Tips For Traveling With Kids
Planning a trip with just you and perhaps your other half is bliss. You know what you want, you can go anywhere and you can even improvise on your journey. Many think traveling with kids is a nightmare or a complicated affair, but we are going to assure you that doesn’t have to the case. You can have just as much if not more fun with your children, it will just require a bit more thinking and planning.
In this article, we are going to provide you with the most useful nuggets of wisdom for traveling with your whole family. It can be done quite successfully and makes for the best kind of family album! It’s easier the more you do, and since your kids aren’t going anywhere, anytime soon, you better get used to it fast.
Do The Opposite Of Your Solo Travel
When you are alone, you can generally predict what’s going to happen, how long everything is going to take, and really stay close to the schedule you imagined. With kids, things change. Everything is going to be slower, from the most basic things such as getting into a taxi, moving through the airport, and even sitting in a cafe. Remember, there are more people now, so everything takes more time. Be patient and enjoy the extra moments you get to experience with your youngsters.
As in any journey, write down a schedule. Prepare to be late on absolutely every single thing, and if you manage to do it on time, think of it as a pleasant surprise. You don’t want to be late for your flight just because your toddler’s bottle at the airport security took too long. Jokes aside, it really does pay off to plan, as if you were all moving in slow motion. Because with a big family, that’s how it feels sometimes.
My friend from Egypt went on a trip to Vegas just before the pandemic hit. His wife and four children were pleasantly surprised by how much kid’s entertainment there was, in this city thought of as adults only. He told me: if you look for information online, you can find all the deals and options for your journey. He is usually very thorough with all his research, and he got most of the planning done on the local website Arabic-Vegas. It’s in Arabic, but there are tons of articles on the destination and travel in general, so it’s worth checking out.
Only Pack The Essentials
When you are going alone on a Paris trip, it’s no biggie packing an extra dress or a button-down shirt. But when you are joined by a few more persons, things can quickly get out of hand. Imagine your daughter packing all of her favorite clothes in a whole 20-kilo suitcase. That’s not a good idea, as you will probably have to carry both the baggage and your tired three-year-old.
You don’t need everything from home on your holiday. That’s kind of the point of traveling anyway, to get away from home and explore new things. It’s a good habit to pack everything your kid may need, but not for your long-distance trip. The difference from a road trip is that you are severely limited in how much stuff you can actually take with you, and you may not even have a vehicle if you are not renting at your destination.
Usually, whatever you missed when you packed your stuff, can be bought in the arrival country, if you really need it. Children will be so excited and stressed about the journey at the same time, they won’t have a single worry about their home items. Just be there for them and make sure they are as comfortable as they can be. That’s about it.
Get Everyone On Board
This is very pun intended. Make sure everybody actually makes it on your cruise ship or an airplane. The Home Alone story only looks fun on a TV screen. But what we really wanted to discuss is how you should explain and help everyone understand what’s going on. People need certainty in their lives, and children more so than adults.
If you make everything clear to your kid, you are actually killing two birds with one stone. The first is that you will not have to deal with the constant questions that may arise in their heads and actually take care of what’s going at the moment without interruption. Second, they will be much more relaxed and appreciative of what’s happening. They will not stress as much about the routine things such as the visa checks on your arrival, because they will know about it prior to it actually happening.
Thinking about how to entertain your young ones once they do get on the plane? Let them try out Duolingo, a gamified platform for learning languages. They might pick up a few useful words here and there and actually lend you a hand in enjoying the local activities.
