In my last post, I detailed my (mostly) successful experience flying alone with my two young children, which went much better than my first attempt. If you’re flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers, let me share a few ideas about how to best set your family up for success.

Like I said in the last post, meltdowns on a flight often have a lot to do with luck. Still, I feel it’s good to prepare and set yourself for the lowest probability of meltdown. Here are seven suggestions I’d make to help making flying alone with preschoolers more manageable. As always, would love to hear your thoughts in the comments! If you hear echoes of the experience I shared in my last post, it’s because I’m not only a spokesperson for these ideas, I’m also a customer.

If you’d like to support the blog, I’ve indicated when I’ve added my Amazon affiliate link for certain products in the post (well, just one), would appreciate it if you used it. You can always find other travel products I recommend on my family travel gear page.

Seven ideas to make flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers more manageable

1. Pick a time to fly that works for your child
2. Pack light
3. Make life easy on the ground
4. Don’t stress out about the nap
5. Make sure your kids are fed
6. Break your flight down into twenty minute segments
7. Practice, practice, practice at home

1. Pick a time to fly that works for your child

First and foremost, I’d say pick a flight time that best sets yourself up for success. Yes, you’ll save a ton of money flying at 6 AM or 9 PM, but is that worth potential disaster? This rings especially true if your travel puts you alone with multiple young children, like my latest trip.

Like I said above, I enjoy traveling mid-morning. I can wake the kids up normal time, and we can either have lunch on the plane or when we land. Others know their kids will nap fine on the plane (either through experience or because they get consistent naps in car seats). If that’s the case, you can travel after lunch and have your kids nap on the plane. This worked like gangbusters for my oldest daughter, but my son doesn’t nap well on planes so I’ve adjusted.

Know your child and know when they will be at their best. To me, it’s super worth the premium to pay extra to fly accordingly.

Corollary my family and I use: Avoid connections if you can. Every layover just presents another opportunity for things to go wrong.

2. Pack light

Like most parents, I tend to worry about everything. This leads to a tendency to overpack – extra jackets, twice the amount of clothes needed, sunscreen, medicine for every disease known to child, etc. I can be guilty of this, but I work very hard to pack light, it just makes the airplane part of travel so much easier.

That means I only brought the essentials to Florida plus:

• 1 extra set of clothes
• Medicine
• Ponchos (it’s Florida and they’re light)
• Swimwear
• Diapers (I ended up having extra room)
• Entertainment for the kids (coloring books, tablet which I forgot, etc.)

So in the end, I ended up with one carry-on sized suitcase (which I checked, more on that later), one adult backpack, one kids backpack, one stroller, and one shoulder bag (like a tote) for food.

That meant except for the short distance from the car to the check in desk, I could always have one hand on the stroller and one hand on my older child. That not only provided convenience, but I also didn’t have to worry about losing anyone in the crowded airport.

3. Make life easy on the ground

So why did I check in my bag? Because of Disney’s Magical Express, which delivers your luggage straight to your room. In general, I’m a believer in making life easy for yourself on the ground at your destination at the least, at both departure and destination if possible. I didn’t have to worry about my suitcase and I just got my kids on the bus and was at Coronado Springs in an hour (though again, we definitely got very lucky this time around, it can take up to two hours).

Becky Pokora of sightDOING.net expressed a similar idea on Episode 75 of the Saverocity Observation Deck podcast. Towards the end of the podcast she mentioned she almost always hires a car at her destination just so she can mostly guarantee she’ll get to her lodging with as little stress as possible. When you save a lot of money on travel via hacking, you can afford to splurge a little to make life easier on the ground. In my mind, this goes double when you’re flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers.

4. Don’t stress out about the nap

Yes, most toddlers and preschoolers need a nap. They also need to assert themselves and their independence. In my opinion, fighting with your toddler about napping on a plane isn’t worth it and may even have the opposite effect. I’m sure you have fought with your child about napping at home, imagine doing it in a very public, very confined cylindrical tube 30,000 feet in the air.

Some kids will be self aware enough and decide they want to sleep themselves (my daughter). Others will just never sleep and end up overtired the next day (my son). Some kids will eventually get so overtired they flip out for a time until they eventually pass out in your arms inside the lavatory (both my kids).

