Travelling with children is something of a herculean effort, whichever way you slice it. Even with the most well-behaved offspring on planet Earth, you’re looking at a veritable gauntlet of travel problem-solving, wherein you juggle the administration of your movement and the entertainment of your little ones.
Of course, we travel with our kids for extremely good reason; the holidays we enjoy on the other side of a horrific plane journey or drive will form lifelong memories – or, if we’re visiting family with the whole family in tow, we’re facilitating bonds that will never really break. Still, it’d be great if we could make the travel bit a tiny bit easier. Which is exactly what the following tips will aim to do!
Pack Smart: Essentials for Comfort and Convenience
The vast majority of your trip-easing efforts will centre around your packing efforts. We’ll be touching on a few different ways to approach packing here, but let’s first start with the essential discipline: packing smart. Not only do you need to ensure you pack a core few things, but you also need to ensure that you take care with how much you’re bringing.
You know that you’ll need to bring some comfort and convenience items for your children, particularly if they’re on the younger side. Teddy bears, comfort blankets and additional pillows can make all the difference to the comfort of your kids – but packing them needs to come at the expense of something, else you’ll be struggling with bags. Your kids will need spare clothes, but those third and fourth pairs of underwear you’ve packed for yourself ‘just in case’? Get rid.
Keep Them Entertained with Tech
Freeing up that space will also be an indispensable activity for the meat of your travel preparations: tech. Not all kids are ‘iPad kids’, but all kids will at some point be happily engaged by a screen in front of them – whether playing a simple game on your phone or watching Disney+ for hours on end.
To this end, you should bring a sacrificial tablet of some sort to occupy your children, so you can hang on to your own phone for travel admin. Don’t forget to bring some headphones for them too, so they don’t disturb you or any other travellers during the trip.
Plan for Downtime and Rest
While travelling can be an exciting activity and engaging enough by itself to inspire a little adrenaline in your kids, travelling can otherwise be exhausting for them. As such, it’s hugely important that you schedule in a little time for rest and relaxation. You’re already bringing some comfortable items that encourage rest, like soft blankets and pillows, but you could go a step further by pre-downloading some calming music or audiobooks for them to wind down to. With three stages of travel covered, you should be able to focus or relax yourself for at least five minutes on your next journey!
Traveling with children can be challenging, but with careful pre-planning, you can significantly reduce stress that will make the journey smoother and more enjoyable for the whole family.
