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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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