keeping that spark alive with extended family, finding unique recreational opportunities, and, of course, tackling the ever-important question of education. ‍‍‍

Full-Time RV Living with Kids

Full-time RV living with kids in tow is an adventurous choice. 

It’s an unconventional lifestyle that usually either opens people’s minds to alternative ways of life or gives them an outlet to show their closed-mindedness. Let’s tackle the specifics of relatives, relationships, recreation, and education concerns so you can be prepared.

4 Concerns Of Full-time RV Living with Kids

Staying Connected During Full-Time RV Living With Kids

With kids in the picture, it’s always a consideration how packing up to live full-time in an RV with kids will affect their relationships with your extended family!

And your family may not be all that thrilled about the idea of you taking your kids away for extended periods. They want you guys to be close, to enjoy fellowship and holiday meals. They want to cheer from the stands as the kids play sports. And watch quietly from the crowd as your kids perform their recitals.

The reality is this: You will either enjoy the limited exposure to your family or you will miss it.

  1. If your family was a huge part of your kid’s life, and your own, before traveling full-time- then you may have an adjustment period in your near future.
  2. If your family was spread out and you only saw them on special occasions or through social media- your relationship won’t change much.

Keep In Touch With Relatives While Full-Time RVing

Just because you’ll be living in an RV with your family, while traveling in the U.S. doesn’t mean you have to be secluded from your extended family! With technology, you can stay as connected as you want.

You can plan your travels around holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other times your family enjoyed togetherness before your great family adventure started. We did this successfully for the first few years of RV life, where we returned ‘home’ for the winter and spent holidays with loved ones, before heading back out on the open road to go exploring!

And who knows, spending less time together may prove to allow for more quality time. After all, choosing quality or quantity usually works well, and if it doesn’t you can always rely on Zoom, Instagram, Facetime, and Facebook to keep your family as connected as you want to be while you travel.

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Relationships while Full-Time RV Living with Kids:

Living in the same town year after year after year after year, pretty much means you’re going to eventually make some friends, right? But what about when you travel full-time? You might only be in one place for a day, a week, or a month… and is there any chance of building relationships?

Can Kids Make Friends While Traveling Full-time In An RV?

We have 4 kids and while traveling full-time they may have had their shy moments, but that didn’t stop them from making friends at every campground pool, playground, or recreation center we visited. They made friends wherever ever we went and we were happy to see it.

Kids (and teens) naturally gravitate toward others around their age. It just happens naturally and I don’t think traveling full-time in an RV will change that. In our house, we have a 50/50 split of introverted and extroverted beings. Some of us love to engage and make new connections, others, wait for the connection to come to them or a gentle nudge in the right direction.

So if you’re kids are naturally outgoing, there’s a huge chance they will continue to be. They’ll spark conversations randomly and invite kids to join them for campfires, cannonballs in the pool, or a few rounds of mini golf.

And if your kids are a bit more reserved or natally shy, they’ll likely continue along that route although they’ll have plenty of opportunities to join in and socialize as much as they are willing.

4 Concerns Of Full-time RV Living with Kids

Kids Will Find Kids To Be Kids With

During our travels, we found ourselves parked at Green River Lake State Park in Kentucky and our children met a family of unschoolers who were extremely cool! They had 5 children, 2 older girls, and 3 young boys ages 13-7.

While exploring their surroundings they stumbled, literally, over rocks down by the lake. The boys showed the girls that these were actually geodes. They ran back to their RV and grabbed a hammer- to crack them open and show the kids that they contained an assortment of crystals. The kids were amazed and appreciated the science lesson that happened naturally with kids their age!

Like I said, kids will find kids to be kids with…

Socialize with. And learn with.

Kids are kids and you’re doing them a great service by taking them on a full-time road trip. The kids they meet on the road will be full of their own travel stories and your kids will have amazing campfire moments as they share them with each other.

They’ll have a core group of kids that can relate to full-time travel and exploration. They will also learn and experience things first-hand as opposed to their brick-and-mortar counterparts who will only read about these things in books inside the classroom!

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Recreation For Full-Time RV Living with Kids:

Recreation should be the farthest thing from anyone’s mind when listing major concerns about traveling full-time in an RV with kids in tow.

You’re traveling full-time with your family in an RV- what else would you be doing besides recreation? You practically live outside right? I mean if you didn’t, you would probably drive each other pretty crazy relatively quickly in such a small space!

So while the rest of America is encouraging their kids to unplug and get outdoors- we’re living this life day in and day out. Our kids are outdoors. They do unplug. And guess what? They love it!

Recreation Is Part Of RV Life

They get to play, learn, and live in nature every day.

Special activities that most children are only rewarded or sometimes even forced to participate is regular life for us.

We camp. We hike. We build tents and outdoor forts. We bird watch. We stargaze. We build fires. We ride bikes. We run. We scream. We swing. We swim. We kayak. And most of all we explore our world together.

Recreation doesn’t get any better than that!

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Education For Full-Time RV Living with Kids

As if homeschooling wasn’t already a hot enough topic. Now you’ve gone and told people you’re roadschooling? Get ready for the eye rolls, because they’re coming in 5…4…3…2…1… told ya!

Roadschooling, Homeschooling, Unschooling- they’re all different methods for educating your kids while traveling full-time.

You can choose your method or do a combination of several, but one thing will stay the same- make sure you can explain what you’re doing. If you don’t know what’s going on, don’t expect someone else to. And trust me, it can make life much easier for you if you can explain your strategy, beliefs, and way of life when asked even the simplest of questions, like what do you do for school?.

Most people equate a good education with straight A’s on a report card issued by your local school district. We’re not most people and if you’re reading this- you probably aren’t either.

Good education is all around us.

Hands-on science, history, geography, math, and reading are all aspects of a good education. We try to expose our children to these subjects daily. Allowing them to thrive in their favorite subjects and learn the materials they are most interested in when they are most interested in them- is a much more effective educational model, in our opinion.

Allowing the world to be their classroom, and teaching them the lessons that you’ve found are necessary and important will prove far more beneficial than book smarts measured by memorization of standardized testing materials in a broken education system.

So find a system that works for you, tailor it to fit in a tiny space, and enjoy what traveling full-time affords your children’s education at any age.

4 Concerns Of Full-time RV Living with Kids

4 Concerns Of Full-Time RV Living with Kids

The majority of people’s concerns seem to revolve around the topics of Relatives, Relationships, Recreation & Education. These four categories appear to be the most concerning topics when people have issues with their decision to try full-time RV living with kids.

They want to make sure you’re on your toes and have all your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted.

We take no offense (okay… we try not to) to the qualms of others when it comes to our chosen way of life. We love traveling with our children, and we love to meet others who also travel and those who would like to someday travel.

We encourage those who are searching for inspiration and information about full-time RV living with kids to get outside the box and live a little! And if you’re thinking about RVing solo with kids, check out his post for some great information!

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