Flight Club: 3 Tips For Less Stressful Flights With Kids

Sorry to the hopeful mamas out there looking for a magical hack but there’s no point in pretending otherwise: flying with kids is always going to be stressful. It doesn’t matter how good your flight checklist is, how organised you are with your bundles of activities and snacks and how many times you’ve asked your kids to run from one boarding gate to another to tire them out.

Things will still happen to stress you out — food will get dropped as soon as you hand it over, toys will disappear into another dimension and ordinarily calm children will suddenly develop unexpected and loud opinions about seat comfort, fellow passengers and the physics of flight. And you know what? That’s just how things are going to be. Join the Flight Club, but instead of a “no-talking” rule, we’ve got plenty to say.

It’s always been rather amusing that most of the articles out there about stress-free flights (or stress-free travelling with kids in general) simply focus on items that keep kids occupied or otherwise asleep. While keeping kids busy can be helpful, I’ve found that the stress of travelling isn’t just about that but all the little details that come with flying with kids that parents have to anticipate or keep an eye on — bathroom breaks, making sure kids are eating or sleeping and so on. It’s like regular life but worse because you’re not on home ground.

Most parents are so preoccupied thinking about making long-haul flights easier for kids that they neglect to consider ways of making the flight easier for someone equally important: themselves. If that’s something that you relate to, read on for some very realistic tips on how to make flying less stressful for you, not just the kids. Trust us, they will be fine.

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Tip #1 for less stressful flying with kids — visualise the worst

We know how useful roleplaying can be to explain how things work (or ought to work) to kids. Roleplaying check-ins, what to do at the boarding gate, or how to behave during the flight can be more enlightening to kids than just giving them directions ahead of time, especially if flying is a new experience. Even kids who’ve flown before won’t mind a fun refresher, especially if they get to pretend to be cabin crew or any other role where they can delight in ordering you around — side tip: pretending to make a mistake and getting kids to correct you (trust me, they won’t need any encouraging) is a good way of helping them remember the right way of doing things.

And just as imagination helps kids navigate an uncertain future, imagination can help you navigate potential stresses. Use mental visualisation by thinking of worst-case scenarios (it’s like the opposite of elite athlete visualisation). Mine would be me with a heavy period and my kid with a nosebleed and both of us needing to pee really badly and all bathrooms have queues 10 deep — true nightmare material, isn’t it? In fact, if you’ve travelled with kids before, you probably have been in a worst-case scenario already, and you know what? You survived! Everyone did.

Before your flight, visualise all the things that can go wrong (and have gone wrong) and remember: you will get through it (assuming aliens and other apocalyptic events aren’t involved, and even still). You shouldn’t anticipate that each trip will be the worst flight ever, but being prepared isn’t just about putting measures into place to deal with eventualities like bathroom issues, it also means allowing yourself to accept that things won’t always go perfectly — and if they go better than you feared, that’s a huge plus!

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Tip #2 for less stressful flying with kids — choose your travel companion wisely

There are just some people you should put on your no-fly companion list, and while it varies from individual to individual, my experience has been that siblings will suddenly use the moment you’re trying to stop your kid from smearing cheese all over his palms to remind you of the family vacation where you offered to help unwrap a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese and half of it was gone by the time you handed it to her.

Although traveling with someone extremely organised and helpful can help with logistics, that’s not as ideal as it seems on the surface. My husband is all those things, but he suffers from instant nap syndrome (and is a deep sleeper to boot), which means that as soon as he’s buckled in, he’s lost to the world.

If you’ve accepted that things will inevitably go awry at some point, it’s more important to find someone who will, at worst, not stress you out even more and at best, be good at de-stressing you. That could mean anything from helping you laugh by pointing out the ridiculousness of certain situations, to getting in the weeds with you to distract your kids or stop them from doing that annoying thing you hate while you take a moment to breathe and remind yourself that all things pass.

Surprisingly, traveling with a family member who is just as chaotic as kids are can be a huge stress-buster. My mum never prepares for anything, which makes her the best companion when flying with kids because she doesn’t mind surprises like kids suddenly spilling their entire tray of food on their lap. Having her just shrug and not get upset over incidents like these can be very calming, although she still hasn’t explained why she wasn’t this mellow when I was a kid myself.

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Tip #3 for less stressful flying with kids — what happens on the plane stays on the plane

Yes, rules and consistency are important for kids and adults, but travel is a survival-mode situation, especially if we’re talking long-haul flights. Apart from rules around safety, basic manners and etiquette, all other rules should be negotiable. This is the time when you just have to make things easier for yourself. That means allowing kids to fall asleep watching videos for five straight hours – they can make up for brain rot with extra Maths lessons. It means not worrying when kids lose toys, crayons and paper – you can look for them after the plane has landed. It means not arguing with kids whether they’ve eaten enough – skipping a meal or two won’t turn them into feeble wraiths. Other rules that I’ve given up on include educational materials – it’s Captain Underpants all the way now – and I also don’t worry if things get lost or thrown out by accident. Everything I bring to the flight has duplicates and is meant to be disposable. I am no longer that parent tangled up in two blankets and a pillow leaning underneath my kid’s legs with my phone light on, hunting for a lost object underneath the seat in front of me.

The great thing about suspending rules for your family flight is that if you dangle this rare opportunity in front of your kids ahead of time, they’ll end up looking forward to the plane ride and being more cooperative about the things they have to do leading up to the trip (and even during the flight itself).

But more importantly, let’s not forget that the suspension of rules applies to you, too! I used to try to get work done on flights but I’ve now completely abandoned the rule of maximising all my spare time if I’m on a flight with kids. The constant interruptions made it impossible to get into the flow of work, and thinking about the things I wasn’t getting done only made me feel more anxious and stressed. If you’ve got an extensive beauty routine, it’s also okay to just do the basics — or not do them at all. Often, I just wipe my face, rub in a night cream, and slap on an essential oil patch. Our family dentist won’t be happy to read this but I’m pretty sure our teeth won’t explode into cavities from not brushing them once or twice.

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If you’re reading this article, there’s a chance you’ve already made a travel checklist and have all the gadgets and distractions for your kids. You might just be looking for one more hack or tip to make your trip stress-free but let me say it clearly once more: it’s impossible not to be stressed, but that’s fine and completely normal. No other mum is on a flight somewhere enjoying it like a spa day.

It’s just as okay to know that dealing with the stress that comes with flying with kids means doing things for yourself and not just the kids. Just get on that flight and don’t worry too much — that plane will land at some point!