Being a parent is already challenging, but the challenges escalate when parents travel with their kids. What is supposed to be a relaxing and fun time with the family turns into a harsh reality check when parents realize that managing kids while traveling can be tough if not prepared. You feel like things were more peaceful at home and start regretting the holiday plan as soon as your plane takes off.
But worry not, dear parents, these challenges can be overcome with determination and patience, as I help you navigate these testing times. Hopefully, the thoughts I propose today will make you an experienced traveler, even if your kids go crazy.
Why Can Managing Kids Be Hard While on Vacation?
The saying "if you want to get to know a person, travel together" holds a lot of truth here. It has never been more true than when traveling with kids. As you're traveling together, you spend more time together, and there are no rooms to hide in or a boss calling you to work. You're there for the experience, and there's no running away from it, including your kids.
But it's not their fault; kids have high energy levels and can easily get bored if you don't match their energy. So if you can't distract them, they become fussy and easily irritated. That's why you'd notice that the quiet ones are usually the ones fully immersed in their cell phone screens.
But if you take away their gadgets or if the battery runs out, they no longer have anything interesting to do, and that's when they become tiny little monsters causing havoc on the airplane, bothering everyone and, to top it off, embarrassing you, the parent, in the process.
But it's something parents don't account for and easily overlook, especially if the family is traveling together for the first time. Plus, parents are already exhausted from the stress of booking hotels, making all the travel arrangements, and buying tickets.
And if you're anything like me, you're wired to the limit thinking about the vacation or worried about missing the flight. So you don't get any sleep the night before, and you can't be bothered about handling kids on the plane.
But this is natural and why most parents find it difficult to handle kids while traveling. So here's what you need to do.
Partake in Physical Activity the Day Before Traveling
Doing some physical work the day before traveling can be wonderful, as exercise can help calm the nerves, and you'll be tired when you go to bed, have a more peaceful sleep, and won't be up all night from travel anxiety.
And this works magic for young kids too. But instead of hitting the gym or doing manual labor, you can make the activity more fun so your kids are more likely to participate. You can play your kids' favorite sports with them, play hide and seek, or just a game of tag where everyone runs all over the place, which can work wonders.
They'll be too exhausted the next day to throw tantrums on the flight because they would have spent all their energy the day before and gone to bed early, so they wake up hungry and tired the next day.
I do this with my kids when we're about to go on vacation. We swim together, and I challenge them to do laps with me. Whoever swims the most laps wins and gets ice cream as a reward. But the best part about this is they can never beat me because I used to be a professional swimmer during college. It's mean, but not as mean as dealing with a crying child during a long flight.
Ensure They Don't Get Lost
When you're in a foreign place, there are plenty of attractions that you and your kids haven't seen or only seen in photos or videos. And every time there's such a sight that captures all their attention, they're most likely going to wander off and get lost.
It can be a very stressful and even dangerous situation, depending on where you are and what their customs are. If your kids see a candy shop, they'll run off, they see a man holding some exotic animal, they'll run off. The opportunities are endless. That's why you need to be prepared beforehand and install the kids tracking app for Android and iOS. And the app I recommend is XNSPY.
XNSPY can track kids and help keep them safe because it's an app for monitoring kids' activities remotely. By using the application, parents will automatically get updates on all the activities on their kids' phones.
In our case, it's a game-changer because this kids' tracking app for Android and iOS can keep kids out of danger by alerting parents of their exact location in real-time. If you were busy sightseeing and your kids suddenly left your sight, instead of panicking, you log into your XNSPY account, open the Locations tab, and see their location on the interactive map included in the app.
It helps you catch up to them before they can go any further and get into trouble with some of the uptight locals who find it difficult to see the humor in things. I've used the app to monitor kids' activities remotely and in many cases, more than I'd like to admit.
It's even been lifesaving for many young travelers' excursions to dangerous locations. Because if you just know the device's last known location, you can open the frequently visited spots section on the app's control panel to find nearby places the device owner might have visited. That's why it can be a great travel tech for your wilderness experiences.
Plan Activities Around Your Kids
When you're traveling with kids, the best course of action is to plan your holiday around the hobbies and activities your kids enjoy. It means that you'll have to sacrifice some of the things you enjoy for your kids' happiness, which is what being a parent is all about, isn't it? But this way, your kids will have less to complain about, which is a win-win for everyone, in my opinion.
And to make them feel more welcome, include them when you're planning your activities so they feel heard and appreciated. Since they'll have something fun to look forward to, they'll be in a better mood and less likely to have an outburst.
Thus the happier the kids are, the more peace and tranquility there will be in your lives, but as always, it's a balancing act, and you don't have to give in to their every whim. Teach them how to compromise and divide the plans that you both agree on, like visiting an amusement park or a safari or going deep-sea diving.
With these tips, your next trip with your kids will involve a lot less hassle and be more enjoyable and relaxing, and your kids might even learn to live without their gadgets for a while. But I can't promise the last one though.