Wednesday Column

***Travel Advice***

This is really pushing my “health-related topics” brief… well, I guess we could say it’s about mental health. Yes, let’s go with that.

There must be something in the air - people seem to be booking overseas holidays. The something in the air would probably be Winter. A few of my friends have recently asked me what my tricks are for surviving long-haul flights with children. This makes me smile, because I can still remember asking a dear friend of mine, six years ago, this exact same question. Now I get to pass along all the things I remember from her, as well as some things I’ve made up along the way.

Buy about 10 of those mesh laundry bags for delicates. Keep reading and you’ll see why.

Pack food that you know they’ll eat. Often my children won’t eat the airplane food because they don’t recognise it. In my opinion, now is not the time to expand their culinary palate. They are already getting expanded in so many ways by the experience - I’ll take food for them, no problem. Put the food in one of the laundry bags. This means that you and they will be able to see the apples, or the muesli bars etc without having to unpack everything.

Pack toys that you know they’ll enjoy. Buying a new toy is a good idea too. Don’t take toys with lots of small parts unless you have one of those children who are good at keeping all the parts together. I don’t have one of those. So I take only single-part toys. Trying to origami myself to retrieve that one Esssential Part from under the seat in front, whilst keeping a toddler asleep on my lap is not my idea of fun. Pack all the toys in one of the laundry bags so you and they can see them… I think you get the picture.

Pack many changes of clothes in your cabin baggage. Honestly, drinks get spilled, food gets slopped and suddenly you’re paying $100 for a pair of trousers for your four year old at the airport so they’re not walking around in their underwear. Yes, this has happened to me. I have been known to buy zip-lock bags and pack entire outfits in their own zip-lock bag, then put all the zip-lock bags into a laundry bag. One laundry bag for each child, with the child’s name written very largely on the bag.

I still have the small bed-sheets that my babies first slept on, and a couple of days before we leave I lay one of these on the bed and sleep on it for a night or two. Then I take this on the plane with us. Children and particularly young babies navigate the world by smell, and the smell of home will help my children settle for sleep.

Take a selection of toys, food, clothes, books and anything else that will entertain your child, and place them in one of the laundry bags. Do one of these for each child for each leg of the journey. Make sure there are some “surprises” in there for emergencies.

This is my most important piece of advice, and the piece that is most often disregarded. Plan a long stopover halfway. We do at least 12 hours. We book an airport hotel and have a shower, a swim, lie down to sleep, eat a meal with metal cutlery, and walk around. I cannot stress enough how much having this break in the middle helps with the mental-health of each member of our three-person unit.

And lastly, treat it as part of the adventure. The adventure starts the minute you put the first article of clothing in the first suitcase. The adventure keeps going at the check-in desk, in finding your seats, in looking up what shows are on their TV, in seeing what all the buttons do, in walking around the plane looking out the windows, in talking about the countries you’re flying over. The adventure starts with you, and they will follow.