Traveling with a toddler on a long-haul flight? Here’s how to keep your little one happy, entertained, and calm on a 12-hour journey—without losing your sanity.
I’m not really a seasoned traveler, I don’t think. I went on a trip to Europe once before I had a kid and was able to take Xanax to sleep on the plane and drink my way through the jet lag at dive bars. You can’t do that with a kid, so I was terrified heading into this trip. Most of this post was written on my phone during the last four hours of my flight, so if that doesn’t prove that I nailed the toddler flight thing then nothing does;
I’m writing this with 4 hours left on my 12 hour return flight. My baby boy turns 3 in just over a week, I can’t believe it. My cousin had an absolutely darling destination wedding in Portugal. Leading up to our flight out I was googling every toddler guide I could find. Some had hilarious advice like leave your kid with a stranger or flight attendant and go have a beer in the bathroom. Everything else was a reiteration of the same thing, I won’t bother spelling it out here, you’ve probably already read it.
I’m going to let out a stream of consciousness into a keep note note and go back and add affiliate links later to try and profit of my personal experience. So far I haven’t made any money, but if you click on a link to make a purchase I can make a skim some pennies off the top at no cost to you.
Here is a quick table of contents of there is something specific you’d like to jump to
- Picking seats
- Things to bring for entertainment
- Snacks
- Comfort
- Travel Stroller
I do a terrible job of striking a balance between comfort and practicality. I always want to err on the side of having everything imaginable so that I’m never stuck needing something I don’t have. But the last thing I want is to be stuck checking all my bags bags because I over packed, or having so much stuff that I can’t find what I need without unpacking my entire bag.
Picking Your Seats
So obviously, the easiest way I would imagine would be to fly first class, but I’ve never done that before because I’m broke. Pretty much this entire trip has been put on my credit card so economy seats seemed like a good idea. We flew TAP Portugal and the rows were two deep on the windows with 4 across the middle aisle. Like every other airline they have managed to make the seats smaller and cram as many people into the tube of demons as they can get away with.
I probably didn’t need to pay for my kids seat, because I’m pretty sure they have to sit us together, but I did anyway for peace of mind. Against all advice I found online, I booked the two seats farthest to the back of the plane, I didn’t want to have to worry about my kid shaking the tray of the person behind me. and I booked my sister’s seat in front of my son’s seat so if he got a little rough with the tray or kicked the seat she could turn around and tell him to stop and it wouldn’t be weird.
When I was 12, our whole family flew down to Mexico for our uncles wedding. My youngest sister was sitting next to me in the aisle seat, she was probably 6 or 7 at the time. I don’t remember what led up to the event but I’ve been told she was barely moving in her seat, when the man in front of her turned around and yelled at her. None of us will ever forget his face, he was bald and had red bloodshot eyes. Afterwards, my sister was convinced he was the devil. Which a televangelist later confirmed.
All that to say my goal in picking our seats was to avoid subjecting my sweet innocent angel to the ire of a demon, devil, jinn or whatever non human asshole may happen to be seated nearby.
We got lucky on the ride out, he was super excited, the TV’s on the back of the plane were fascinating to him, his auntie was in the row in front of us with an empty seat next to her so he could move back and forth between us and we didn’t need to break into any of our plane present until the flight back.
Things/activities to bring for entertainment
This little water painting thing was a total hit. They have a little paint brush you fill with water and when the cardboard image gets wet the color is revealed, when it dries it goes back to being blank. I picked out one with trains and excavators since that’s my kids jam, but they have all different kinds.
Initially he was being a little rough with it because there wasn’t enough water coming out and it was drying up and the color was disappearing before he moved on to the next part of the picture. When our food came I kept the little cup and poured in little splash of water for him to dip the brush. That made a huge difference.
He likes to paint by grinding the bristles into the page, at one point I tried to show him a proper brush stroke technique to which he replied, “no mom, I’m painting” in a condescending tone that implied I was suggesting he do something other than paint with the brush.
