How to survive a long-haul trip with a toddler (and why it’s worth the stress) |

Flying or driving long distances with a little one can be trying, but it also holds incredible rewards. For people who started families far from home, video calls are no substitute for seeing your relatives hold and play with your child.

As a veteran of not just one but three solo long-haul flights with my toddler, and one eight-hour drive for a combined business-holiday trip, I am here to tell you that such trips are doable, and even quite special, with a few tricks up your sleeve.

Choose your departure time carefully

If you are able to choose the time of take-off, many parents swear by night-time.

When flying solo with her daughter, Milan-based travel planner Elizabeth Thacker Jones, who is originally from the US, plans for her toddler “to arrive at the airport somewhat tired so there’s a better chance she’ll sleep on the plane. Even if it takes time to go through security, she is stimulated enough by the excitement of flying [and] more curious than cranky”.

Paris-based Squarespace employee Adam Levy and his wife, journalist Alex Brook-Lynn, have travelled a handful of times with their under-two-year-old, particularly back to New York, where they are from. Levy swears by the “red-eye” flight: “If it’s bedtime, their last meal and the white noise will knock them out. Then it’s a game of negotiating a sleeping baby from lap to lap.”

When driving, my husband and I have always tried to leave an hour before our three-year-old daughter’s nap time – so that (ideally) we get two hours of silence. We plan to stop when she wakes up, to stretch legs and have a snack.

The best toys may not be toys at all

On my first solo-parent flight, I had way too many things and wound up carrying all of them plus a sleepy child.

It’s hard to know what will or won’t entertain or satisfy a cranky child – but fortunately one of the things everyone suggests for toddlers, stickers, are very lightweight.

I had stickers all over my face and arms – and a happy kid – on our first journey. But on the second trip, only a few months later, I was horrified to find that stickers no longer interested her. Neither did the colouring book and textas. Even the screen only entertained for 10 minutes. Instead, she wanted to use my body as a jungle gym and run up and down the aisles.

I devised a game in which I pulled my daughter on to me, folding her arms over her chest and bending her knees, telling her I was “putting her in a box” and would send her some place fun. Together, we would talk about where I’d send her (the zoo, the moon etc). It was a great vocabulary exercise that gave her the attention she craved while calming her. Our activity bag was mostly untouched on that flight.

Severine Perru, who is originally from France, based in the Adelaide area, and works remotely as wine director for a bar in New York, recently did a long-haul flight with her husband and their 15-month-old. They brought many toys that were all new to their daughter, and wrapped them individually in cloth bags so that each time she wanted to play, she could reach in the bag, choose something and open it.

The toys that were the biggest hit: a magnetic fishing pole and insect set; cards for matching mother and baby animals; and a battery-powered musical book “but not an annoying one, just a nice one with buttons, playing classical music”. A great tip from Perru is to “put a piece of tape on top of the little speaker so it’s less noisy in the plane”. The book is a favourite on long car trips, too.

Things will go wrong

You will have someone insist on keeping their seat even if it is between you and your co-parent. Your sleeping child will put their feet on the stranger in your row. Your nearly toilet-trained child may pee on the floor at the check-in desk. All of this happened to someone I know, or to me.

Levy lists “things your kid is going to do: cry, want to touch things, want to put things in their mouths, drop things, walk away, not want to be held or controlled, and touch other people’s stuff”.

It’s frustrating, but try not to be too hard on yourself. Keep your expectations low.

People will help!

A shout out to the guy in Doha airport who, as we were running to catch our connecting flight and the reusable grocery tote I’d packed with snacks suddenly burst at the bottom, gently remarked in a familiar accent, “Those Woolies bags are usually so fool-proof”, and bent down to pick up our snacks.

Shout out to the guy in Sydney who was living the dream of travelling with one small carry-on but nevertheless took the time to hoist my car seat and bags on to the free transfer bus between the domestic and international terminals.

And if you’re in a partnership and struggling with a child who is clingy to one parent, the other parent needs to find ways to help. “When she is holding him, I had better be available to be useful,” Levy says,…