How to Get Parents’ Permission to Travel to Europe

How to get my parents to let me travel to Europe with a school group?

Hello,

Ahh, the ultimate power play of youth: how to get your parents’ permission to allow you to go away from them. It is my impression that the only thing you can do is to keep working on them — day and night don’t stop asking, pleading, explaining. Put up posters and pictures of Europe on your bedroom door, get books from the library about wherever it is in Europe that the school group is planning on going, start studying the language, get a job or do odd jobs to make up the other half of the money that you need, show your parents that preparing for travel is ALREADY making you a more responsible and independent person.

Travel begins the moment you decide you are going to go. Decide with certainty that you are going on this trip to Europe, live it each day, and take every preparatory measure to ensure that you do go. Make sure you also include your parents in every step of the way — talk to them as if they were your friends, show them maps, books, movies about Europe.

In point, you have to make your parents WANT you to go to Europe, too.

Tell them that you would be taking away a great, once in a lifetime, opportunity if they did not allow you to go.

Sometimes, parents need to be worked. You need to do the leg work to convince them that you are serious, you need to ensure them that you will make this trip to Europe an educational and personal experience, you need to explain that this is an important step towards your oncoming independence.

Travel teaches nothing if not self determination and independence.

Tell them that this trip is not only an educational journey but a personal one as well, make them realize that the impact that traveling abroad will have will better prepare and mature you for life ahead.

Remember that your parents are probably just worried about you. Getting mad at them will do nothing, but making them feel guilty — that they are depriving you of a great opportunity — could.

Show them how high school travel experience will help get you into college. Show examples of college application essays that ask you to explain how some “great life experience has made you the person you are today.” Show how you could write about going to Europe to answer these questions.

Most importantly, be good and don’t give up. When they say no, just go on with your day, come back in five minutes with a new argument. Leg work, leg work, leg work — don’t give up for a second, bother them to no end, but do so gracefully. Do let them get made at you, do extra work around the house — make a deal with them something like “I will do two extra chores a day for $5 to add to my Europe travel fund.” When they say no, don’t acknowledge their refusal, just nod your head and go on making your travel plans.

Parents tend to want what is best for their kids, it is your job to show them that going to Europe will be the best thing for you.

My wife went to France when she was 14 with a group of kids her age, and the experience changed her life.

Keep working at this, make up your own money, show that preparing for these travels alone is making you a more independent, responsible, and knowledgeable person and there is a good chance they will allow you to go.

If you have any more questions please feel free to leave them below in a comment.

Other pages on VagabondJourney.com that could offer more advice

• How to convince your parents to let you travel
• Gap year to travel

Walk Slow,

Wade

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Original question asking how to convince parents to give permission to travel

my parents do not think that i am old enough to travel to europe with a supervised group of high school aged kids, even if i pay for half…. how can i convince them to ket me go!