Thursday, December 10, 2009

Flying with Young Children

We will soon depart on our first flight with two little ones. Let's hope we aren't over confident. Despite the fact that our first born can, at times, be quite a handful, she has always been an excellent traveler. I can't remember ever having difficulty with her on the plane. She never had the screaming fits because of ear pain, she is generally well behaved, and she mostly stays in her seat. I attribute part of that to the fact that she started traveling at a very young age (her first trip out of the country was at age 7 months) and it is old hat for her.

We'll see how well we do with two!

One of my best parenting tricks for things like travel and eating out is to talk about it A LOT beforehand. Explain what will happen, what to expect, what kind of behavior you expect from them, what the reward is for that behavior(!), how long you will be doing this activity, etc.

I like this recent blog post about things to do in airports with kids, and how to get through security easier with kids.

Now, navigating the security line with kids is something I haven't quite mastered yet, so I'll take all the advice I can get there! I'm quite adept (Humbly, I'd say I'm black belt level) at getting through security as a business traveler. Man, I can whip off my shoes and have the laptop out in nothing flat. But boy, I can't seem to get the shoes off my toddler, make her put down her toy and calmly waltz through the metal detector without significant coaxing and bribing. There are some tips on getting through security with kids in this blog post, but I suppose I was looking for more of a magic bullet - these seem kind of obvious.

Any of you have good travel tips? I'll take any old travel tips - tips for traveling with kids or just plain old tips.

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