My family of 8 are in the midst of our first international trip with all 8 of us – to Lisbon, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain (Catalonia?). We’ve learned a few things about what works and doesn’t work when traveling internationally with a large family. I’m sure I’ve got enough fodder to keep PWaC in blog posts about this trip for quite awhile 🙂
Traveling with kids on the subway
I have traveled several times on subway systems throughout the world – by myself, with my wife, and with 1 or 2 of my kids individually. Off the top of my head, I’ve navigated the subways in Beijing, New York, Chicago, Singapore, London, Lisbon, and now Barcelona.
The subway is one of our preferred methods of transport where it exists, because as a mode of transportation, it’s something (usually) very well defined, where I don’t have to worry about taxis or being taken advantage of, especially in places where I don’t speak the language or have another culture barrier. It’s usually cheaper as well
Leaving a kid on the subway
Fast forward to yesterday – we were on our way to the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, and taking the subway from our Airbnb. The 8 of us had gone through the turnstiles and were making our way down to the subway platform. I was in the lead with my 17 year old son, and my wife and the other kids were behind us. As my son and I got down to the platform, a train was already there. I yelled back to let them know to hurry because the train was here, but didn’t actually board the train because I know that I’m not actually getting on the train unless we ALL can get on the train.
My son however had no such restrictions – he saw the train there and immediately got on the car. Pretty much as soon as he did, the train doors started to close. I tried to keep them open or re-open them, but they remained closed, and the train took off.
Okay – this picture is a staged re-enactment. I wasn’t QUITE so calm under pressure to take a picture of him as he sailed away by himself!! 🙂
The rest of our family had not made it to the platform yet (not even close, really). As the train moved away – I yelled at him through the window: “NEXT STATION!”
What do do if you lose your child on the subway
Thankfully, we have talked about and trained for this with the kids. Our two family rules for subway travel are:
- If you get on a subway when everyone else doesn’t get on (or can’t get off when everyone else gets off), then GET OFF AT THE NEXT STOP AND STAY THERE. We will come and find you
- If everyone gets on a subway car and you don’t, then just STAY WHERE YOU ARE. We will come back to find you.
Ian shared his rules for what to do if you lose your child on the subway a few months ago and he came up with the same rules, so I’m thinking they are good ones.
Again, I was thankful that in addition to having gone over these rules with our family many times (including earlier on this trip), we had 3 other things in our favor:
- It was my 17 year old son, who is nearly (?) an adult and is big enough that nobody was probably going to mess with him.
- It happened on a Sunday morning, and the subway system was pretty much empty so it was definitely a lot less chaotic.
- And because we all have Sprint and use the Sprint International Plan, he had a cell phone and we were able to be in contact with him via text messages.
So while I was mildly concerned, I had nowhere NEAR the worry that I probably would have had if it had been my 7 year old daughter with no cell phone who had been on the train by herself. And following my 2 rules for when things go wrong, I at least thought “well this will make for a good blog post later :-D”
Sure enough, our family all got on the next train 6 minutes later, and one stop later, I was quite pleased to see this smiling face waiting for us on the platform.
Of course, he had gone down the platform some, so he had to run to catch up with our car, but we were easily reunited.
Have you talked about what to do if you lose your child on the subway? What are your rules?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
My only question is…did you follow the instructions on the sign above and give him besos?
I thought the whole point of having more than two kids was so you can afford to lose a few.
Its not going to be easy if you can’t let go for even 6 minutes.
No – the whole point of having more than 2 kids is to increase your odds that one of them will be a professional athlete or rock star and really be able to take care of you in your old age 😉
Wow. He’s 17, why would this be a big deal apart from the fact that he’s another article for you to gain additional traffic.
If you have to be so worried about a 17 year old by himself on the metro then you have to be doing something wrong.
Unless of course the whole thing has been exaggerated for dramatic purposes and yet again more website traffic.
Congrats to you for having a PLAN in place.
And, again for having the courage to share the story. Though, to be honest you did not leave a kid on the subway, he left you. LOL!
That’s what I keep telling him 🙂
17 years old…? Really, 17??? When I did read the title I was thinking about a kid that’s maybe 7, or 8. Oh my. When I was 9 years old I did walk or cycle to school every day myself. When I was 12 I did take a train or cycled alone or with friends of the same age for 10 kilometers each way. The saddest part is that other comments don’t think this is weird. Maybe read this: https://www.salon.com/2016/07/03/parenting_as_an_expat_the_dutch_taught_me_how_to_loosen_up_and_give_my_kids_some_much_needed_freedom/
Would love to hear your itinerary from this trip. Those two cities have been discussed many times with my family of 5 for 2020.
We use the same rules – except my husband and brother-in-law are 71 and 89 year old seniors! My sister and I plan all our trips and our husbands follow along and do not participate much in the decision making. They pretty much follow directions but several years in a trip to Paris I realized that my husband had no euros, no metro tickets, and probably did not know the address of the apartment where we were staying! Since then I have made sure he carries some money and tickets, and I write down our address for him to carry in his wallet.