Folks it’s the holiday season and while our children are getting more and more excited about Christmas and toys parents are already starting to dread the 10 hour drive across country that the in-laws finally guilted them into making this year. If you find yourself stressed about traveling with your crazy family this year then stay tuned for some helpful tips on how to wrangle all those strong personalities into one unified goal.

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Pay attention and be aware of your personality styles when it comes to your holiday travels this year.

The traveling Lion

• Needs to know the goal and direction
• Allow opportunities to help schedule or plan travel

The traveling Otter

• Just make it fun!
• Make sure you plan exciting things
• Bring distractions
• Stay optimistic

The traveling Golden Retriever

• Take time to connect with them
• Try to eliminate major surprises, they like to know what is going to happen
• Give them a chance to be heard and not drowned out by the other ones

The traveling Beaver

• Don’t mistake their tone or attitude as negative
• Give them the details and let them help planning the route
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So, as you can see the personality types of your group will greatly affect your traveling plans. If you have a child who is a strong lion, like my daughter Reagan, and a sweet golden retriever, like my youngest David, you will want to be considerate of these differences and try to plan around them as best you can. For example, I used to take special care to make sure David got to choose a movie every once in a while so that he knew his opinion was important too.

Even if you don’t have children and are traveling with friends, you still want to take these things into account. If you are a lion traveling with an beaver, don’t take their constant questions as a challenge on your authority. If you are a golden retriever traveling with a otter, assert yourself and make sure they don’t accidentally bulldoze over you with their constant enthusiasm.

Also make sure to communicate travel plans with your group as best you can before you leave. This decreases the stress of everyone no matter what their personality type is because they know there is a plan.

Listen, though my dominant personality trait is an otter, I know that I transform into a full beaver on travel days. Frankly it’s quite spectacular. If your like me and turn into a total stress ball if things aren't running on time, make sure to warn your friends and family that it is important for you to be organized.

In the end, knowing and planning around the personality types of your group can be invaluable in making sure you create a mostly stress free and relaxed environment.