Tips on Holiday Travel with Toddlers
The Below is our Quick Top 5 Tips for Holiday Travel with Toddlers on the Plane, Train, and Automobile
Along with the holidays comes the inevitable travel to visit family, friends, or maybe even your own little getaway. Traveling with kids is always tough, but over the holidays adds the extra layer of stress. Between weather delays, long waits, and traffic, NO NAPS, it can be chaotic. Add in two toddlers and the situation intensifies times approximately 1.7 million.
This year, we will be flying across country and also taking about a four hour road trip within a short amount of time. In preparation, I created my own list of tips to remind myself of what we need to succeed with mitigating melt downs. As I was writing out my list on a random post-it note, I realized this would be a perfect blog post and hopefully can help you all with some travel.
Just remember, the most important thing above all, is to remain calm! The kids may be freaking out, or things may happen outside of your control, but just remember, those little ones feed off your energy! It will all be OK, just take deep breaths! You got this!
Tip 1: Bring Snacks. Whether you are traveling by car, plane, train, or moped, bring copious amounts of snacks. As many snacks as you can. We try to bring a variety of at least four different snacks and make sure there is enough for two snacks for each kid per hour. That may be a little much, but you would rather overdo it with the snack than not having enough.
Tip 2. Bring Preferred Toys. Any favorite toy that can make it on the plane or car, bring it. Regardless of your philosophy on screen time, bring pre-downloaded movies on your iPad, phone, or computer. Make sure you are fully charged and have a back up portable charger linked here. You do not need a “oh no my iPad died during Trolls” meltdown moment. Rotate out the toys about every 45 minutes to 1 hour, this really helps the time go by!
Tip 3. Backpacks. Ditch the cute purse, travel tote, over the shoulder diaper bag. You and the hubs both need to wear backpacks during all travel times. it allows you more freedom, accessibility, and flexibility. All things you need if a toddler takes off down the terminal. Plus, it just makes it a lot easier when you are navigating through the airport with strollers, luggage, and trying to find your ID, etc. if your hubby will wear a back pack too, it will literally lighten your load and more room for diapers, snacks, and toys. This is a great option here.
Tip 4. Wipes on Wipes. Honestly, I do not know what it is about traveling with little ones, but invariably there is a blowout or spit up episode every.single.time. The worst case scenario is that happens and you are out of wipes! Remember to always have extra wipes. At least one pack in your backpack and another in your companions, then keep an extra one in the car at all times. The wipes also come in handy after snacks, cleaning off dropped toys on the plane floor, or any other random event that may pop up!
Tip 5: Timing is of the Essence. Be deliberate the times you leave for a road trip or when booking your flight. For road trips, I recommend leaving very early in the morning or late in the evening. We have a cousin who will drive through the night with the kids so they sleep. I cannot do that, but we always leave first thing with the hopes to be at our destination by nap time. If it is an eight or more hour drive, that way the first four hours the kids are awake in the car and we make a stop about every two hours. Then, the last part of the trip they nap, then when they wake up we are almost there.
For flights, we live in a place where there are very few direct flights so we always have to get on the early flight. We used to try and get on the earliest flight, but learned it was better to take a little bit later of a flight so the kids are not as grumpy from being up so early. Also, the only real DON’T and I repeat DON’T is a red eye flight with toddlers. Maybe a baby would be OK, but not any kid over 2 years old. We tried that thinking the kids would sleep and it completely backfired and they were up the whole flight, miserable the next day, and so were we.
Later, we will feature a longer post later on a full step by step for flying and traveling international with toddlers, but for now, this is just a quick tutorial. Please feel free to comment, message, or email me with any questions!
Safe Travels!
-Lindsey
