Where Is My Parachute? (Or Flying With Young Toddlers)

My favorite ABC and 123 Learning Cooperative has a picnic on the topic of traveling with children. A lot of people wrote about car trips. We are lucky in this respect. Anna is a good car traveler. As long as the trip is under an hour, she is quite content to look outside, listen to CDs of children songs and stories and talk/play word games. As we are a little obsessive in the area of cleanliness, we have a family rule of not eating in the car and drinking only water. We bring snacks, but eat them during rest stops. It makes the trip longer, but in my mind part of the pleasure of destination is in the journey to get there.

We live in the Silicon Valley while my parents are on the East Coast, and my husband's family is in Germany. This makes flights unavoidable. A lot of my international friends are in the same boat, and when I talked to them about family visits, they shook their heads and said, Good luck! This is a sad reality of traveling with young children on long flights - a lot of things work... but each works only for about 10 minutes, at least in our case. Here are some lessons learned and things that worked well for a young toddler (our first flight was when Anna was 17 months, second one is at 20 months).

• Don't fly on red eye flights. Instead try to arrive to your destination late in day. When we flew to New Jersey, we decided to take a red eye thinking that we will just sleep through the flight and sleep some more while there (the flight arrives at 5 am). Well, Anna had other plans. She was extremely excited to be on a plane and also very tired and wired. She didn't cry, but she didn't sleep either. After 2 hours of requests for water, milk, more water, books, etc., I was exhausted. Finally she went asleep... for about 2 hours. When we arrived, she was excited again - to see her grandparents, their cat, the new house. Besides, it was morning. She absolutely refused to go to sleep, and there I was - at a wet playground at 7 am with a wild and unruly toddler trying to get her work off her energy and nod off. Good start of the vacation.


• Bring a lot of snacks and don't expect that your little angel will eat something that she hasn't tried before. Well, at least ours didn't. We brought the milk that doesn't require cooling (Horizon brand), and Anna was not amused with its taste and texture. She kept whining and asking for her milk. Unfortunately, airlines don't carry milk nowadays - only creamers. Ugh.


• Don't overwhelm your young toddler with novelty. Following the same line of thought, that I read in some other responses to the topic, we brought some new toys, books and coloring activities. But Anna was already really tired and overwhelmed with all other new things around her - the movement of an airplane, announcements from the cabin, smells, etc. She craved the comfort of something she knew. She was clinging to her blanket and her kitty for dear life the whole flight, and she wanted me to tell her familiar stories and sing her familiar songs.


• Bring Benadryl. I wouldn't use it on the crowd under one - they sleep just fine without it. And, yes, I know that drugging your children is bad. But... this is the only thing that gave us much needed break on the way back from Germany after 5 hours of trying to get Anna to nap with conventional means. Our friends recommended to try it once at home, because in about 10% of cases it actually makes kids even more wired. We were not one of those 10% - it worked well, just not for too long, 2 hours later Anna was back desperately wanting to leave that plane now.


• When everything fails, remember that this too shall pass. Our worst moment on the plane happened during our return flight from Florida when Anna was 17 months. We ran out of food, and a "fasten seat belts" light was on. She wanted out, I said "No". The worst tantrum ever ensued. She cried what felt like eternity. The watch showed that it was actually 10 minutes, then she grabbed her blanket, said, I am all done! and went to sleep for the remainder of the flight.


• Expect the worst and enjoy the rest. I have to admit - the experiences of international flight and time zone adjustments with a young toddler made me cancel our plans of yearly visits to Germany. I told my husband right after our flight last July that next year I am not going. After weighing pros and cons, we decided that we will wait with our next international flight until she is over 3 year old and better able to entertain herself. However, despite being cranky and sleep-deprived for most of the vacation, we did enjoy seeing our friends and family. Also, every time we travel, we see significant spurts in Anna's language and cognitive abilities. My husband says that it's because her brain is "rattled" by a new experience. That's why this year we plan to fly cross-country again to visit my family. I am confident that barring some unforeseen complications (such as illness or bad turbulence), this trip cannot possibly be worse than the ones we took when she was under two.