Air & Road Travel with Kids

My daughter and I recently returned from a 2 week trip to the Eastern States.  Given our history of travel (see blog entry 6July06 - Holiday booked) I was extremely anxious over the plane trip (2 x 4 hours & 1 x 2 hours) and bus ride (2 x 4 hours).

I am very happy to report that every part of the trip was excellent, Mia was perfectly behaved in every way.

PLAN

This was the pre planning I did before we set out to travel each time:

1. travel times organised outside of sleep times - previously we organised flights for when Mia should have been asleep and this was disasterous, she just became overtired and therefore more cranky than she should have been
2. lollypops to keep ears equalised during take off and landing - now I am sure there will be parents out there that think this is an awful idea, feeding kids sugar, but it is a sure way to keep children swallowing to ensure their ears equalise during take off and landing.  Blocked ears can cause pain and panic in children as they do not understand what is going on.
3. new items to keep them occupied- this doesn't have to be an expensive option, between my mother and I we packed new sticker books ($2.95 each), new books (less than $5) and other small items to keep Mia entertained.  I did purchase one big ticket item and that was a portable dvd player and it was worth every cent we paid ($195 from KMart).
4. food - I didn't organise a kids meal for Mia as she always wants to eat what I do so when the time came she was served a normal airline meal - to ensure she didn't get hungry before or after the meal I packed a sandwhich, cheese sticks, apple and saltanas.
5. routine - I am the first to buck routine but my experience of setting a routine on the first flight made me stick to it for subsequent travel.

ROUTINE

This is the routine I used with Mia initially on the first plane trip and then on each subsequent travel section of the holiday:

1. settle into seats, showing Mia any buttons, windows and other items of interest (she especially liked the headphones on the plane)
   
2. the first 15min to 1/2 hour looking out the window and talking about what we could see
3. looking at a book or doing a sticker book (sticker books are books with alot of stickers which are removed and placed in their allocated postion somewhere within the books story - lots of entertainment) 1/2 hour
4. eat and drink - either food provided by the airline or food prepared by me
5. portable DVD player - I took along most of Mia's favourite DVD's, she chose which one she wanted to watch and then settled in to watch the whole movie - 1 1/2 to 2 hours
6. snack - the apple worked wonders it takes Mia approx 1/2 hour to eat an apple
7. the final stages of the trip were also taken up with discussing what could be seen outside of the window and what we would be doing when we got to the distination

On reflection I cannot think of anything more I could have done to improve the way we travelled (unless you consider business class - but I guess that is more for me than for my daughter).  By doing the above I maanged to eat my meal, watch the movie and even read some of my book.