AMA: How To Travel With Small Children and Not Hate Life

In this week's Ask Me Anything, I answer a reader's question with some expert advice and a little insight of my own.

If you are a parent, or know someone who is a parent, you have likely heard the phrase, “You don’t go on vacation with your children; you go on a trip.” Vacations are trips without children. Or at least children of a certain age.

Once you become a parent, “Vacation” is waking up to an empty house on a Saturday morning to find your partner has taken your toddler somewhere, and sitting alone at your dining room table to drink coffee in silence. “Vacation” is when your mother takes the monitor so you can sleep in. “Vacation” is doing whatever the hell you want whenever you want, which is some version of life without children.

It’s not that family trips aren’t also fun. They can be the best. But they are not vacations. And while I love traveling with my young daughter—she’s quite good at it, and is *usually* genuinely fun to be with, too—it still requires parenting at military-grade levels.

The first time we took her on an airplane (cross-country at that), it was 2021 and she was five months old. In preparation, I reached out to my friend and writer, Nadine Jolie Courtney, expert traveler, writer, and mom. Ever since her first daughter was born, Nadine hasn’t let children slow her travel game, international and all. She directed me to this article in Vogue that she wrote, which is a trove of useful information (and validation that no, you’re not crazy for doing this!).

I think the answer to my reader’s question, like everything in life, is ultimately all about expectation—well, and a crap ton of forethought—but first let’s touch on some tangible prep tips that will hopefully make your next kid-friendly vacation a little less stressful.

PACK DISTRACTIONS

Because our daughter was born in 2020, and her first flight was sometime mid-pandemic, she’d never in her short life seen that many people in one place. No concerts, no malls, not even a grocery store had been a part of her world until that day. To say she was gobsmacked would be an understatement, and this worked in our favor.

She was so consumed with people-watching for much of our trip, darting her eyes around, craning her neck to get a good look at all these people, that it was essentially it’s own form of entertainment. And if you’re a parent, you already know that distraction is key to a young child’s happiness.

Nadine suggests packing all things Shiny and New:

While an iPad is a godsend for children as young as one year, they’re all but useless for infants—though great for you when your baby inevitably falls asleep in a weird position that means absolutely . . . no . . . moving. Babies can be distracted by shockingly pedestrian items: keys, tissues, even tape.”

When I put out a call for tips on my Instagram, several seconded this with advice to pack new activity books, sticker books, and toys like these, which are great for babies. But to Nadine’s point, when we moved back east from California, our daughter was nine months old, and we mostly entertained her with water bottles, car keys, busy toys, crinkle books, and looking out the window. If you can clip it to a paci clip, do it. Oh, and snacks. Pack lots of new, fun snacks. (By the time we landed in North Carolina, our daughter was 90% Mum-Mums.)

For practical purposes, another friend suggests bringing a travel pack of Clorox wipes and plastic grocery bags (you never know what you’re going to need to throw in there). We keep these things in our diaper bag for easy access all the time.

ABOUT THAT IPAD…DOWNLOAD SHOWS & MOVIES IN ADVANCE + DON’T FORGET HEADPHONES

The older they get, the more flexibility you may have in the way of entertainment. They can draw or color independently, hold their attention longer if you choose to read them books, and happily watch a show. We are highly limited screen-time family, but travel is an exception.

Once my daughter was a few months past two, we introduced a tablet for long road trips. Until then, I’d been her sole entertainer in the backseat for the 4–6 hours trip, and by the time we reached our destination, I not only had a horrible pain in my neck from looking left the whole time, I was also completely spent from being her one-man show. I just couldn’t do it anymore.

HOT TIP: Download a wealth of kid-friendly content beforehand so you don’t have to rely on WiFi. This may sound obvious, but in the flurry of packing and prepping, it’s remarkable what “obvious” things slip our minds. We also rely on in-flight entertainment, since this is such a novelty for our daughter (and unfortunately how she discovered her new obsessions: Paw Patrol). Just remember to pack headphones! We use these, which are affordable because kids, useful for their Bluetooth capability, and also come with a cable in case the wireless feature gets funky.

BOOK TRIPS AROUND THEIR NAP TIME

This, of course, only applies to kids of a certain age. Now that my daughter is nearly three, she’s coasting out of her daily naps, but on every trip prior, this advice from Nadine’s article was a Godsend.

“Whether your flight is a long haul or a quick jaunt, schedule it during your child’s nap time. If you’re taking a red-eye, pick a departure time that coincides with bedtime. When your baby’s sleep schedule isn’t disrupted, it’ll be a more pleasant experience for everybody.”

My daughter has never been a “fall asleep wherever” kind of kid. While she showed some flexibility due to being in daycare, she mostly slept in a pitch-black room, cozied up in a sleep sack, with the sound machine on, after a predictable routine of feeding or nursing, reading, and cuddling. I had low expectations for her napping on a brightly lit airplane with a cacophony of people and sounds.

But she almost always did. We timed our flights so that, delays aside, we’d be careening down an asphalt runway while she was either taking her bottle, nursing, or having just finished. Then we’d shush and bounce her for what felt like years, wiping the sweat from our brows, and eventually, she’d fall asleep with her chubby cheek on my chest.

