How to: Plane Travel with a Young Child

[This is an overdue post requested by a few fellow bloggers. Took me awhile to compile the info together. Thought i should finish this before our next travel arrangements. I am going to break this post down in three sections. This first part is mainly about "emotional preparation", the second part will be on "physical preperation" and last part is on "Mid-flight Temper Tantrums and Plane Travel-related Products"]

Traveling can be fun and exciting but what about traveling a little kid. Seriously, the thought of flying with a small child is quite nerve-racking an intimidating to some new and veteran parents. What if she throws a tantrum mid-flight? What if she doesn’t listen? What if we can’t console her? What if other people give us the look (you know what kind of look/stare parents get in public)? What if she is sick while we are 30,000 feet above ground level? Am I in my right mind/state to make this crazy decision to bring a small child on a 24-hour flight? And questions go on. Heck, I am an adult and I really have a hard time sitting in that confined space in an economy section. How can a child with so little attention span and patience sit through the whole thing?!?!?!? It does sound like a torture, doesn’t it?

 Good news – it is absolutely possible with advanced preparations - I promise you.

Back in the glorious days when packing for plane travel was just a breeze between me and my husband, our carry-ons and suitcases were far from being complicated.

Now that we are parents, packing has taken on a new level of complication and frustration. I literally freaked out over the packing process when we decided to bring a just-turned-2-year old on a 24-hour long haul flight (from USA to Thailand) in 2011. Ater months of extensive reading/research on the world wide web as how other parents prepared their children for long haul plane travel, we felt more at ease to embark the long journy. It sure was a flight of a lifetime. Now let me address that we had never traveled on a plane when our little one was a baby so I couldn’t pinpoint the difficulties but I feel that there are challenges and difficulties at each stage/age. Based on our expereinces, we traveled overseas when our daughter was two (in 2011) and recently this year when she turned three years old. We used the same carrier (Continental back then, now United and ANA), both times had two connecting flights with approximately 3 hours layover at Narita Airport, Japan)

When a wee one was two years old, it was more difficult and exhausting for us because her attention span was much shorter and she was not really interested in movies. Toys were our life-saver during that first trip and boy was I glad I packed enough!! It was an exhausting trip because we had to constantly find the way to keep her occupied for the most part of the flight on that first leg and she didn’t sleep much until we were on a latter flight from Japan to Thailand. I was ready to fall asleep before she did many times. One year later, her interest and attention span have gradually matured. We did’t have to use all the toys we bought at all. She was pretty much entertained herself with plently of in-flight entertainiment (movies). Although she didn’t sleep much on the 13 hour flight, we didn’t feel it was long simply because she was so good and spent most of her time watching movie and playing at the seat. We flew on United (Continental has officially merged with United recently).

A main challenge when traveling with a toddler must be “how to keep them entertained and avoid tantrums?”. If you are parents, you know tantrums are really scary. Personally, once it has started, it is NOT easy to stop. It is important to understand your child’s nature and read his/her clues before a nightmare begins. If he/she is an easy-going kid, can sleep wherever and whenever when he/she is tired, rarely throws a fit – heck you are one lucky mother!!!! Our little one is a super happy little girl in general but when she is tired or sleepy, boy oh boy she can be a complete opposite. How bad? Continue reading for our mid-flight meltdown. So we all know the keys to keep a child happy on the ground or up in the air (as long as he/she is not sick at the time of travel) has “a full belly”, “good rest” and “plenty of entertainment”. How can we implement the plan?

 

 

The very first and important step is to prepare your little one and introduce the idea of plane travel (what the plane looks like, where we are going, how he/she should behave, what he/she can expect in a kid friendly way). I found that an easiest method to do this is by using simple materials that your child can understand such as a DVD made for toddlers or a picture book. I like an interactive material in a form of a DVD because she will not only be able to see but hear what the plane sounds like.

 

 

Upon my reseach on finding kid’s traveling products, we ended up purchasing a few items that were and weren’t worth the money. One that fell in the “worth every penny” category was “The I'm A Good Little Traveler! DVD Toolkit Series: Shae by Air”. How brilliant that this mother of one shared and filmed a travel experience from her little girl’s perspective (her daughter was 3 at the time). I bought this DVD back in 2010 and the content is quite outdated (as far as the airport /security process) but it does an awesome job in delivering an idea of plane travel to young children. Some people complain that it is a very short DVD for the money but this is made for young children and you know little kids have such short attention span so this works perfectly. My daughter at the time was not even 2 yet was so excited and she wanted to watched this every day before the trip. When the big day finally arrived, she jumped with joy and excitement to be in that big airplane.

Another important thing to keep in mind, kids know and understand more than we can imagine and they like to know what to expect. Traveling is fun and exciting for kids but they can get frustrated as much as adults especially when they are in unfamiliar place. It is our job to assure them that everything will be okay and what to expect along the way (like getting in line and wait / putting her stuffed toy in a bin / walking through a security check and so on). I personally think children as young as 18 months start to understand a bit more and by using the right tools / words to show them the idea, they can get it.

Part II: The Checklist, The Stroller and more