Travel with Toddlers
As promised, I wanted to share my flight experience with our kids. I can hopefully provide a few pointers for anyone that has plans to travel with toddlers in the near future.
As an aside, we are officially moved into the house in Texas! I still can’t believe it. After months of planning it’s wild that we are finally here and settling in. The boys have adjusted so well to the new house. I think our four year old is mainly excited to see toys that he hasn’t seen in a few months.
If you have been following along, you know my husband drove down to Texas with our golden retriever Murphy for the move and I flew with our 2 kids and my mom. The flight from Detroit to Dallas is about 3 hours. Our 4 year old does great on the plane – we bought him some headphones on Amazon and he’s perfectly content to have a few snacks and watch a movie or two. These particular headphones have held up great for us. They fit his small ears nicely and he never complains of them being uncomfortable.
I know not all airlines provide seatback entertainment – we usually fly Delta and most of their flights provide it. I would recommend downloading a movie or show to your phone or tablet if your flight won’t have the screens available to you!
Our 18 month old was truly the wild card for this whole flight. I spent a few hours reading other blog posts, trying to get ideas of things to do to keep him busy or entertained and prevent screaming for the 3 hours. I did find a couple things on Amazon for him – I figured I would share my experience with a couple of the items I bought for him.
Items to Consider
Hands down, the best purchase I made was these animal gel clings. They were essentially stickers on a large plastic sheet that would stick to the windows, seatback and tray table. They were the work horse of our flight. He loved putting them up and taking them down. My only thought / recommendation with these would be to cut the large sheet they come on into smaller more manageable sheets prior to a flight. It would have been easier to hold onto and let him see just a few at a time.
I also purchased another similar set of reusable stickers. This was a cute set that came with a board that stickers could be placed on. The set seemed to be better for my 4 year old. A lot of the stickers were really small and my youngest had a hard time peeling them off the plastic sheet. These didn’t get as much use for us.
Finally, the thing that I was most excited about – kind of ended up being the most disappointing. I ordered this Montessori busy board. In theory, it was going to be awesome – a little folder that was full of zippers, buckles, various velcro patches – I thought for sure it would keep him busy just as the name implies! However, Noah lost interest in this about as soon as I pulled it out to show it to him. And even my 4 year old didn’t really care about this. I think the sweet spot age for something like this is maybe 2-3? Not for my 18 month old.
Travel with Toddlers Checklist
- Animal Gel Clings
- Headphones for older kids with use of tablet, phone or seatback screen on flight
- Snacks – we survived on some fruit, goldfish crackers and cookies from the flight attendant – I probably could have had a few more snacks ready to hand out.
- Books! My kids love flipping through board books – I wish I had more on our flight.
- Another thing to consider, not something to pack, is the timing of your travel with naps. If flight times allow, really try to schedule your travel plans around kids’ sleep schedule. I knew my son would be too busy to sleep on the plane. We flew early morning and made it to Texas before his nap. He ended up just sleeping on our drive home from the airport. But I know if we tried to fly during nap time we would have had a very cranky toddler!
Let me know below if you have any other helpful travel with toddler tips! I’m sure we will be doing it again soon so I am all ears for your suggestions.
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