Air travel with young kids isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a stressful experience for everyone involved – the parents, the kids, the strangers traveling with you. I generally try to avoid stressful situations, but sometimes you can’t avoid air travel with young kids.
My situation involves unavoidable air travel with young kids. I grew up more than 1,000 miles away from where I currently live, and my parents still live in my childhood home. That means that if I want to go “home” and take my kids, I’m schlepping them on an airplane. Of course, I want to see my parents, so air travel happens.
From my trips home with my kids, first with one kid and then with two kids, I have learned some things that make air travel with young kids go as smoothly as possible. Hopefully my tips can help you if you’re faced with an airplane trip with your kids. The first five are in this post. The next five will be coming next week. The good news is that a flight is a finite period of time and you can get through it!
First Five Tips for Air Travel with Young Kids
1. Manage your expectations
Air travel with young kids won’t be perfect. Please don’t expect it to be! Think about your normal day-to-day life. Do things often go perfectly when your kids are involved? Probably not. Don’t expect more when you take them out of their daily routine, put them on an unusual mode of transportation, and make them stay seated in a cramped space for a much longer period of time than they are used to. Life with kids is all about being perfectly imperfect. Embrace it, especially when you’re traveling.
2. Have a change of clothes for everyone
If you’ve been doing this whole parenting thing for longer than a minute, you’ve probably learned that you need to bring a change of clothes for your kids basically everywhere you go. They spill food and drink, they play in dirt and water, and they occasionally have an accident (or a blowout) that necessitates an outfit change. When you’re traveling in an airplane with young kids, however, you need to bring these normal kid outfits plus a change of clothes for yourself and your partner if he or she is traveling with you.
You never know what is going to happen on an airplane. They’re out of their normal schedule and surroundings, they’re feeling weird things in their ears, and it can get bumpy. This scenario can lead to strange happenings.
On my son’s return flight of his first ever plane trip, we learned this lesson. He was congested and had dozed off on the flight. About halfway into the flight, we started experiencing some pretty rough air. Post-nasal drip plus turbulence turned out to not be a pretty combination and he got sick. All over himself, his carseat, and his parents. Because of the turbulence, the flight attendants could not come to help us, nor could we head to the bathroom. I was so glad I shoved an extra shirt for my husband and myself in the carry-on. From then on, we do not set foot on an airplane without extra clothes for everyone. Even when I’m traveling solo for work, it is now engrained in me to have an extra outfit handy in case of emergency.
3. SNACKS!
If you take nothing else away from these tips, take this – it is absolutely crucial to have a ton of snacks when attempting air travel with young kids. When you pack your snacks and think you have enough, double them. This cannot be overstated. Snacks will be your best friend when flying with kids.
You can focus on having plenty of activities available to keep your kids busy on a flight, but remember that snacks are often your kids’ favorite airplane activity. That’s 100% true for my daughter. She moves from snack to snack on a flight and stays relatively happy.
Don’t worry about making sure they’re only eating the healthiest things on air travel days. A well-timed lollipop can be the difference between a good day and a disaster.
4. Tablet
Following close behind snacks, potentially the second most important of my tips is to have a tablet for kids 2 and older. Even if you think tablets are the devil, they are necessary for air travel with young kids.
We are not a tablet family. We do not use the tablets at home, the kids don’t often watch videos on our phones or iPads, and their TV time is pretty limited. All this goes out the window when we are traveling. My son can use his tablet basically the whole travel day. I don’t limit it at all. If he wants to watch Elmo or Paw Patrol for the entire duration of the flight, that’s a-ok with me. As long as he keeps his headphones on and isn’t forcing Elmo on anyone else, he’s free to OD on Elmo. This usually works like a charm. I don’t know if it’s the screen stimulation or the novelty, but I am always so thankful for the tablet on travel days.
5. Separate seat for kids under 2
One “perk” of air travel with young kids is that you are not required to buy a seat for children under 2 years of age. These kids are considered to be lap infants and can fly for free as long as they remain in your lap for the entire duration of the flight.
Do not fall for this. Flying with a lap infant is a quick way to ensure you’re going to have a hard flight. If you’ve met a toddler, you know that they will not be amenable to staying seated on your lap for however long your flight happens to be. If you’ve met a touched-out parent (or have been one yourself), you know that you will not want to wrestle a child to remain on your lap for the entire duration of your flight. Please save yourself and your child a lot of heartache and buy your kid under 2 years old a seat of his own.
If you go this route, you’ll need to bring your child’s carseat onboard. That can seem like a lot to lug on an airplane, and it is. But in return you get a sliver of personal space and your kid can comfortably recline in a place that he’s used to sitting. Get yourself a carseat backpack (or borrow one) and buy every member of your family his or her own seat on the airplane.
Stay tuned – next week I’ve got 5 more tips coming your way to make air travel with young kids bearable!