I liken this to calling the bank when you get “pending” for your credit card, which I no longer do. If you start insisting your child take a nap on the plane, you’re inviting them to throw a tantrum early. Yes, they may eventually throw a tantrum if you don’t make them take a nap, but your insisting gives them two opportunities to do that instead of just one.

I’m sure many people disagree with me, and that’s fine. I’ve just found stressing about the nap not to be worth it. On both flights, I calmly asked my son if he wanted to take a nap, he said no. I replied by trying to reason with a two year old about the importance of rest, he said no again, and I just let it go. Luckily he didn’t tantrum and we survived.

Obviously, this strategy needs to be adjusted for longer flights, but we managed for five and a half hours including the delay, and you can too.

5. Make sure your kids are fed

Do I love bringing macaroni and cheese (with broccoli mixed in) onto a plane? I most decidedly do not. But I knew Jetblue wouldn’t even have “real” food for sale on my flight, so I needed some sort of substantial sustenance for the kids. If I hadn’t woken up so late I would have added ham.

The two most consistent reasons my kids, and I think most kids, get cranky are still lack of sleep and hunger. While I’ve established I try not to stress out too much about the former, I definitely prepare for the latter. I reserved an entire carry on bag for snacks, the macaroni and cheese, milk, etc. I even bought easy mac for the ride home. Spend that extra time and use up that extra space to make sure your kids won’t be hungry on the plane, and ideally, not just loading up on chips and pretzels. Trail mixes are great for protein if your kids will eat them.

I brought treats for my son (aforementioned Reese’s Pieces), and doled them out over time. Another very effective technique for toddlers is putting tiny snacks into a pill box (Amazon affiliate link) – it really drags out the whole process!

6. Break your flight down into twenty minute segments

I got this idea from a fellow writer at Traveling Dad, Jeff Bogle (from the fun parenting/travel blog Out with the Kids). I recommend checking out this post about breaking your flight into twenty minute segments (despite him disagreeing with me about the nap time thing!).

The basic premise: bring activities, food, entertainment, etc. that can be doled out to your toddler in 20 minute segments (minimum). Whether it be coloring books, a TV show, or a snack in a pillbox, prepare to have a variety of activities for your child.

The idea sounds simple and it is! I’m not a very organized person but I still managed to get on that plane (with very little luggage) with over ten twenty minute activities. My activities included the aforementioned pill box, a coloring book, a sticker book, the mac and cheese, multiple TV shows, and more.

Mixing things up will prevent the kids from getting bored, and planning in this fashion will prepare you to entertain them on the trip even if you’re a bad planner (me). Bring some candy for yourself, too.

7. Practice, practice, practice at home

If you can’t handle your young kids at home, you’re certainly going to struggle up in the air. So if you don’t get put in 1 v multiple situations at home, put yourself in them. This goes double for whichever parent spends less time taking care of the kids.

Taking care of the kids alone at home obviously gives you a practical advantage. You get used to being outnumbered and the tightwire act that ensues. You also get the experience of not having a safety net to back you up. I guess you have the kindness of strangers but you potentially have that on the plane too.

But probably the best reason to take care of the kids alone, aside from making your partner happy and more relaxed, is you get to know how you parent the kids. To state the obvious, this knowledge will be invaluable when you’re in a solo situation with the kids. Especially one that has the potential to be high stress.

Also, hanging out with the kids alone is fun. Practice!

Final Thoughts

There’s no surefire way to ensure flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers will be smooth, but there’s lots of ways to reduce stress. These are tips that have worked for me. But every family and every child is different, as you no doubt know if you are a parent.

So, I’d love to hear it: what works for you and your kids when you’re traveling alone with no backup? Or if you haven’t tried it yet, what scares you the most about traveling alone with your little kids? Let me know in the comments!

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About a year ago, I told myself my attempt at flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers probably sufficiently broke me to the point of avoiding traveling alone with the kids. I jest. But here we are, a year later, and I decided to have another go, this time taking an entire vacation with my older two children (5 and 2.5). I thought I’d just share a bit of my experience and some rudimentary tips for trying to survive being alone with small children in a small cylindrical tube. 

