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Taking the Kids™Author and Family Travel Expert, Eileen Ogintz, Provides Tips on Taking Trips With Your Kids |
More from Eileen Ogintz:
- Check out the Kids Korner, where you can learn all the fun things that kids can do in various Southwest Airlines cities.
- Kids ask the darndest things! See the answers to some of the most common questions that kids ask our Flight Attendants.
| About the Author | |
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Eileen OgintzAuthor, Taking the Kids™ |
The meeting of a three-year-old, a cat and a goldfish pond started Taking the Kids.
Eileen Ogintz' three-year-old son Matt pushed the hapless kitty into the pond at a Wisconsin cottage her family had rented for the weekend. “I thought the kitty wanted to go swimming,” Matt explained.
The furious owner insisted they pack up and leave immediately. The embarrassed parents drove home three hours to Chicago in a downpour.
Eileen Ogintz was a national correspondent for the Chicago Tribune then, covering news stories around the country. The travel editor, hearing her tale of woe about the cat and the goldfish pond, encouraged her to write a story about the trials of traveling with children. That story led to others.
“We realized there were a lot of people like me, parents who wanted help planning trips now that they had kids.”
The award-winning syndicated column "Taking the Kids" grew out of those stories. Ogintz left the Tribune, after 14 years as a reporter, national correspondent and feature writer, to spend more time with her three young children and to launch the column nationally. The Taking the Kids series of travel guides for children and “Are We There Yet?” for parents followed. This summer, Ogintz's two newest books, “A Kid's Guide to New York City,” and “A Kid's Guide to Cruising Alaska,” will be published by GlobePequot Press.
“More people than ever are taking their kids places, whether they're going to Grandma's or a museum, to Disney World or on a business trip,” Ogintz said. “Their time and budgets are tight. I give them the help they need to make the most of their family time.
Taking the Kids, the only national family travel column, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services and appears in more than 50 major newspapers including the, New York Daily News, Newsday, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dallas Morning News and the Oregonian (Portland.) The column has won several national awards and appears online on smarterliving.com and other websites.
Today, Ogintz also contributes to numerous national publications and has appeared on such television programs as “48 Hours,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America” and “Oprah.” She is often asked to speak on family travel and how those in the travel business can best meet families' needs.
She was the recipient of a 1995 and 1996 Parents' Choice honor for her Taking the Kids books and currently also teaches journalism at New York University.
Ogintz has traveled with her husband and three kids across the country and abroad - from London and Paris to Disney World to Disneyland - skiing in Colorado to fishing in Minnesota, soaking up history in Washington, D.C. to sightseeing in Las Vegas, New York and Yellowstone National Park.
Ogintz, who holds a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri, is a 20-plus year veteran of the newspaper business, reporting for The Anniston Star, The Record in Hackensack, N.J., and Des Moines Register as well as the Chicago Tribune, where she created the paper's family-issues beat.
She lives in Connecticut with her family.
For more family travel tips from Eileen, please visit takingthekids.com. Eileen also welcomes questions and comments from readers. She can be contacted at eileen@takingthekids.com.
