Experienced parents, what was the hardest age for traveling? When did it permanently improve?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12 was the hardest age. Kid thinks they know everything, won't help wtih anything, only wats to do what they want to do.

Kid is 15 now, and ven they will tell you they ruined the Hawaii vacation.

Teens can be threatened and bribed. Toddlers hands down. Teens you can also leave. Don’t want to go to Haleakala, fine stay here we’ll go without you.

Wowee that sounds like a healthy household!

Actually it is. It is respecting their choice and not allowing them to ruin the vacation for everyone. Why is it healthier to make them go somewhere they don’t want to go?

This is what we do too. DD is an introvert and sometimes just needs alone time. I have no problem with it and neither does she.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12 was the hardest age. Kid thinks they know everything, won't help wtih anything, only wats to do what they want to do.

Kid is 15 now, and ven they will tell you they ruined the Hawaii vacation.

Teens can be threatened and bribed. Toddlers hands down. Teens you can also leave. Don’t want to go to Haleakala, fine stay here we’ll go without you.

Wowee that sounds like a healthy household!

Actually it is. It is respecting their choice and not allowing them to ruin the vacation for everyone. Why is it healthier to make them go somewhere they don’t want to go?

Teens don’t have fully developed brains, and are not known for their stellar, logical decision making. This sounds like a parenting cop out. Imagine the kid in 15 years talking to a therapist about how abandoned he felt when his parents left him behind. I teach eighth graders -typical teens want to be wanted, but they don’t want anyone to know it matters so much to them.

[Anonymous]

5 years was when travel started becoming less of a "what were we thinking" and more of a "phew, made it." when the kids were 7/9, that's when it became easy and we had a great time in France. They pulled their own little suitcases, and distracted themselves and could handle time changes, delays,etc without total meltdowns.

[Anonymous]

The very best age was 8-12
Fun but tiring 3-7
2 and under and 13 and up is the least fun.

[Anonymous]

I found after age 5 (6 for one kid) to be the easiest.

When my kids were younger, we made a big deal out of picking a special snack in the airport for the plane - anything they wanted. They'd pick a snack and munch away while watching a movie on their tablets. Unlimited airplane screentime was always the way to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Short answer: 2-4 is the worst age because they still need you so much, still get easily overtired, and are usually pretty inflexible and respond poorly to changes in routine. Older kids can also have these issues but almost all 2-4 years olds have them, making this kind of a universally challenging age for travel.

Long answer:

Depends on the kid and also on your ability to be flexible and adjust your travel to meet their needs. My kid is older now and many aspects of travel are so much easier than when she was in that 2-4 range. She can carry her own bag, she can hustle through an airport, we don't have to travel with all the little kid stuff (boosters are easier than car seats, for instance), no diapers and she is no longer weird about public toilets, she can read which magically makes it easier for her to entertain herself, she can express her needs more clearly and also knows how to suck it up for short periods of time if she needs to.

But she's still pretty young (now 8) and travel with her is still pretty different than travel before her. She's a picky eater which is something we've really had to learn to accommodate while traveling and does throw a wrench in our plans -- it's especially hard during foreign travel because we can't just go sit down at a random restaurant in some tiny town that only serves fish or schnitzel or whatever the local delicacy is. We accommodate this by continuing to pack snacks for her (more than I expected to need to at her age, and more than she gets on a normal day) and sticking to destinations, for now, where it's easier to find family-friendly restaurants. We also plan trips so that we do plenty of meals that are picnics or eating dinner back at our AirBnB or hotel after a long day of sightseeing. This is actually surprisingly wonderful because it means we grocery shop everywhere we go, and grocery stores in other countries can be a fun way to get to know the culture and eat local delcacies, while still ensuring we can grab fruit and bread and cheese for our kid.

The thing I remind myself even when it's hard is that we are bonding as a family in sorting through these issues, and making valuable memories for all of us. She won't remember everything we do, but she will remember bits and pieces. Plus in watching us roll with the punches and figure out how to make it work even when travel doesn't go as plan, she's learning that stuff too and that will serve her well in the future. These aren't the things I loved most about travel when I was 25, but they are very worthwhile aspects of travel now with an elementary school kid.

NP but thank you for this! I have a 3 year old and a 7 year old who are both relatively picky eaters- 7 year old is now more reasonable, with age, but agree completely about the lack of ability to just go to a random foreign restaurant and expect to find a meal he will eat. 3 year old will probably be much easier with food as he gets older because he was an easy baby with food-it’s only been since age 18mo or so that he has been stubborn so I think it’s the age. Whereas my oldest was picky from the get go. I wanted to pull my hair out every time someone told me to “feed the baby what you eat! Rainbow food! Baby led weaning!” Like, no. It didn’t work.

[Anonymous]

Our 3 year-old is waaaaaaay worse and more reactive/prone to meltdowns than when they were 2. Our 3 year-old still has trouble verbalizing what they want and gets frustrated rather easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12 was the hardest age. Kid thinks they know everything, won't help wtih anything, only wats to do what they want to do.

Kid is 15 now, and ven they will tell you they ruined the Hawaii vacation.