Related: Tips for flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers

A couple quick notes before I get into it. First, I chose Disney as a location because I thought it would be easier. A Disney hotel reservation offers a lot of benefits that make life easier when you get on the ground. I figured with stuff like Magical Express, I wouldn’t have to worry about hauling luggage or a rental car on the ground. Plus, at a rate of $145/night at Coronado Springs, a moderate hotel (that I could pay for with points too) it seemed like a no brainer. Also, I scheduled the trip to coincide with when my parents were visiting friends in Florida, which obviously helped a ton. They agreed to stay at Coronado as well and spent some time with us in the parks.

Finally, props to anyone who has done this, especially those who have to sometimes. A friend of mine took her two under four year olds all the way from Thailand back to the States. My mom likes to remind me she did the same with my sister and me to Hong Kong. If you want to fly alone with young kids or are in a situation where you have to – know that people have tread that path before and excelled at it. Or at least survived it.

My experience flying alone with two preschoolers

Woke up late, oops

I booked an 8:30 AM flight outbound and a 10:30 AM return because I’ve decided that for short domestic flights (< 3 hours) it’s best for my kids to avoid naptime. Like anti-clockwork, my alarm didn’t go off at 6:00 AM so my wife woke me up in a panic at 7:00 AM. My wife and I tag teammed to make some mac and cheese and we made it out the door by 7:15.

We got to the airport by around 7:40, even with rush hour traffic, and dropped our bags off at check in. Since I had two kids and only two hands, I didn’t want to deal with rolling a carry-on through the airport. (Alas, I think that will be par for the course now until all three are old enough to carry their own stuff).

We found a cute little play area in Terminal C where we hung out before heading to the gate. After arrival at the gate we of course had to return to the play area where we left one of our dolls. I like to board late when I’m alone with the kids because they’ll be on the plane long enough, so we hung around the terminal and were some of the last people to board.

A bonus two hours on the plane

Again, like anti-clockwork, when we boarded the plane in Boston, we happened to be in the middle of a mild snow and in freezing temperatures. Jetblue in Boston taxis to a de-icing pad instead of de-icing at the gate. That combined with a bunch of other delays that I can’t even really remember meant we did not have wheels up until 11:00 AM.

2.5 hours on the plane while the flight was still on the ground! To be perfectly honest, I worried a lot about whether my kids (well, mostly the two year old) would lose it at any minute. Oh, and in my rush out the door I forgot our tablet. So how did we survive?

Well, for starters, free TV on Jetblue helped a lot. Between that and my phone (and multiple portable chargers), the kids mostly stayed entertained. I also came equipped with a bunch of coloring books, snacks, and the aforementioned mac and cheese.

We spent a lot of those two hours talking about planes, why they get delayed, the whole deicing situation, watching TV, coloring a little, watching TV, eating candy, watching TV, etc. I refused to bust out the mac and cheese because I knew I had to pace us. Finally, we were on the runway and taking off, and I did a little cartwheel in my head.

A bag lunch and surviving the rest of the flight

I had originally intended the mac and cheese to be lunch for the kids at the time of our descent (which should have been around 12:30 PM). But after they survived the long delay and we took off, I decided that we’d eat lunch right then and there, at 11:15. The kids mostly held it together the whole way.

Obviously, avoiding meltdowns has a ton to do with luck. My son had been quite difficult the week before we left so I was pretty nervous, having read a bunch of stories about how all the kids who get kicked off the plane are in terrible twos or threes. Yikes. If I could point to one thing besides luck that saved my bacon, it was a decision early on in the delay to dole out ONE Reese’s Piece to my son every twenty minutes. He bought into it and I managed to get through the whole flight giving him only a little bit more than a Halloween sized pack.

A stress free transfer

When we finally landed, having that Disney hotel reservation really paid off. We just waited for our stroller, squad goals-ed our way through the airport to the Magical Express, got onto the bus (more TV) and went straight to the hotel. An hour later we were in our hotel room, two and a half hours later we were in Pandora at Animal Kingdom. Disney transportation doesn’t always work smoothly, but when it does it is straight up spectacular. 

Final Thoughts

Did part of me root for a meltdown to happen so I’d have something more interesting to write about? I’ll never tell! But hopefully this post reassures anyone out there flying alone with preschoolers that even when things go wrong, you can have a great flight! In my next post, I’ll write about my best ideas for minimizing the risk of having a bad flight experience with your little kids. Until then!

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