International travel with children

[IIOY]

My FIL has offered to take us to England to visit family. We have two children, who will be barely 6 and almost 5 when we plan to go.

My kids are well-behaved overall, but the trip will be relatively brief (5 days or so) and I worry about sleep/time change issues for the flight over and general crankiness because of these things. The brevity of the trip means the kids won't have much time to acclimate before being jolted with another big time change.

I realize people do this all the time with their kids and was wondering what experiences others have had. My H thinks they will be pretty adaptable; I think they will be a hot mess. I've traveled internationally quite a bit and it always takes me a solid 48 hours to feel good.

Thanks for any thoughts.

[peachdragon]

I don't have experience with this, but i do believe that the younger you are, the less you are affected by jet lag... It's gotten harder for me to bounce back as I've gotten older.

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[sratsey]

Kids will adapt. My son went to England (also family, where are you going?) when he was 3 and Greece when he was 4. At 6 he went to Mallorca and my daughter, then 2, was also on the trip.

Children adapt amazingly well. Seriously, I don't even think they ever experienced the jet lag that me and H did. They stay awake when stuff is happening and then go to sleep when it gets dark. I really can't recall it ever being the mess that I thought it would be. Even the plane trip was shockingly fine. At 6 and 5 I'm sure it'll be okay.

Have you already booked a flight? One thing I DO recall was out trip to Greece. I booked the flight in the evening with the idea that DS would sleep. Then our plane was delayed and instead of boarding at 8:30 we didn't board until almost 11:30. That could have gone either way. He was fine, thank god...but I think if he had been tired at that hour, it could have been a disaster if he wasn't able to fall asleep on the plane. Because of this, I only book flight during times when my children should be awake. They play and they watch movies and I don't have to worry about them being tired.

[slug*bug]

Especially if it's a direct flight, I think it's doable. Where we've run into trouble is when we have a weird connection and don't start the overseas leg until after the kid(s) are already overtired/strung out. It only happened once, but it was memorable.

Our kids are younger, but they do adapt relatively quickly (ours is usually an 8 hour difference and they're usually fully adjusted 4-5 days in, but it's only usually rough for a day or so.)

That said, the adjustment isn't horrible, even for our 13 mo. old. I don't like to do it regularly, but for a once in a lifetime trip (which it sounds like you want to take?) I think you could swing it.

[CloudBee]

I think you should always take advantage of travel. Go!

[Deleted]

We do this trip regularly.

This last time DS3 never adapted to the time change. Honestly it was fine, it just mean that he went to bed at midnight and slept unil 9am. THere are worse things.

I'm not sure where you are, but the best flights for us are out of Chicago or Dallas vs. flying through NYC/DC. The flights are longer so we can sleep for a longer chunk than the 2 hours max I used to get when we did the Boston/Heathrow flight

[dutchgirl678]

We went for 10 days recently from the west coast to the Netherlands. On the way there, the kids hardly had any jet lag (they are 4 and 1). But they both got sick and were out for a few days. They slept well at night though. After we got back it took the youngest one a good week to get back on his schedule but the older one only a few days. I'd say go for it.