Traveling, although usually a great experience that leads to having wonderful memories, can also be a very stressful and challenging time. Bringing along your children, especially young ones, only makes it that much more complicated and stressful. Navigating an airport is difficult enough by yourself; let alone while having screaming children, children wondering in the wrong direction, and more luggage then hands. Do not even think about the audience of onlookers that are starting to stare. Traveling with children is most certainly worth the challenges; you make life long family memories as well as teach your children valuable experiences as they come to learn and appreciate other people, places, and cultures. Here are some tips to help you through the difficulties.
Distractions:
When you’re traveling with young children keeping them entertained is critical, especially if you are on some sort of public transportation like an airplane. Make sure all electronic devices you are bringing are fully charged and keep in mind you very well may not have internet connection everyplace you are while traveling. You may want to think about downloading some shows or movies ahead of time instead of relying on your’ device to stream them. You can also make sure they have plenty of games (there even more education geared games available) downloaded so they have options to bounce back and forth from so they do not lose interest.
Bringing a couple of their favorite toys is a no brainer. You may also want to bring a new toy they have not seen before the trip. Having a new toy to look over and figure out, may do just the trick in keeping them focused on something besides how long they have been strapped to their seat.
Tasks:
As children get older they seem to catch on to when adults are just trying to distract them. Giving older kids a purpose or a task to do can focus their attention and actually make them excited to be sitting there. Giving them a camera to photograph their trip can be a good idea depending on the child’s personality. You can also give them certain topics or challenges to photograph to keep them thinking.
Giving each of your children a ‘Trip Journal’ is a great task and with an educational and memory benefit. Along with writing about what they did each day they can also color a picture of each day or their favorite experience. You can also equip the journal with different puzzles, mazes, and questions to keep them on task and their brain working.
Traveling with children can be difficult. You will undoubtedly be hearing a lot of, “Are we there yet.” The more entertained your children are the more bearable traveling will be. No one knows what will interest your children better then you. How ever many activities and toys you think you need to bring to occupy there time, it is safe to say you should bring more.