BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Cooking For Kids Kids and the Holidays--Travel Tips?

Hello!

A friend of mine always has a special "bag of toys" that is only used when she travels with her kids. She udpates it for each trip.

I think she called it the "bag of distractions so Mom doesn't go crazy during the three hour layover!"

It does seem to work well, and I was wondering what other tips are helpful while traveling with kids during the holidays?

I always found food helpful. I would pack lots of water, gum, cereal, etc. I found most of the time they got cranky because they were either hungry or tired. I couldn't always get them to sleep when I wanted, but eating was a lot easier.

I have only travelled with a tiny one-15 months. She was so wiped out by our seventeen hour journey that she just stayed curled up on my chest, in a mei tai carrier on our layover of four hours. We found a nice safe seat in the passenger lounge and took a nap together.

My biggest piece of advice would be to let them have a run around on layovers so that they burn off some energy and so are more likely to rest on the journey.

Thanks so much for responding! Those are great tips!

I was just talking to an old friend, and this topic came up.

She said on one particular stressful trip, she found one tip seemed to help more than anything else--bribery!

She told both of her kids that if they could get along and be quiet for the last leg of the trip, they'd stop for ice cream at Baskin Robbins on the way home. She was at the end of her rope, and the words just came out of her mouth.

However, there was instant peace in the car, that was sitting in the middle of a highway traffic jam!

For long road trips, I always made up a "goodie bag" for my kids. They weren't allowed to open the bag until halfway through the trip. The bag might have a couple of toys from the dollar store, candy, snacks, puzzle books etc; They were very well behaved for the first part of the trip since they wanted to open their bags and the second half they were busy with their goodies.
I did the same for the return trip.

The goodie bags and food are great suggestions, I've used them successfully myself. I have one more suggestion to add to the bag of tricks...Audio Books.

If you're all in the car together, listen to an audio book everyone is interested in on the CD player and make predictions and summarize between chapters or CDs. If traveling by plane, downloadable mp3 audio books could work wonders to keep older kids (or Mom!) occupied, interested and eliminate the worst thing...boredom!

eMediaXpress.com will have Christmas audio books with special discount pricing starting December 15th that would be perfect to set the holiday mood.

I hope you don't mind, I have an article on car games for kids. Maybe some of these would help. Here is the link.

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Hi Sue!

Your article was perfect! Thank you so much for adding it, and for anyone who is traveling for the holidays, it's a must read!

I bet those tips would come in handy during long carpool drives as well!

Thank you again!!