10 tips for tackling toddler travel

We don’t travel often now that our family has expanded. We haven’t taken a true family vacation since Q’s arrival. With his second birthday fast approaching (yikes, a month exactly from today), we also wanted to take advantage of one trip while he is still free to fly in our laps.

This was a great plan in theory, but as our recent trip to Denver approached, we became a bit concerned. Q is in full-on toddler mode, with seemingly limitless energy and little to no interest in sitting in one place for 10 minutes. Four hours at a clip in a plane sounded like a disaster. What were we going to do to keep him entertained for that long?

I called in the “experts” – AKA my fellow mom friends from Facebook. As anticipated, they had all some great tips that helped make our trip out and back as smooth as possible. Did it go perfectly? No way. We didn’t expect that would be a possibility. We did however manage to keep him pretty occupied for around 88% of the time. And that I call a win!

Here are some of the suggestions we used along with some others.

1. Do not pre-board when the airline allows. Send one parent ahead to take on all the things and bring your child on at the very last minute possible. We did this and it was very helpful!
2. Apologize to your seat neighbors. This went a long way for us. We naturally met a number of folks in the wait at the gate and Q charmed his way with several of them. A lady a row behind us on our return flight even made faces at him periodically which got us extra giggles from him to keep him entertained.
3. Bring at least a few new items for them to play with on the plane. The novelty will buy you extra time of entertainment that older, familiar items may not.
4. Invest in some volume-limiting headphones. We bought this pair on Amazon. We didn’t end up using them a ton as he’s still more into the visual than really following a story, but these are a great pair to stash. They’re nice and cushioned on their ears and I like that it doesn’t allow the volume to go beyond a certain threshold.
5. Limit bulky items in your luggage. Instead of packing diapers and extra wipes, we bought them at our destination, getting just enough to get us through our trip.
6. Take at least one interactive toy. Lots of my friends recommended this buckle toy from Amazon, which he loved. We’ve been carrying around in the diaper bag ever since. I also bought a set of Colorforms, which he’s since become obsessed with.
7. Keep them active at the gate/terminal before boarding. This was one we definitely did on the way back. We walked at least 10 loops of the moving walkway around our gate. Q was entertained, we wasted some time and he expended some energy!
8. Bring a few favorite yet small books. This was tricky, as his favorite books aren’t super portable. I managed to squeeze in three that would work in his bag and we used them all.
9. Download video entertainment in advance. We are definitely in favor of limiting screentime. We do however allow our son to watch some educational animal programming since he’s obsessed at the moment. Netflix’s new download option is my hero as we could download options and change them with no added cost for each leg of the trip. Genius!
10. Consider splurging on economy plus. We didn’t do this as we’d already purchased our tickets before someone mentioned this to us.

I have to say, I’m really glad we did it. It was such a fun trip (more to come on that) and the flights were such a small price to pay to get us there and back.

Any additional things that have worked for you with your little one(s)? Drop them in the comments!