We just spent two weeks in Europe with our 2.5 year old which went pretty well. Then we spent this past weekend at a rental house 2 hours away and it was a total disaster. Like bad enough where we said, will we ever travel again? So no advice other than to be prepared as much as you can for food and sleep and it may go ok or it might not! The disaster was especially disheartening bc Europe had gone so well.

You don't rely on restaurants for 100% of the meals You stay at an Airbnb, or the like, so you have space(!) and a full kitchen.

Since your kids sound rigid (seriously, the older kids meltdown if a restaurant is running slow??) you might want to be pre-emptive - snacks in your purse, a deck of cards, fidget spinner to keep them from imploding .

I assume your 2 yr old won't nap on the go? (in a car or a stroller)? So you and Dh divide and conquer? I went back to the beach house with toddler after a few morning hours at the beach while DH took the older kids mini golfing and whatever. Then 2 hrs later we all went down to the beach again late afternoon - where we posted those "amazing" family pictures.

Maybe you're taking the wrong kind of vacation. Try an AI beach place as opposed to walking around Yellowstone. Or maybe a cruise as opposed to a sightseeing London Do you see the difference?
Tell us where you want to go Op. We'll give you life hacks and tips to make it fun so you can kiss staycations goodbye once and for all.

My kids were like that when younger. We basically only traveled to family or rented homes where we could control everything and cook at home and sleep at sleep times. Once the youngest dropped naps and gained some bedtime flexibility we branched out. Each time you have another child you reset the clock. We are finally now looking at international travel with an 11 and 14 year old.

You see all these amazing trips on social media. People aren’t posting pics of the meltdowns, the hard parts, the waiting outside a restaurant to be seated parts. What people post is not reality. I had a very challenging trip recently, although there were some highlights. Only posted the highlights. No one would have any idea.

We’ve done some travel with our three young kids. We brought grandparents to help. Without parents I think we’ve only done day trips.

You go back in time, stop after your first, and travel the world with your little side kick. Or wait until the baby isn’t a napping toddler anymore.

We bring our nanny.

The people that I know that do "amazing" trips with little kids have help. Their very active parents/inlaws come along on the trip--so there is a 2:1 adult:child ratio.

You just do it…. Bring snacks, bring entertainment, be flexible & be willing to tolerate things not going perfectly. We spent a week in Europe when mine were 6 & 1.5. Sure, the toddler was up super late because of the time zone change, etc, but it was worth it for us. We did lots of domestic travel as well. My parents never stopped traveling when my siblings and I were born/little either. People just make it work.
That said, traveling with little kids isn’t mandatory. Just wait until their older if you don’t want to travel now.

Assume three factors play into this:
- some kids are easier going than others.
- most people have less than three kids
- some adults have higher tolerance for kid chaos and lousy trips.

We didn’t do a ton of traveling when DS was younger, but he was an only, and he was extremely flexible (eg compared to your kids, life went on without a nap, he would never have flipped out in a restaurant, he had the endurance of a champ etc). But DH and I have limited tolerance for stress, so the whole idea of having any inconvenience at all never seemed to appeal to us. I mean, the point of vacationing is to relax, right? And DS has fairly severe adhd, so even though he was super flexible, he was crazy high energy which meant we had to be high energy too.

In light of all that, we visited my parents beach home a lot when he was young, and went to Europe for a month once, and had done family trips here and there, and all were pretty easy but we didn’t have any interest in doing anything more chaotic than that.

Mine weren’t really that easy, but I love travel so we just dealt with it. It’s just parenting somewhere else and in hindsight I am glad we did travel with them when they were little because it was often more enjoyable than traveling with teenagers.

Mine were so easy once you totally disrupted the routine by changing everything up - the way going someplace new, sleeping in a hotel and eating in restaurants do. But you have to bite the bullet and try it so you can figure out what works for you.

Crossing times zones is easier than you think. You can adjust your normal schedule an hour or two, or if you go further, you either add a nap or subtract one- depending on the direction.

I find getting apartments easier or, at least hotels with breakfast, makes things easier. The other is being prepared with snacks and hydrate hydrate hydrate.

You can start small by renting a house on the beach, lake or mountainside.

You don’t.

I mean you could, but it doesn’t seem worth it to do a big trip where some or all things could go wrong. Wait a few more years — things change.

The only trip I can imagine would fit with the parameters you described are a few days at a local (DE or maybe NJ beach). The drive isn’t overwhelming and depending on your budget you could stay really close to the beach to accommodate schedules/ potty breaks etc. and most of the places do take in food so you could prep for that ( or buy food at the grocery store to prepare.

Remember, this too shall pass. You will travel again and experience the joy of exposing your kids to new places, foods, and cultures. But all of that is generally easier to do post potty training and dropping the nap.

I see all of these amazing trips parents take with their young kids and I just don’t get how they do it. My kids are 2, 5 and 7. Theoretically we could do it with the two older ones but traveling with the 2 year old sounds like a special sort of hell. He naps from 1-3 and goes to bed at 7:30ish. If he doesn’t get enough sleep he is a terrorist. Also my kids are super schedule driven and need to eat a specific times. If a restaurant is running behind they would just all start going crazy because they are hungry.

Basically my kids don’t go with the flow and I can’t imagine traveling with them. We only really do day trips or traveling to family houses in the US. Crossing time zones is even worse. I have never done that with them.