Keep a portable sound machine on your person/within easy reach if your child sleeps with one at home. We found that this elicited a kind of Pavolv’s Dog response: As soon as she heard the white noise, it signaled to her that it was time to wind down and fall asleep.

Then we were faced with two obstacles:

1.) How to keep her cool. (Dress yourself in layers; those babies heat up like an engine when they sleep on your body.)

2.) How to keep her asleep during abrupt and abrasive noises. At which point, we’d fume with rage. Though you can try noise-cancelling headphones. They didn’t work for us because of her sleeping position, but they might work you.

You don’t realize how loud and unbelievably frequent flight announcements are until you’ve just spent 30 minutes trying to get your fussy baby to successfully fall asleep and an intercom directly above your head shouts at you, again, with news of an additional 35,000 miles when you sign up for the Delta credit card. DAGGERS.

(For you parents who’ve done cross-country and international flights with a baby who didn’t sleep a wink, I see you and I Prayer Emoji Hands you.)

SHIP & ORDER AHEAD

Though we never felt compelled to do it, I liked Nadine’s advice on Shipping Ahead.

“If you’ll be gone longer than a few days, ship ahead items like diapers, wipes, and formula with Amazon or Diapers.com, and luggage with a shipment site specializing in travel, like Luggage Free.”

Luckily, we often traveled to places in which travel cribs and baby necessities were waiting for us. (Thank you, grandparents.) Nadine also advises, when possible, to request a crib ahead of time. To save space, sanity, and your efforts, gate check the stroller and baby wear always.

One pretty important tip that we’ve always neglected: Travel with a car seat. Some people even swear by bringing it on the plane and using it during the flight. Once we didn’t bring a car seat on a flight to New York City and, as it turns out, UBER Car Seat is just a booster seat. Not a car seat. Which is not great for your 18 month old who not only has never sat facing forward in the car but also doesn’t meet the legal weight requirements to travel so! (Insert sweat emoji face here.) The cab ride to our friends’ apartment that day was basically me body-shielding our daughter from flying out of the backseat window as the car jerked back and forth for 30 minutes.

If you’re staying in a hotel and don’t want to pay for an adjoining room solely for your infant or toddler, try to choose an option with either a spacious closet or bathroom where you can shove the portable crib. This will give you the flexibility to um, not go to bed at 7 p.m. with in your child, and also keep the space dark and quiet. If you really want to go all in, bring black plastic trash bags and tape to cover windows and hopefully avoid unnecessary early wake-ups.

REALLY JUST…PREPARE LIKE IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD & GET CREATIVE ON ARRIVAL

We always pack a plethora of medications, we live and die by TSA Precheck and Global Entry, and we always eat early. Likely, when you are traveling, you will be dining out quite a lot which is…unpredictable, at best, with small children.

One of our friends shared that lately her three year old loves to play “restaurant” when they are out to dinner. They bought her a small server’s notepad with a pen that clips onto it so she can take their order wherever they go. They stretch this game out as long as possible, inquiring about “the day’s specials” and asking for a ton of modifications.

I also found some helpful advice—not to mention travel obstacles and triumphs—in The Real M*ther F*ckers Podcast by

Stephanie Jucar Cooley from Unpacking

and her co-host Vanessa Anderson. Which is a great reminder that, while this advice will hopefully make your family getaway that much less stressful, it ultimately all comes down to you and your travel partner. You set the tone. You do the heavy lifting. You manage your expectations accordingly. Children are unpredictable maniacs. You know this.

We love taking our daughter to New York City. The overstimulation is right up her alley (from her stroller she shouts, “Doggie!” “Bicycle!” “Bus!” and then begins singing another verse of “Wheels on the Bus…”), and my husband and I love sharing our favorite place with her. But going to Brooklyn with our daughter, however, is not the trip we’d plan if it were just the two of us. Doesn’t mean we don’t want to take the trip. It’s just…different…and we set our expectations accordingly.

A note on (the baby) crying in public…

Before that first flight with our daughter, I’d been so nervous about her crying the entire flight. Or screaming uncontrollably at landing and takeoff because of the pressure on her ears. I remembered my annoyed, pre-parent self when this would inevitably happen on flights, the groans from other passengers, etc. Look—nobody likes it. Not mom, not baby, not the person sitting next to you. As a parent, you have to let that shit go. You can’t control it. Babies cry. Do your best and everyone else can plug their ears with headphones. The more stressed you are, the worse the episode will be. One nice thing about parenthood is that it makes you wildly more empathetic to others in scenarios like this.

At the end of the day, the best way to travel with your kids and not hate life is to stay open minded. In some ways, trips can be easier than “real life” because you’re shaking up your routine. You’re not fighting the same daily battles you might be fighting at home: The morning struggle to brush teeth and get dressed on time for school; the mealtime struggle in which your kid is bored of eating all the same things; the nighttime struggle to get your kid to stop the 10-minute naked dance party and get into the bath already. Travel offers children (and parents!) an opportunity to try new things and, best case scenario, learn how to be a bit more flexible—just make sure you prepare like crazy and improvise along the way.