Our essentials for traveling with Children

Our eldest daughter is 4 and has been on alot of flights, somewhere around 30. We’ve had successful flights, unsuccessful flights and everything in between. The same goes for holidays. So I thought it might be useful to put pen to paper and do a little list of our essentials for traveling with children which we rely on to make our trips as smooth as possible.

In brief our essentials for traveling with Children are:

• Take your own car seats
• Lightweight buggy/double buggy
• baby carrier/sling
• Technology and games to entertain
• Books and toys
• Plug Adapters
• Snacks and food

Our own car seats

• This has come about after SO many disasters at car hire places waiting for suitable car seats and getting them fitted. Almost without fail the quality has been substandard (and we have always booked with big agents like Budget, Avis etc). The staff will not fit the car seats for you, as they don’t want to be liable should anything happen. The last thing you need after getting off a flight is to spend ages fussing over car seats.

• We bought our eldest a spare car seat and it’s been great. Far better than any we got given by the car hire companies and you make back the cost within one holiday! We pop it in a car seat bag and check it in to oversized baggage and so far, we’ve always received it, intact at the other end! We currently take the baby’s Maxi Cosi Pebble with us, but we’ll buy her a spare one too once she is big enough.

Lightweight buggy/double buggy

• High on our list of essentials for traveling with children is a lightweight buggy (or double buggy if you have two children) – we bought a Silvercross Pop for a bargain price (about £110) back when our eldest was 4 months old for her first holiday to Mexico. It is still going strong! It reclines flat and as a baby she would happily fall asleep in it. As she’s grown she’s still happy to sit in it or lie down when she gets tired. The hood extends fully so acts as a sunshade and is ventilated so no worries about them getting too hot. 

• Since attempting one holiday with just the single buggy and a buggy board we have bought a double buggy (Chicco Echo Twin stroller £125) for the two girls which has been a bit of a lifesaver. Even though it can sometimes be difficult on narrow streets, it allows us to do so much more than we’d be able to do otherwise. You can read about our first holiday with the double buggy here.

• Our eldest rarely uses a buggy at home but for holidays I’d expect we’ll be using it for a good while yet. 9 times out of 10 you can take the buggy up to the plane door which is a great help (even if it is just to hold all the hand luggage).

Baby carrier

• Probably the single best purchase for airports! It has saved us from carrying a baby in our arms for long queues at security or baggage on so many occasions. I bought mine from gumtree for £30 – bargain! It’s a baby bjorn and whilst I find it uncomfortable to carry them for too long in it (probably more to do with my back than the carrier) it is absolutely perfect for short periods at the airport. 

Technology, games and books to entertain

• Download films, tv, games and books to a device. As most aeroplanes don’t have wifi yet we have found it essential to download a selection of the above to keep our daughter entertained during the flight. It’s particularly helpful during take off and landing when they have to sit with their seat belt on.

• Ultimately you do what you can to keep them seated during flights and technology is often the answer. It’s also useful for any drives you need to do during the holiday where they get restless. We used to take a portable DVD player too for when our daughter got bored of the downloads or there wasn’t decent wifi but we take it less often now. 

Books and toys

• Books, toys, colouring pens and paper. This is particularly useful for long flights. I always ensure they are quiet toys/books (don’t want to annoy the fellow passengers unnecessarily!) and that they are small enough to fit into our hand luggage.

• I’ve lost count of how often a book has helped at the end of a flight to keep the children from meltdown. These are always good to provide a bit of familiarity at bedtime too or for early morning playtime when you’re on holiday.  

LOTS of plug adapters

• Plenty of adapters. We long for the day everything is done via usb but for now we travel with an extensive array of adapters. The more we have the better but we generally take 1 for each monitor camera/monitor unit, 1 for each of our phones and 1 for hairdryers/laptops or other things we might need to use. That’s a whole heap of adapters but we find it better to be able to keep things plugged in in one place than having to constantly move the adapters around.

Snacks and food

• One of the biggest essentials for traveling with children is snacks and food, a necessity for the plane and handy to have for the holiday. I pack way more snacks than I think we’ll need for the plane and they always get through them all. It is the easiest way to distract them from a meltdown. Our staples are breadsticks, kiddylicious wafers or veggie crisps and rice cakes. Generally I try to take things that won’t be messy or get eaten too quickly (chocolate, whilst it keeps them quiet for a few minutes – will melt and go EVERYWHERE).

• For the holiday itself, if we’re self catering (which we usually are), I tend to take a packet of Cow and Gate Muesli (the type you just add milk to), a packet of quick cook fusilli pasta and a can of sweetcorn and beans so that we have the basics for a quick dinner if necessary. I always appreciate that we have these even though we do big supermarket shops when we are there.

• Speaking of which we have started buying nappies when we get to the destination since having our second child – we just don’t have the space to take them with us. Dodot has been available in Spain, Sardinia and Portugal (apparently these are the Spanish Pampers and the leading brand there). 

Summary

I’m sure we haven’t got it all figured out – and we definitely learn as we go but the above really helps us! Let us know if you have any further tips 🙂