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TIPS FOR TRAVELING WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

By: Dahlia Stein   |   December 22, 2021

Contemplating air travel for the holidays? If you don’t have to, don’t do it. With over 700+ American Airline flights having been cancelled in a single weekend, air travel is very unpredictable. A relative of mine recently tried to fly back to SFO from Florida (non-stop) and over a 72-hour period was handed out 9 boarding passes from 4 different airports. She calls it her “airport tour de hell”.

I personally will shy-away from air travel this season, however, if you must travel, here are some parental tips on traveling with little ones:

1. Bring lots of snacks – and the weekend before the flight, make sure to gift wrap each snack so you have the opportunity to surprise your toddler every hour with a special snack and it takes him/her time to open it.  
   
   
2. One of the most important items to know as a parent is that it’s important your baby be sucking to keep the ear pressure at a minimum during take-off and landing. When does one start to give the bottle, provide the pacifier or put the baby on the boob? If you have a trick for that, please let me know…. otherwise, I tend to encourage the sucking to begin about 30 seconds after take-off. This helps to prevent using up the sucking time (or already finishing off the bottle) in the event that taxiing takes longer or if take off is postponed and you end up sitting on the tarmac for way longer than anticipated.  If you have a toddler, a lollipop is a great first (or last snack for landing to encourage the landing air pressure). If you have an older child, bring gum as your child’s first and last wrapped “gift”.
   
   
3. Another helpful item during this pandemic is to bring straws. Yup, straws. This allows you to keep your mask on while drinking a beverage. You and your little one won’t need to remove your mask each time you want to take a sip of water. Prior to COVID, I’d bring a straw and a mini feather. My child would watch me blow lightly on the feather causing it to jump or fly above my tray table. This was also fun entertainment and super light to carry in our luggage. Now-a-days this game may be better played in your hotel room over the living room table or even outside.
   
   
   
4. When my son was one year old, and I was about to embark on a flight to China with my toddler, I hit up a nearby garage sale and asked if they were selling any remote controls. The owner said, “Sure, I’ve got one to give you, just let me make sure I’m grabbing the one that no longer works on my TV”. Well, let me tell you, that remote was super popular – my son pressed buttons for hours and if it hadn’t been successful, I would have just left it in China but after 3 weeks in China, that remote was like a whole new cool toy on the return flight.
   
   
   
   
5. If you are ever traveling overseas, always book the baby bassinet. Children below the age of two can sit there (and typically you only pay the flight taxes) and call in to request your family sit together at one of the bassinets. This spot means your adults get extra leg room, the flight attendants provide you extra support and you have an extra spot for your child to sleep, play, sit or you can lay out a blanket below the bassinet so the baby can lay on the floor a bit to experience different surroundings. The only downside to this seat is that you must store all your carry-on in the overhead storage for take-off and landing. Be sure you have the baby bottle handy because one in motion you can no longer stand up to grab your stored away gear.
   
   
6. Lots of easy toys and games to entertain your children midair:
   
   a. I ask the steward or stewardess for a few paper cups. Then I turn all three cups over and line them up on my tray table. Under one of the upside-down cups I’ll put a small toy, feather or gum wrapper and we play “Under which cup is the toy/feather?”. You can even play this game with snack pieces like goldfish or M&Ms.
   
   
   
   b. Tic Tac Toe – all you do is bring some blank pieces of paper plus a few pieces of colored paper and you’ve got yourself a super sustainable tic-tac-toe board. You draw the lines with a pen and move the pieces of colored paper around like they are pawns. That way you can reuse the game board over and over again.
   
   
   
   c. Origami is great for older children plus a little book with a few directions of what to make. I typically make them together with my child, so they don’t result in frustration and I’m watching the process of skills and there to assist when assistance is needed. Plus, we end up a with a few cool frogs that we can jump around on our tray table or we create those foldable fortune cookies that you hold in one hand and can flip each of the lids so there are fun prompts in each of the folds. The prompts are things like: Give your relative a kiss, say a riddle or tell a joke. For my younger child, I simply write in numbers, so we can practice numbers and say, if 4 is selected then we do 4 more trigger folds.
   
   d. Magnetic Game: Lakeshore Stack & Match Link
   
   e. Melissa & Doug Water Wow!
   
   f. Who doesn’t love a game of UNO?!!
   
   g. Bananagrams are also great, even to practice letters & sight words with an early elementary student.
   
   h. Charades – leave it to your creativity to develop this fun game.
   
   i. And if you need a good new book, grab a new Where’s Waldo Book.
   
   j. Pipe cleaners of various colors are also amazing. You can bend them into different shapes and have your toddler guess what animal or shape it is plus after they guess it, they can lay it on a piece of paper and trace around the shape using a piece of paper and colored pen. Additionally, with many pipe cleaners, you can ask your child to count how many of each color pipe cleaner there is. You can make jewelry with it by bringing a few beads, pearler beads, cheerios or even noodles to string on it. The possibility is endless plus the child can eat the cheerios later to keep busy and satisfy a snack hunger.
   
   k. Stickers are also magnificent for travel as they are light and you, as the adult, can tell a story to the child through stickers. You can also entertain with Band-Aids and post-it notes. Kids washi tape is also great and can be used on the tray table to create different portioned off areas or even the tic-tac-toe board.
   
   l. Finger puppets are also great entertainers as you can tell stories with them and make believe. They can also be used under the cup game mentioned earlier.

Hopefully some of these tips will help you and your child to have a wonderful and fun adventure. If you’re ever interested in additional tips, feel free to reach out. 

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and all my best if you do end up traveling this winter.

Bon Voyage,
Dahlia 
travel@decaconnect.com