Tips for Traveling with Toddlers

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or doing it for the first time, traveling with kids is intimidating. A lot of things are out of your control and you never know how it’s going to turn out, but you can still make sure set yourself up for success! Here are a few tips/tricks/products that worked well for us on a recent trip. For reference, I have an almost 2.5 year old and we had a 4 hour flight followed by a short layover and then another 1 hour flight.

 Without further ado, here you go:

• Board early - I have done extensive research on traveling with toddlers (I’m a nervous nelly, what can I say) and I found that most people recommend boarding as late as possible, but I’m going to say the opposite. I find boarding early gives my daughter sufficient time to stand on her seat/play with the window shades and put the tray up and down a dozen time before there is anyone else around for her to annoy.

• Pack a special backpack - We bought our daughter a special backpack before our trip and stuffed it full of surprises (and doubles as a busy bag when we go out). Months after our trip she still gets excited and asks for “her backpack” when we bring it to restaurants and on road trips. Speaking of backpack, here are some of the items we packed:

  • Stickers: My daughter is obsessed with stickers and can play with them for hours (seriously, no exaggeration). We picked a few of her favorite characters and ordered some stickers ahead of time as a surprise and also let her pick a few out at the local sticker store. If you live in LA, and you haven’t already been, hightail it to Sticker Planet in the Farmers Market. Here are some of the stickers we brought:

  • Peaceable Kingdom Sticker Fun! At the Airport. These are great because they are reusable. My pro tip on this is always put the stickers back when you're done so they feel new every time you open them.

  • Melissa & Doug Puffy Stickers. We have pretty much all of these and are a go to toy at restaurants/home/the car/etc.

  • Quiet Book: Last year my daughter was obsessed with a buckle toy, and this is sort of the toddler version of it.

  • Race Cars and tape: I brought two little race cars (our favorites are from Candy Lab) and tape to make a road on the tray. I originally bought this  Melissa & Doug Tape Activity Book but she accidentally found it before we left so i just grabbed some of the extra tape.

  • Melissa & Doug On-The-Go Felt Craft Activity Set: This was the unexpected hit of the trip. We made it about 75% of the way through the set and finished the rest while we were on vacation.

  • Magic Ink Activity Books: My daughter doesn't actually color in these, but for some reason she likes to watch me do it. Maybe it's like the toddler version of stress relief or something. I bought a Frozen book and Finding Dory book.

  • Crayons and a mini notebook: I stopped by the dollar section target and picked up a banana pencil case, a pack of crayons and a mini notebook to throw in.

  • Books: Books take up a lot of room so I try to bring a few that I know my daughter will love. The Usborne "lift-the-flap" question and answer books are very popular at our house. They are feature a certain topic (nature the body, etc.) and each page has a dozen or so questions with flaps that contain the answer. It's interactive, takes a long time to go through and  honestly I've learned a lot of random facts about nature from reading them. I also threw a couple Little Golden Books in from the library because they are so thin and take up basically no room.

* One more note about the backpack, my daughter can’t really carry one for very long so the heavier/larger items were in my backpack.

• Bring Snacks (and lollipops) - just pack all of them. I don’t know how it’s possible, but toddlers have an amazing ability to snack for hours and hours (and hours and hours). We used these Stasher bags for all of our snacks. We also swear by the these special lollipops for takeoff and landing. They have no added sugar so I don’t feel terrible giving her a handful of them. For younger babies, it’s easier to give them a bottle but since my daughter is past that stage the lollipops work well although I’m sure any snack would work.

• Bring a tablet – just do it. Even if you have strict screen time rules at home, do yourself a favor and bring an iPad/tablet/whatever. Maybe you won’t even need/want to use it but at least you have it as a backup in case you have a delay or run out of other activities. I loaded my old iPad up with a few movies but Christianne highly recommends the Amazon tablet. However, here is one caveat to that. When my daughter was 18 months old I packed an iPad, and loaded it up with Moana. My daughter had never watched any TV or movies so she watched for about 10 minutes and then was over it. If your kid has literally never seen anything, then you might want to skip and save the space in your bag. Here are the headphones that we used that a friend recommended. They worked well, feel like they are high quality and have nice features like volume-limiting and bluetooth (aka they were expensive and I am justifying my purchase by telling myself we'll use them for a long time).

• Forget the rules - You always hear people say all rules are off when traveling and I can say once my daughter turned two I fully embraced this. On the way to vacation we played with toys/books/stickers for about 75% of the trip before pulling out the iPad. Then on the way back we let her watch three movies in a row. I felt kinda of gross doing this, but I also read an entire book. An entire book! Uninterrupted! My daughter was happy and I felt like I was still on vacation so it was a win for everyone.

And of course, if sh*t hits the fan, just remember, you will never see these people again so if it’s awful, who cares. You’ll survive, promise!

- Callie & Christianne

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