Mileage Plus Kids
Jun 03 '00 (Updated Aug 15 '00)
Our two children have always liked to travel with us. And FLYING is their preferred mode of transportation. When our daughter was 18 months old and our son was five, my husbands job took us to Sao Paulo, Brazil for a three year stint. And in those three years our children experienced first hand long air travel time (to Chicago it was 11 hours plus) and spent a LOT of TIME in an airport (for International travel you must arrive at the airport two hours before your flight). Here are just a few of the things we used to pack to help make the flight (and airport time) easier .....
We were lucky in the fact that the flights we would take back to the United States would be overnight flights. But don't be fooled ..... the kids didn't spend the whole flight sleeping!! (Okay! Our son pretty much did but NOT his sister!) Being that they were overnight flights the FIRST thing that I would pack would be their blankets. And these would be put into their own backpacks. (At the beginning our daughters backpack doubled as a diaper bag. I just found that carrying it as a backpack was much easier. It gave me more hands to push the stroller, grab the car seat, tackle my own carry on bag. You get the picture!!)
Inside the backpack ...
An extra set of clothes and underwear. (When our daughter was smaller I would pack a couple of extra sets of clothes.)
A bottle of Triaminic Cold Medicine (About an hour before the flight I would give each one of them their recommended dose to help them during the flight with air pressure.)
A bottle of Tylenol (One must always be prepared for anything!)
Bottled Water (I tried not to take fruit juice boxes, etc. because somehow they would always seem to end up on me. And my kids love water! You want your children to drink plenty of water because it is very dry in the airplane. And yes! This DOES get heavy!)
Snacks (A VERY important one! Airline food is getting better but not that good. Especially to a child! I would take things like granola bars, pop-tarts, crackers, gummy-treats, dry cereal, gum, suckers, etc. I would also try to make it a "special" snack that they didn't get all of the time.)
TOYS!!! Our son was easy .... A pad of drawing paper and a pen, his Gameboy, a couple of metal airplane toys and a few books. The other day I just ran across a piece of paper he had written on the airplane once talking about how long the flight was going to be, what time is was now, where we were flying over, how is sister was doing, etc... It was so sweet to run across this piece of paper a few years later! It will be going into our scrapbook, that's for sure! :)
Our daughter ... I must confess that this got easier each time we traveled because she was every bit older. Her FAVORITE toys of all (all during these three years) would be her Winnie The Pooh plastic characters. They were about one inch tall, and she had them ALL. She would pull down the table tray in front of her and line them all up and talk with them for hours. Literally! We also never left home without paper and crayons and new books that she had never seen before. When she was a bit older we would bring along some Barbie Dolls and Kelly Dolls. And .... don't rule out the headsets! She LOVED to sit there with her headset on listening to music OR watching a movie. On one flight the movie's were NOT working correctly (NOT a good thing on a 11 hour plus flight I mind you!!) and one of the flight attendants brought her a portable video player from First Class so that she could watch A Bugs Life. (Obviously this flight attendant has children!!) And the last year I bought her a cheap tape cassette player and some books with the matching cassettes so that she could listen to her own stories.
After I post this I'm sure that I will think of MANY other things that we brought or did. Just remember (and this is sometimes easier said than done - I KNOW!!) RELAX ... and try to ENJOY the flight! We are lucky to be able to take our kids on these fun adventures! (And to them, it IS an adventure!!!)
Note: During Takeoff and Landings ..... (I did these things in addition to the Tiraminic noted above.)
For infants and toddlers .... they should be taking a bottle (or drinking out of a sippie cup!) or sucking on a pacifier. This will help their ears during these times when the air pressure in the airplane is at it's worst.
For older children ... my kids either pop a piece of gum in their mouth, have a bottle of water nearby, or .. just yawn, yawn, yawn!!
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