Flying with toddler: Preventing boredom on board

Sometime during the handful of trips taken since my daughter moved from the infant stage to being a running, climbing and very active toddler, I decided that I detest red-eye flights. An overnight leg to the East Coast last month resulted in a semi-rested child but an extremely exhausted mommy. Some families swear by red-eyes; to me, they are torture.

But flying during the waking hours presents its own challenges — mostly, how do we keep our little traveler entertained in our seats and prevent breakaway bolts toward the cockpit? One mom I know brings sticker books, which keeps her 19-month-old contentedly sticking and unsticking for hours. I tried this on our last flight, to Atlanta, and it worked for about five minutes. We then turned our attention to the emergency card in the seat pocket. My daughter, Siona, was riveted … for five minutes.

We flipped through the in-flight magazine and catalog and another couple of magazines, and we ate some crackers. We read Siona’s favorite new book “Bus Stops” at least eight times — each time with new perspectives gained, of course.

I introduced two new, never-before-seen-by-her toys, which whiled away a little more time. The neighbor in the next seat played a few rounds of peekaboo with her. The row behind us then took over with that game. We semi-quietly (OK, it wasn’t that quiet) sang a few songs.

Think all of the above got us through our four-hour-plus flight? No, it got us through about 40 minutes. And during all of this, my arms got a workout from pulling her back repeatedly from the aisle. We repeated the aforementioned activities again and again and somewhere in there was a nap (both of us) as well.

But next time, I’d like to be armed with a greater arsenal of activity options (and call me old-fashioned, but I’m not quite ready to start popping DVDs onto the laptop for her yet). Can you help?

If you have flown with an active toddler, how do you keep her or him entertained on board? Any tips to share with me and other readers?

- Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Photo: Susan Derby]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 9:11 am by Susan Derby and is filed under Airline travel, Family & Kids, Global, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.