Best Travel Tips for Traveling with kids or toddlers
21:40
Travelling with children can be a
bit like taking a herd of wild goats on holiday. Whether they’re your own or
someone else’s, factoring a child’s needs into your travels involves a lot more
than sticking on a CD full of pop music and making toilet stops.
Here two Rough Guides writers
share their hard-won wisdom. First up, mum of two Hayley Spurway offers advice
on travelling with toddlers, then Ross McGovern reveals how he manages to
travel with older children.
Best
Travel Tips for Traveling with kids or toddlers
Give
them a camera
Giving toddlers their own
(robust, child-friendly) camera encourages them to observe their surroundings
and focus on what interests them. You might be surprised at the results from
their knee-high view. Amongst pictures of feet and wheels, my three-year-old has
shot flowers, animals, helicopters, boats, rocks and rabbit poo.
Take
your time
The greatest thing you can take –
whether at the airport, sightseeing or getting from A to B – is extra time.
Toddlers love to explore and don’t care for the time pressures of travel, so
you’re more likely to all retain your cool if you factor the faffing, gawping,
stalling, toilet stops and tantrums into your timeframe.
Book
ahead
Whether you’re camping or staying
in hotels, it pays to book ahead. Trying to retain the spontaneity of travel BC
(Before Children) doesn’t pay off if you arrive at your destination to find you
can’t bag a bed or pitch and have to hit the road again with tired, hungry
toddlers melting down in the backseat.
Be
prepared for the climate
It’s simple advice, but children
dressed comfortably for the weather and terrain will be happier in a new
environment. With all the gear available, there’s no excuse for dressing
toddlers in ski-suits four sizes too big, forgetting their gloves, or leaving
them barefoot on a beach where sea urchins lurk.
Don’t
forget the medicine
Whether they’re out of routine,
jet-lagged, or eating less healthily, kids always seem to get ill on holiday.
Dampen the impact of broken nights, frayed temperaments and fevers by packing
an easy-to-swallow medicine such as Calpol in the UK. Other basic ingredients
in your first aid kit should include antiseptic wipes, plasters, sting
treatment, and a thermometer.
Pack
Pull-Ups for potty training
Planes and public transport
during the potty training days can be a nightmare. As if you didn’t have enough
in your hand luggage, now you’re expected to add a potty, three changes of
clothes and bags of wet, stinky pants. Potty-training gurus may disagree, but
if toddlers are still having lots of little accidents then I’m all for putting
them back into Pull-Ups on the plane.
Use
public transport
Most toddlers love the novelty of
travelling by train, bus and boat, so ditch the hire car and use public
transport where possible. In Switzerland, my two-year-old would repeat the
names of the metro stops as they were announced – provoking ripples of laughter
and making him even more excited about boarding the train each day.
Invest
in a child locator
In my experience, toddlers aren’t
fans of reins, backpacks with a leash, or any infringement on their freedom.
Keep tabs on them at airports, train stations and crowded attractions with a
child locator. The child wears a small unit (strapped to a belt or shoe) and
you keep the transmitter. If you lose your child set off the alarm and follow
the sound to find them.
Keep
bugs at bay
Whether you’re travelling to
Paignton or Peru, antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer are handbag
essentials. A wipe of the cutlery in restaurants where you’re unsure of
hygiene, or a squirt of hand sanitizer when there’s no washing facilities, can
zap a few germs and prevent toddlers catching some common bugs.
Be
app-y
Thanks to toddler-friendly apps,
there’s no need to cram a toy box into your hand luggage when travelling by
plane. By all means take a book and a magic scribbler (crayons just get lost
down the side of seats), but the most compact form of entertainment is a device
loaded with apps and games.
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