On this week’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me, family travel writer Alexia Santamaria and Auckland lead for Youthtown, Chad Slade, share their top tips for the weeks ahead: whether that sees you getting through long-haul flights and road trips or looking for things to do closer to home.
Santamaria, who has travelled with two sons as toddlers through to teens, says the benefits of travel for kids are great.
“It expands them outside their little world, especially at my kids’ age where they’re teenagers and their world can be all around friendships and girlfriends and school dramas. Just to know that there’s kind of a bigger world out there, I think it’s really beneficial.”
Santamaria has years of experience taking flights with kids and says there are some key things to prepare that will help make trips easier.
Travelling with kids
Getting on that plane
When you’re booking flights, Santamaria says if you haven’t got the budget for Skycouch - which allows for more space - choose seats as far back as you can.
It means you’ll have easy access to the toilets and won’t be held up by trollies running up and down the aisles.
If you can, book a night flight too. Run your kids around in the afternoon and hopefully by the time they’re on the plane they’ll be tuckered out and ready for a good sleep.
Well packed
Santamaria says the contents of your carry-on could save you hours of trouble once on board.
“Pack multiple changes of clothes for everybody involved. And millions of snacks: their familiar snacks or their familiar water bottles, cause everything’s different, they’re up in the air, there’s the air pressure.
“We used to travel with familiar and non-familiar, so things that they liked, but then also, when they were young, like a brand-new sticker book or something they’d never seen. So, the novelty factor was high. New things for novelty, familiar things for comfort.”
Plan to do less
When you’re planning and booking your holiday, Santamaria says building in more time than you would for a trip without kids is key.
“Think about all those things ahead and don’t book it like you would an adult trip as in bang, bang, bang, we’re going to do all of this. Leave heaps of space for tantrums and needing to go for a nap.”
She also suggests extra consideration for comfort: if you’re travelling to a hot climate, a pool and air conditioning will make everyone’s life easier.
Holidays at home
If you’re staying home for the holidays, it’s still important and possible for kids to have new experiences, says Slade, who runs holiday programmes as part of his role at Youthtown, a not-for-profit that has been operating kids’ activity programmes for 90 years.
“It’s really important that we’re getting our young people stimulated whether that’s through playing games or cooking ... getting them involved in things so it means they’re open to learning new things.”
And that doesn’t necessarily mean spending money to do so. Slade says there are plenty of ways to utilise things around the house for kids to have fun with.
Themed days of the week
Slade suggests nominating certain days of the week for specific activities.
“What we’ve found is when we theme stuff, young people tend to be on it straight away,” he says.
“On our programmes, we get young people to do dress-up movie days. You could put a movie on and then just go around the house and find things that are themed to the movie …”
Particularly when parents are still working, Slade says planning goes a long way. He suggests, for example, making Monday a water-play day and Tuesday an arts and crafts day.
“It means that they can allocate certain times of the day where they can just come out for that half an hour and do that little activity with their children.”
Building blocks
With some couch squabs, a few pegs and a sheet, kids can have hours of fun building an indoor fort.
And when the sun’s shining, send them outside to have a go at building an obstacle course out of things found around the house (while making sure they’re safe items), suggests Slade.
Let them decide
Slade says when it comes to older kids, the best chance of engagement comes when they’re given some autonomy over their activities.
“For our older kids, the biggest thing that we try to do in terms of working with them is [asking] what do they want? Don’t prescribe it because they’re not going to want to do what older people want to do.
“Knowing what their hobbies are, trying to work on those hobbies and stuff like that.”
- For more tips on travelling with kids and keeping them occupied these summer holidays, listen to this week’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me below.
- You can follow the podcast at nzherald.co.nz, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
