It’s that time of year where you’re starting to either confirm holiday plans or deciding whether you’d rather be at home this December. As a parent one of the biggest concerns when travelling is how well will your child/ children handle the actual journey to your final destination.
From my experience flying with children can be really tough, especially if you are not adequately prepared. To make travelling a bit more pleasant this holiday season, we’ve looked at three ways to help make the entire experience a lot more enjoyable.

1. A backpack for each child
This I found to be absolutely essential when travelling successfully with children. Whilst mom and dad handle all the luggage and travel documents, the kids will be carrying their own. Children love to carry their own backpacks, there’s little that gets them as excited as unzipping their own bags once on the flight.

It’s exciting for kids to feel like grown-ups and they like to be in charge of carrying their own accessories. Some ideas of what to put inside the bag, sugar free snacks (depending where you’re flying to), games, colouring goods and small toys.

2. Decorate the window
Booking a window seat is always a great idea as your kids will love to look out the window during take-off and throughout the flight. The window is also a great place to let them express their creative side, bring a couple sets of inexpensive window clings and let them decorate away. They peel off easily and can be moved around if need be. Perfect to stimulate their imagination!

3. When all else fails

After all the snacks, games, window creations and art and crafts are over and no longer keeping your child’s attention, you can reward them with good behaviour by bringing out the electronics. We suggest you save the best for last and only bring these out when you’ve exploited all other options. Pre-loading devices with age appropriate movies/ programmes is a great idea as it should stimulate the child for the last leg of the trip.

At the end of the day the memories made whilst travelling with your children far out way any “travel hassles” that can sometimes occur. We wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy festive season ahead!