It kept him busy for well over an hour until it was clearly approaching nap time. At that point he spilled the water on me twice before just looking at the page and dumping the water straight onto it.
I decided to put my foot down, which was dumb because why get mad over a spilled teaspoon of water? The result was two angry people, one of them an illogical toddler. In hindsight, a gentle redirect was the obviously wider choice, but we both needed a nap.
PROTIP: Don’t cry over spilt milk, or water.
I got one of these seat extenders, and it wasn’t the life saver that parents seemed to rave about in the comments but it did make it a little easier for him to fall asleep and once he moved onto my lap I was actually able to put my feet up on it which gave me another position to rotate through since each position on a plane only ever seems to get you like 30 minutes of comfort max, maybe an hour if you find a really good one. Actually, the best part about it was that it kept the seat clean. My kids a messy eater and got crumbs and chocolate all over it. It was nice to be able to just roll it all up and leave. Its machine washable so that’s cool.
Anyway, to quell the tantrum I started by making an issue out of the water cup, I rapid fire opened the remaining two presents. The workbook was a total fail, why would he want to trace letters when he was completely content with his painting? It did, however, make a great place mat later on. Maybe I should have started with that and set the bar low. I had considered a sticker book but it felt too risky, after 11 hours on a plane they’d have been on EVERYTHING.
But these magnetic blocks. were exciting enough to calm him down. Being so close to nap time though nothing was going to change the fact that everything is always wrong when you’re tired.
At home, his favorite new toy has been these magnetic tiles. However, part of what he loves about them is the satisfying way they collapse when he kicks, smashes or otherwise destroys his creations. Fortunately, his first attempt at block destruction got him a sharp look from one of the flight attendants and I was able to scare him into behaving the rest of the flight by warning him that he didn’t want to make the flight attendant angry again. Honestly can’t believe it worked, but I’m grateful it did. At one point he said something like, “If I crash these the flight attendant will get mad at me and then I would get mad at her.”
PRO TIP: dress your kid in a suit for the flight, everyone will be swooning over your little charmer. My cousin’s wedding was the night before and he fell asleep on the dance floor while my dad was holding him. Our cab to the airport picked us up at 6am and it didn’t feel right sacrificing his precious sleep to change him out of a cheap suit that is basically sweatpants and he’ll grow out of before needing to wear again. He was getting compliments left and right, and I think it made up for his mom looking like a total degenerate.
I had avoided anything with small pieces except the magnetic blocks because I was worried about losing them. The flight attendants were also so sweet and gave us a gift bag with games and eye masks. It had a little tic tac toe game (similar to this one) in it which he loved. I tried to teach him the rules, but he just wanted to put the pieces in and take them out, which was fine by me.
I’m brought a tablet for him, so I got him a pair of headphones for the flight. I also teach, and headphones come in handy for the classroom so I got this box of bulk headphones so that I could bring 2 for him and put the rest in my classroom. My thinking was that he’s likely to destroy one pair, so its good to have backup and sure enough, a couple hours into the flight he ripped the ear pads off. I also didn’t want to have to deal with confusing the bluetooth if I also have my headphones connected to something, plus the cord made it easy to find the headphones the many, many times he dropped them. In the end, we never once turned on the tablet the entire trip, but he did use the headphones to watch the in flight movies. But Type C adapters are useful in case you need to plug old school headphone jacks into a new school device.
If you have a less destructive kid, they have SO many cute headphones for kids on Amazon.
- The Bandou store has cute headband style headphones shark, koala, dragon and unicorn
- CozyPhones has some headband style pandas and foxes as well
- These over the hear headphones by Snug Store come in a ton of cute prints and lets you have multiple kids plug in and listen without needing a splitter.
- And these headphones have ears, very cute
Snacks
Bring snacks, the meals are far apart and my kid was NOT into the airplane food at all. Which essentially meant I got two meals, and I was okay with that, but he is supposed to eat too, or so I’m told. My mom had made us these cute little “skycuterie” dishes for the flight out but the way back all I had was a pastel de nata style croissant I had gotten on my way through the airport and a packet of ramen noodles. The ramen noodles were a huge hit, except they made a huge mess. Dried noodle crumbs every.
