Tips on surviving travel with kids

Press, 19 July 1988, Page 26

Tips on surviving travel with kids

Great travellers always journey alone. I can’t recall wonderful travel scribes such as Paul Theroux, Jan Morris, or Eric Newby writing about their experiences looking for toilets for a five-year-old in Peking’s Forbidden City or dealing with a 16-year-old skate punk who’s hurtled his board through the plate glass windows at Honolulu Airport. Newby did take his wife down the Ganges but it’s not as if she got in the way. From my memory of “Slowly Down The Ganges,” the marvellous woman did all the cooking, and the washing, too, I’ll wager. As these professional peregrinators sally forth in search of rousing adventure and scintillating stories, you can bet your map and compass there’s not a disposable nappy, book of crossword puzzles or box of Travel Scrabble in their luggage. In the course of their deliciously solo travelling, they may be joined for a bit by colourful and amusing characters (mostly roguish Indians named Aziz or fusty Foreign Office types) but they never wind up changing nappies aboard a 747 over the Hindu Kush or looking for a cheeseburger and chocolate milkshake in the markets of Marrakesh. I am devoted to the works of such great travel writers but I do wish they would occasionally write about family journeys. I’d love to know how they’d cope with tots or teens in tow. I’ve travelled with both types of offspring (more recently with two boys in their mid-teens) and our experiences have been of the horrid trial-and-error variety. I’ve learnt a bit since our first overseas sortie when they were three and four. I had visions of the cutely dressed pair playing for hours on end with their dear little Matchbox cars, sweetly napping, and skipping off the plane fresh and full of fun to greet our relatives at the other end. In my heart I knew it was fantasy, and I don’t think I was really so surprised when they arrived at Heathrow with custard and breadcrumbs in their hair, their smart little navy shorts wet with excitement, and their eyes all red and shiny like young, startled foxes. I will spare you the details of other equally unsuccessful plane trips, but I’ve learnt much along the way. Here are some survival suggestions for travels with your kids: © Sorry, but rule number one is leave your very little ones at home with relatives. If the purpose of your trip is to relax and unwind, you’ll do neither if you’ve taken the cause of your fatigue and anxiety along with you. Babies and tiny tots have little cognisance of their surroundings, and the two-year-old may as well play in the sandpit in Nanna’s backyard because he or she has no-one to impress with stories of the glorious beaches in Thailand.

© If you are flying with under-fives, take a change of clothing in your hand

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luggage. Sudden turbulence, over-ex-citement or both can lead to food and drink spills. Always carry plenty of tissues or moist towelettes and some sweets for emergency snack attacks. © The cabin bags of these junior travellers should contain favourite toys, books, coloured pencils and paper, and other easy-to-pack amusements. Try to plan enough of these games and diversions to last the length of your holiday.

© It’s great fun to suggest your older children keep a diary of their trip. Buy them a ruled exercise book, pack sticky-tape, scissors and pens, and they can fill in that day’s events each night, sticking in tickets and postcards and other mementoes of their travels. Encourage them to be neat and inventive, and they’ll proudly show their diaries to teachers and friends once they’re back at school. Also suggest they pack their address books and send postcards to relatives and special chums. Teenagers could be encouraged to learn photo-taking with a cheap Instamatic-style camera so they have a visual record of their holiday. My teenagers carry autograph books as they’re convinced one day they’ll end up seated in the same row as Boris Becker or David Bowie. Failing such far-out fortune, the books are ideal for collecting signatures and addresses of new-found friends.

® Walkman-style radios-cum-tape recorders and a selection of cassettes are an essential part of any selfrespecting teenager’s travel wardrobe. My boys have small carry-packs which fit 10 cassettes and have space for those all-important batteries. I also treat them to a supply of new magazines (cricket, pop music, computers and the like) on the eve of each trip, and they often swap these mags with fellow teenagers along the way.

© Avid teen readers should pack a swag of novels to exchange at local swap libraries. Your hotel’s front desk staff should be able to help you locate such libraries. Some resorts have reading and recreation rooms, and they can provide another source of book-swapping (for adults, too).

© Check with the hotel’s Guest Relations Officer if there are other children of the same age as yours and arrange an introduction. This doesn’t

“Sorry, but rule number one is leave your very little ones at home. If the purpose of your trip is to relax and unwind, you will do neither if you’ve taken the cause of your fatigue and anxiety along with you ...”

always work, of course, but it’s definitely worth a try.

® If you’re at a stay-put holiday destination, use that time for your children to learn a new sport. Mine have had tennis coaching in Fiji and learnt scuba diving and jet ski-ing on Maui.

© Allow yourself and partner at least a couple of evenings to yourselves. Babysitting is always available at major hotels, or leave older children in charge of younger ones and either pop back to the hotel room during the evening or ask a staff member to check on them. Many hotels now feature in-house video programmes so make a fun night for the kids by choosing a movie, or leaving them with playing cards or a jigsaw to complete.

© Jigsaw? yes, it can rain all through the best-planned holidays so take a few lightweight games (most popular types such as Scrabble, Cluedo, Chinese Checkers and Backgammon come in travel packs). Don’t weigh down your suitcase with the Trivial Pursuit (most resorts have a set on loan) but maybe pack a box of speciality questions to use with the hotel’s board.

© Use extra suitcase space for such standby games rather than clothes.

“The Press” on the move

Kids of all ages love souvenir T-shirts and you’ll find they wear their newlybought clothes patterned with place names in preference to the boring old gear they’ve brought from home. © Always choose a hotel with a pool. You’ll go down as an almighty parental flop if you ignore this point. © To keep the holiday food budget within sensible bounds, plan a picnic with fresh bread, takeaway deli items and ripe fruit.

® Discuss your holiday trip with friends who’ve travelled with kids. Anyone who’s survived the experience will have at least one or two handy hints to pass on.

© To make the very most of your trip, collect travel articles about your destinations, invest in decent guidebooks, and use the resources of national tourist offices and consulates to obtain free maps and literature. Involve the children in the planning stages, set them tasks of watching out for stories or TV documentaries, take along a big envelope of relevant literature, and use some of your flying time to go through the brochures and choose ground tours. Depending on the ages of your children, encourage them to act as navigator in a rental car, to take charge of the maps as you explore by foot, and allow them to find guidebook references as you come across places of interest. Teenagers, in particular, respond well to such responsiblity, and the trip can assume a worthy educational value as well.

Finally, don’t for one second imagine that a holiday with children will be carefree and uncomplicated. It won’t. These talkative, tantrum-prone and terminally hungry youngsters will, however, enrich and enliven any travel experience on the planet. I choose to believe Theroux, Morris, Newby and the like are missing out on quite a bit.