Top 5 Strategies for Flying Internationally with Kids

Tip number one is to pack smart, not heavy.

So when we travel, any of my friends that know me well knows that I am a light packer.

Part of this is honestly because packing heavy and, like, having to navigate and wrangle a lot of luggage alongside wrangling small children is a recipe for anxiety for me.

I don't love to have a lot of things.

But I do wanna speak and acknowledge that there are some people that feel quite differently.

Having all of their things is what makes them feel more secure.

So I want to just speak that into existence of I'm aware of that dichotomy there of just two different types of people.

But I'm not saying you can't pack the things that you wanna pack, but be smart about what you pack and try to limit the amount of luggage and the weight, especially with little ones and things that they personally are carrying.

So when we travel internationally, for example, I'll use our Japan trip that we took last year as an example, we packed one large suitcase that we checked.

We packed one carry-on that had, like, emergency items that we would want to grab, or if for some reason our luggage got lost, we would have access to some basic essentials.

And then other than that, each of our kids that was old enough to carry one just packed a backpack with their own individual items.

So if they're really little, um, like a baby or a toddler that's not big enough to carry their own backpack, I just put stuff in, like, a diaper bag backpack, and I kind of combine the two of us.

But otherwise, each of our kids gets their own backpack, and we help them strategically pack it so it's not overpacked and we aren't dealing with a lot of whininess from kids being tired from carrying heavy backpacks, and then adults just end up throwing extra backpacks on their shoulder.

That is not what we want here.

So what actually goes inside of these backpacks? For us, it's gonna be a few basic snacks.

We don't pack a ton because there's always going to be snacks available on the plane.

These long-haul flights, in addition to the meals they serve, they normally have snacks in the galley that you can go get, and it's such a fun way to begin exposing your kids to different flavors, especially if you're flying an international airlines.

We've flown Japan Airlines.

We're about to fly Cathay Pacific.

We've flown Air France or British Airways, and each one has a slightly different flavor, which can be really fun.

But beyond that, we pack activity books.

Each kid normally has at least one activity book.

Think sticker books, like sticker by number or color by number or crosswords or Sudoku or any other, like, puzzle book, things that will kind of keep your kids busy.

We normally have at least one sketch pad and some drawing supplies, pencils, colored pencils, some kind of fidget toy, either like a fidget spinner or something like a Rubik's Cube.

And then we'll have-- sometimes for our younger ones, we'll have little magnet tins, like silly face magnet tins or things like that, and like a pack of cards or something to play card games with their siblings.