I have no real advice for this portion other than to bring snacks.
Comfort
I didn’t remember liking my neck pillow and didn’t bring one on the way out. Huge mistake. We picked some up in the Lisbon airport on the way out and they saved my life. They make them way better than they used to where the back is flat (like this one) so it doesn’t push your head forward all stupid. I was getting something close to a good nap when someone walking to the bathroom knocked my knee off it’s carefully balanced perch on the seat in front of me and I never got comfortable again.
Overall, I such at sleeping on planes and have pretty bad sciatica so the best advice I had found online was don’t even try. So I didn’t try, but dozed off for maybe an hourish, and was very happily surprised I got any sleep at all. I also found out they make these wild looking neck pillows that look like a midieval torture device, but hold your head to the back of the seat so it doesn’t slump forward. Perhaps one day I will try it.
But the best part of having to buy my kid a seat was that he slept on my lap and I got to turn sideways to put my feet up and sleep against the window.
Travel Stroller
Since I knew I would already be carrying around too many bags for me and the kiddo, the last thing I needed was to be trying to balance a kid on top of that while rushing around the airport. We also thought we were going to be renting a a fiat, so the giant jogger I’ve grown accustomed too was not going to cut the mustard (is that the saying? Sounds dumb). The rental places ended up giving us a bigger all electric car
Ultimately, I settled on the Ingenuity3D Mini Convenience Stroller because it packs down small and had tall enough handles that I won’t be hunched over trying to push the stroller through the airport. There is nothing in the world more infuriating than leaning over and having your purse fall off your shoulder onto the crook of your elbow. I’m starting to feel my blood pressure rise just thinking about it.
PROTIP: If you are a foreigner renting an all electric vehicle in Portugal you need to download the MIIO or EVIO apps! If you download the app for whatever brand charger you stop at, you won’t be able to create an account without a Portguese phone number. We almost got stranded in Nazare until I found this post explaining what I needed to do. Thank you internet stranger.
The travel stroller was great, rode it almost exclusively over cobblestone and handled it like a champ. For $60 I’m very pleased with it, it folds down slim and most importantly I didn’t have to bend over awkwardly to push it. I’m 5’7 and that was really the only thing I cared about after size.
Since it has two handles instead of a bar it was really hard to push with one hand. but I was able to hook my suitcase over the handle and push them both together which was awesome and elimated the need for one handed pushing for the most part, except when I wanted to hold a coffee or something.
If you’ve got some real fuck you money laying around I can only imagine the UPPAbaby Vista V3 is pure luxury for you and your kiddo. Its on sale right now for $999.99, down from a whopping $1200. If you got the money though, please purchase that through my affiliate link, it’d pay for half the stroller my broke ass ended up buying. The Bugaboo Butterfly is slightly more reasonable, but still lightweight and luxurious.
Final Thoughts
If you’re wondering how to survive a long haul flight with a toddler, it is important to remember that, at the end of the day, you probably know your kid better than anyone else and all the advice you read online is trying to sell you something. Just because all these things worked for me, doesn’t mean they will work for you. In fact, it probably won’t because me and my kid are just better than everyone else and that probably includes you.
But I’m not perfect, and the jet lag nearly drove me to actual insanity. My kid slept like a champ on the red eye out, but that meant that by the time we landed, got the rental car and drove out to Fatima I was barely able to keep my eyes open. when we got to our hotel room anytime I closed them for more than three seconds I fell asleep. I thought I could just get a quick cat nap in before dinner but my toddler had other plans and it stretched out into like three hours of me falling asleep for 2 to 10 minutes at a time and my toddler waking me up by hitting, kicking, kissing and/or headbutting me before I just gave up on ever feeling like a human again and forced him into the shower with me for a reset.
Final protip for you, it takes showers like 10 mintues to heat up in Portugal. Every single time I just gave up on hot water after 3 minutes and got into the cold shower. Then right as I was finishing up the water would get hot.
Bon voyage, peons!