6 Sanity Savers When Traveling With Toddlers | How To Not Lose Your Mind and Have A Great Vacation by Gary Miller | I actually had some downtime away from my business this week. This week our family took our first family vacation. Our family is of course my wife and I and our two daughters who are 1 and 3. Overall the trip was a giant success for our family full of a lot of fun and memories. It has also been completely exhausting and I can’t remember in recent memory being so tired at the end of each day.
Down and Dirty Tips For Traveling With Toddlers I’m not an expert in things toddler travel but I have learned a few hard lessons that I wish someone would have told me before we packed up the SUV and went on this trek. Here’s my in the moment list of tips for those of you who are thinking about or are currently traveling with toddlers.
Traveling With Toddlers Survival Guide 1) When researching activities at your vacation destination, STOP thinking like a married couple and start thinking like parents. My wife and I had a full page of activities for our beach trip that upon closer review we realized over half of them were great stops for Mom and Dad but absolutely horrible for toddlers. Toddlers like it simple. Playgrounds, water parks, beaches… Think MOVEMENT activities when traveling with toddlers. Even if you think your toddler has a zen like focus and can endure two hour boat tours, think again. 2) Have a game plan for each day mapped out then considering cutting it half. The great temptation when going on vacation is getting sucked into the notion that since you spent good money on the room,
travel, food, and so on that you have to pack every single minute of the day with activity. AVOID THIS TEMPTATION like the plague that it is. Remember, days at home are not packed every minute with new and different activities. Home balance is about routine. Bring that concept into your travel plans. The kids will be more sane and so will the parents. Don’t be scared to throw plans out the window. One of the single best times our girls had at the beach was after dinner one night when we just walked on the beach with no toys, bags of stuff, or any planning whatsoever. They ran, laughed, and had a blast largely because we didn’t try to thrust our plans upon them. We just stayed out the way. 3) Everything takes longer to get done on vacation. All parents know the joys of trying to get out the door with toddlers to run errands at home. It takes forever. We all know the what seems like forever process of getting toddlers to sleep at home. Expect these already cumbersome activities to take longer on vacation. At the beach for example, getting out the door means applying sun screen, loading swim diapers, beach toys, and the list goes on. The already long process of getting started takes even longer on vacation. Here’s the thing, kids will go as the leaders go. If you’re annoyed with the process and showing it, the kids will get annoyed and show it in that special only toddlers can. Fits, screaming, crying spells, and meltdowns. Stay calm. This goes back to point #2. If you put less on the schedule you won’t feel as compelled to try to rush everything. 4) Add 1-2 hours to your nightly toddler sleep routine. Yes you read that correctly. Some parents have been blessed with toddlers that have easy sleep routines. You guys can skim this section and by the way I hate you. (I don’t hate you, just really, really, really, envious) For the rest of us getting toddlers to sleep is still a bit of crapshoot. Start with the obvious tips. Bring their favorite pillows, stuffed animals, story time books, background music, whatever is central to the evening routine at home that you can fit into your bag. You can pack a lot lighter in other areas but not this one. Don’t cut corners on sleep items. Introduce them to the new sleep area, show them all the things from home, and try to turn it into a game or adventure. Try to stay on the normal sleep schedule as close as you can. Chances are the kids will go to bed a bit later because the family is out and about having fun but don’t push it.
The more like home nighttime is, the more success you’ll achieve with getting them to sleep. One final about sleep on vacation and toddler. Take your time. For my wife and I, after each day of traveling with toddlers, we just wanted to sit down, have a evening cocktail, and mellow out. That’s all fine and well but you cannot rush the process. If you read three stories at home, get ready to read three stories, three times on the road. It will take longer but we found the time decreases as each day passes. Kids adjust very quickly but it still takes longer in general in the sleep department while traveling. The first night it took us a full two hours longer. The rest of the trip about 45 minutes to an hour longer before all the toddlers were sleeping. 5) The vacation is 0% about the parents, 100% about the kids. This should probably be #1 because if you get this right in your head when you’re traveling with toddlers the entire experience will be better. There are some that probably take issue with this fifth tip. I would suggest that if you do, it’s because you’re still thinking like a married couple with no kids and you need to reframe. The moment we have kids, our priorities are forever changed. Our highly self-centered ego’s get checked hard by the needs of our children. That’s not a bad thing, that’s a fantastic thing! The sooner we embrace the change the sooner we will begin to experience the many magical moments of being a parent. 6) Enjoy! It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the planning and the next event on the schedule that we don’t even enjoy what’s happening now. We adopted a simple approach on this trip. We had our working plan but we wouldn’t discuss any plans beyond the next scheduled item. It forced my wife and I to enjoy what we were doing in the moment. Take tons of pictures, do silly things, laugh, and make great memories. Traveling with toddlers doesn’t need to be a nightmare. My wife and I smiled at each many times when things were going crazy. We silently agreed together that we’re blessed even in the midst of toddler chaos. It’s our beautiful chaos and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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