Teens can be threatened and bribed. Toddlers hands down. Teens you can also leave. Don’t want to go to Haleakala, fine stay here we’ll go without you.

Wowee that sounds like a healthy household!

Actually it is. It is respecting their choice and not allowing them to ruin the vacation for everyone. Why is it healthier to make them go somewhere they don’t want to go?

Teens don’t have fully developed brains, and are not known for their stellar, logical decision making. This sounds like a parenting cop out. Imagine the kid in 15 years talking to a therapist about how abandoned he felt when his parents left him behind. I teach eighth graders -typical teens want to be wanted, but they don’t want anyone to know it matters so much to them.

Decision making? They aren't determining defense policy, they are choosing wether to participate in an activity. We aren't leaving them in Fairfax, we are letting them sleep in and returning at lunch. There is absolutely a place for empathy but not to the point that they get to control the day for the rest of the family. If I had my druthers we'd spend the whole day at Haleakela and kula but we do something the parents like and then we come home and go to the pool and have lunch or go paddle boarding, something the kids like.

[Anonymous]

It will get continually better from here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12 was the hardest age. Kid thinks they know everything, won't help wtih anything, only wats to do what they want to do.

Kid is 15 now, and ven they will tell you they ruined the Hawaii vacation.

Teens can be threatened and bribed. Toddlers hands down. Teens you can also leave. Don’t want to go to Haleakala, fine stay here we’ll go without you.

Wowee that sounds like a healthy household!

Actually it is. It is respecting their choice and not allowing them to ruin the vacation for everyone. Why is it healthier to make them go somewhere they don’t want to go?

Teens don’t have fully developed brains, and are not known for their stellar, logical decision making. This sounds like a parenting cop out. Imagine the kid in 15 years talking to a therapist about how abandoned he felt when his parents left him behind. I teach eighth graders -typical teens want to be wanted, but they don’t want anyone to know it matters so much to them.

And parents here told my I was being a bad parent when I didn’t give my 13 yo kid the out and made her do the National park tour. People will call you a bad parent no matter what you choose: yawn.

[Anonymous]

Worst ages: from when the kid starts walking - until when they can be entertained by a full movie on the plane.

For us, a huge turning point was when the youngest was 4. Suddenly we’re not packing diapers, strollers or pack n plays, and the kids all have an attention span. I remember the first flight after that turning point, and I didn’t know what to do with myself on the plane for a bit since they were so calm and entertained! I started packing a book for me to read again. I’ll have to check in again when I have moody tweens soon to let you know if it goes back downhill then 😂.

[Anonymous]

We used the need for routine with our little one when flying to Europe:
Try for a normal day/nap/exercise until it’s time to go to the airport
Late afternoon or early evening check in, then have an early dinner and wind down time
Fly out as close to bedtime as possible
Arrive early (everyone will be groggy, but things tend to be quieter, especially at larger airports there)
Early check in at your hotel or lodging (make the effort to areange it)
Have a large breakfast and some mild exercise to facilitate a short afternoon nap, then try to follow the location’s daily schedule as best as possible.
Dinner is much later there.
This method worked well for years. Flying back, despite the best-laid plans, was always sheer hell.

I agree with some of the earlier posters about the tweens/teens. From our experience, scheduled activities like
camps and such became scare after age 12. Everyone had a bit of a break from each other, and our young one made fun friends along the way..
Planning vacations around locations where interests aligned have always worked well for our family, but when there was an alternative activity for something like a lousy beach day. It’s a good idea to have the plan b ready,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Worst ages: from when the kid starts walking - until when they can be entertained by a full movie on the plane.

For us, a huge turning point was when the youngest was 4. Suddenly we’re not packing diapers, strollers or pack n plays, and the kids all have an attention span. I remember the first flight after that turning point, and I didn’t know what to do with myself on the plane for a bit since they were so calm and entertained! I started packing a book for me to read again. I’ll have to check in again when I have moody tweens soon to let you know if it goes back downhill then 😂.

Totally agree. The worst for plane travel was 9 months through about 2.5 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Worst ages: from when the kid starts walking - until when they can be entertained by a full movie on the plane.

For us, a huge turning point was when the youngest was 4. Suddenly we’re not packing diapers, strollers or pack n plays, and the kids all have an attention span. I remember the first flight after that turning point, and I didn’t know what to do with myself on the plane for a bit since they were so calm and entertained! I started packing a book for me to read again. I’ll have to check in again when I have moody tweens soon to let you know if it goes back downhill then 😂.

Totally agree. The worst for plane travel was 9 months through about 2.5 years.

It is physically hard when they’re 18 months - 4 or so. Gotta carry them, occupy them, deal with naps and tantrums and using the potty. But there is no doubt that when they enter the classic detachment years of 12-15 or so, you have a mental battle. They don’t want to go. They think you’re boring. The activities bore them. They have a crappy attitude. All of this is developmentally appropriate and really, really challenging when you just want a nice family vacation and know they’ll appreciate the experience one day in the (far) future but in the meantime have to deal with their crappy attitude and sighing and complaining. Humans are complicated, there’s no permanently easy stage

[Anonymous]

Traveling with a 6yo and 3.5yo and was just saying today that I feel like the truly hard years are behind us.