Tips for Traveling with Children

As the holidays approach, you will probably be doing some more traveling. And it can be a true joy or a terrible nightmare to travel with your children. By planning ahead, you can spend quality time with your children while visiting different places.

I’ve traveled with my son many times and have some great tips to share. First of all, make sure you bring enough to do for the journey. You can never bring too much to entertain/distract your kids.

What we do throughout the year is buy small prizes like you get with fast-food meals whenever we see them at garage sales, or at after-holiday sales. These are kept in a big bag in the closet and any time my son does something prize-worthy (for instance, all tests with no more than 2 mistakes) he’s allowed to choose a prize.

When we travel, he’s allowed one prize per hour of travel. So for instance, because we live in Germany, which is about 9 hours from our hometown of Detroit, he’s allowed to choose 9 prizes. Then during the flight, he’s allowed to open 1 prize per hour.

Another tip is to buy puzzle and sticker books from the dollar store. They can be lots of fun and very inexpensive. Also be sure you have a pen handy, and if possible a small bag filled with colored pencils or crayons. Drawing is always a fun, quiet activity.

Do everything you can to prepare your child for the trip before you go. If you’re going to visit family, look at pictures and go over everyone’s name. If you’re going to a new city, check out books from the library that show what you’ll see once you get there.

If you’re taking a trip to an amusement park, check youtube.com to see if you can find videos of any of the rides your children can see before you go. And you may want to consider buying a couple disposable cameras for your children to use during the trip.

Also, let your children make a few decisions about the trip so they feel they have some control over things and their opinions are valued. It can be something as simple as “which jacket should we take, the blue one or the red one?” Or something like, “should we visit the zoo or the museum?”

By planning activities for your children to do before traveling, your entire family can have a fun and relaxing trip that you’ll remember for a lifetime!

Stay tuned for more tips and helpful hints for being a mother and an entrepreneur and a self-published author. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at any time via www.jexbo.com.