Lower your expectations, lower your stress: how to simplify your family trip planning with ABC lists

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I haven’t been at it long, but already, parenthood has taught me a lot. It forces me to practice patience, prioritize someone’s needs over my own, and be more willing to go with the flow. But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned relates to traveling with kids and planning family trips. It’s a lesson I probably should have learned years ago but was too stubborn to give in.

The secret to stress-free family trips is: expect less.

By lowering your expectations, you give your family more room to succeed. Setting the bar too high for a family trip is a sure fire way to fail. Set everyone up for success by expecting less from the get-go.

The best way to simplify traveling with kids and create a stress-free family trip? ABC Lists: create a list of priorities for the trip so everyone can effectively manage their expectations from Day One. Put everything on the table ahead of time, leave plenty of buffer room for flexibility, and level-set expectations.

Let me show how we create ABC lists when planning a family trip!

Create an ABC list of priorities.

When planning a family trip we wnat to prioritize everyone’s needs and preferences. This way everyone feels included and morale remains high. So figure out the A-list, B-list, and C-list of items together as a family. You must consider input from all traveling parties, including littles and olds.

• A-list: the things that you must see/eat/do/experience during your trip to feel satisfied; this list should consist of the fewest items (certainly no more than one big thing per day).
• B-list: the things that you really want to see/eat/do/experience, you’d be sad if you didn’t get to do at least a couple of them, but you won’t be devastated if you can’t do the whole list.
• C-list: stretch goals: things that you’d absolutely love to do if time/money/energy/moods/planets all align to allow them to happen but it’s totes not a big deal if you don’t even look at the list during the trip.

I developed this three-tiered list approach for problem-solving by working with my parents for 15 years at their small business. We used this method when project planning and writing job postings: what are the Must Haves (for a project to be considered complete or for a job candidate’s baseline skills), the Would Be Cool Ifs (for a project to include if time/money allow for it or for a candidate to possess to excel in the role), and the Utopia Vision Wishes (for a project in an ideal world or the perfectly tailored candidate’s skills). As long as the Must Have list was fulfilled, we’d be good. Everyone would be happy. Anything from the B or C lists would be a bonus!

My husband and I use this method when house hunting or day dreaming about house renovations. We always identify the Must Haves early in the planning stages of any trip. These lists may change over time, with location-dependent influences, and the capacity of the A-list will grow as your kids get older. This is why it’s important to make a new list for each and every trip. This exercise helps ensure that everyone gets to do something that they specifically want to, and helps keep everyone’s expectations for the trip in check.

Over-planning ≠ satisfaction.

Over-planning = high expectations. High expectations lead lead to anticipation. If the build up is too hyped, then the thing itself may ultimately prove disappointing. By planning LESS, you’ll enjoy the trip MORE.

Planning too much leads to high expectations for the one planning; things can feel forced for your travel companions. Going to London when you’re single and free in your twenties will be vastly different than when you return with your own family 15 years later. Even if you may want to give your family the same experiences you had and try to recreate some magic from a previous trip, any attempt at forcing the fun will fail and NO ONE will not have as much fun as you had hoped or expected.

Examples of how a less-is-more approach has served us well.

Let me give you an example scenario of how to plan a stress-free family trip with an ABC list.

I have loved Paris and everything French for most of my life but when I took my husband to Paris for the first time I mentally prepared for him to hate it. As much as I wanted him to fall in love with the city’s charms, he was coming to the city at a very different time in his life and in very different circumstances than I did. So when we were deciding what to do for the short time we had allotted in Paris, we made our lists… and the A-list might surprise you. It did not contain a single tourist attraction — and why should it? Justin didn’t grow up studying the language or learning French history like I did. He had no context for many of the historical sites or pieces of art. But he has a deep appreciation for good food, good wine, architecture, and wandering walkable towns to see what we might see. And Paris delivers on all fronts.

So our Must Have A-list for our trip included:

• showing him around the 5th, my old neighborhood from when I studied abroad
• eating escargot
• eating at least one street crepe
• wandering the streets and letting ourselves get lost
• find a cocktail bar (this was 2016, before craft cocktails hit Europe
• buy French kids books for our hypothetical future child (again, this was 2016)
• eat a baguette while walking along the river

Our B-list included only one museum (and we weren’t picky — it ended up being the Louvre because no one was there that day!), day drinking in a park or on a bridge (we didnt have time), a park (again, did not care which one, and we hit a couple along our wanderings), and going inside Notre Dame (we love visiting old churches for the architecture and art). We didn’t even touch anything on the C-list (Montmarte, Butte chaumont, riding the subway, buying art from a river vendor, le champs de mars to see the Eiffel Tower). But we had a GLORIOUS lovely time! We didnt feel disappointed by anything because we actually got done everything we wanted to do. Anything else would have been icing on the cake.

Embrace the flexibility by leveraging ABC lists.

At the end of the day, successful family trips aren’t about checking every box on an itinerary or squeezing in as many activities as possible. They’re about creating shared experiences, savoring the moments that matter most, and embracing the unexpected twists along the way. When you plan with lower expectations using ABC lists, you set yourself up for success. Focus on what truly counts while leaving room for spontaneity and fun.

The real magic happens when you’re able to enjoy the present, no matter how much—or how little—goes according to plan. Whether it’s wandering the streets of Paris or taking a quiet moment by the lake in Chicago, the less you expect, the more you’ll be pleasantly surprised. So on your next family adventure, pack light, plan light, and give yourself permission to simply enjoy the ride. You’ll come back feeling refreshed and satisfied, not from how much you did, but from how well you embraced the journey together.