Family Gap Year: 7 Reasons to take one, from exploring new cultures, adapting to new environments to strengthening family bonds.

I started to have second thoughts about traveling to Ecuador with our kids, ages 5 and 8, when it was time for their travel vaccinations. With the first painful scream, I wondered: What on earth are we doing? In a month, we would be flying for more than 15 hours and bringing our kids to a country where they would have to rely on their mother’s college Spanish to get them through—and their father’s crazy, offensively defensive driving learned in the heart of Africa. My husband