travel tips for toddlers on an airplane
i'm sure their are toddlers who travel on airplanes more often than my daughter - but she gets around her fair share. she's 21 months old now and i believe she's been on at least 10 journeys that included more than 6 hours of total flight time in a day. our last flight (at age 21 months) was such a breeze that i thought i'd take a moment to share the current secrets of my success.
here are the various gadgets that we bring along . . .
| name | price | description | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Kitchen Towel | $2 | bring along a dishtowel and get your child a cup of ice. all babies seem to like eating ice - i remember this keeping my 9 month old busy for at least twenty minutes. when they are older, get two cups and let them pour the ice back and forth. use dishtowel for inevitable mishaps. |
 | Horrible Plastic Thing That Beeps | $10 | visit your local walgreens / walmart /target and buy your child a cheap, horrible plastic thing that beeps. something you would never usually buy because a) it's tacky, b) it's of no educational value and c) they'll only be interested for 20 minutes. $10 for 20 minutes of peace and quiet on a plane is oh-so-worth-it. on our last flight, i bought my daughter a pink plastic toy cell phone. |
 | Stereo Headphone for Young Children | $13 | if you have a portable dvd player or laptop, and your child likes to watch movies, this is an obvious life-saver on an airplane. however, even if your child enjoys movies at home, you will run into two problems on the airplane. #1 they will have a hard time hearing due to the ambient plane noise and #2 they may be more interested in banging on the keyboard. if your child is NOT obsessed with banging on the keyboard, then a pair of these headphones, along with a channel amplifier will take care of the volume issue. i haven't found a cure for #2 yet, and have temporarily given up on audio-visual entertainment on airplanes. it worked like a charm when my daughter was 9 months old and on a flight to hawaii though. |
 | Muddle Farm : A Magnetic Play Book | $10 | this book is for creative play with magnets. the book shows several farm scenes and the child places the magnetic animals wherever they please. my daughter particularly likes the night time scene, where she tells all the animals "night night". great for airplanes and restaurants. |
 | Sticker Activity Colors | $6 | the exercise here is very basic - each page of the book has a different color theme and initially depicts the outline of objects (e.g. outline of a fish, etc.). the child picks a sticker, finds the appropriately colored page and then places the sticker in the right spot. finding the right color page is a little beyond my 21 month old daughter, but when i gave her the first sticker and flipped to the correct page i didn't have to tell her what to do next. great for airplanes. note - i also tried the Sticker Activity Shape book, but that one was too hard for a 21 month old. |
 | Magnetic Play & Learn - Colors | $8 | this book suggests structured play with magnets - e.g. each magnet is supposed to go in a particular place on a particular page. what to do is obvious enough that my 21 month old daughter played along with no trouble. after doing what she was "supposed to do" with the magnets, she branched out and started placing them creatively. great for airplanes and restaurants. |
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I really like the magnetic
I really like the magnetic book idea. I would love one of those for my own "creative" play....oh wait, that is my fridge....
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