AIBU to ask about long haul travel with young kids

[flyingwkids]

Posting for traffic.

I've been living and working in the UK for over a decade and don't make it back to NZ very often. With travel opening up again, I'm seriously considering taking my (British) DH and two children back to NZ for three weeks over Christmas this year.

They'll only be 5.5 and 2.5 years old.

Am I insane?

Any advice, tips? Would you break the trip up? Or go the full approx 32 hours, on three flights, in one go?

I've done this a few times. DC 2.5 years between them. If with DH I would do it no problem. Alone I wouldnt do it. I did 1 journey with baby and toddler and it was horrific.
We never stopped over, kids slept, ate and watched hours and hours of tv 🙈 but we made it. It's an effort though. At 5.5 that's a good age to travel the 2.5 year old may be more of a handful. We did lots of walking up and down, playcenter at airports etc. Lots of activities, new bits wrapped up, lots of stickers, crafts, cushions, snacks, pjs, teddies and you will be fine.

We went to Australia when dd was 2 and it was fine. We were lucky because she was always able to sleep anywhere and she didn't mind sitting still as long as she had plenty of adult attention. We just spent hours and hours with stories, stickers, colouring etc.

I think how easy or difficult flying longhaul with children is does depend on the individual children.

For us, the baby and toddler years were probably the easiest!

Thank you both for replying. My instinct is just to head straight through, but my husband thought it best to have a stopover. I just have visions of the kids having complete meltdowns trying to adjust to a new timezone more than once.

DD will be 5.5 and I think she'll be completely fine with a tablet (as she doesn't get it often) and stickers etc. DS could potentially be a handful as he is very active and doesn't watch any telly yet. But it is still 9 months away.

Yes that was why we didnt stop over. I imagined the dc bouncing off the walls of a hotel room whilst we tried to rest.... no one sleeping then just on to the next plane! My dc always struggle with time zones so I would just go with the flow, accept naps/ lack of for a week and get to NZ asap

I’ve done this a couple of times, first when youngest DC was 18 months and eldest almost 4 yrs. I’d say stick it out and do it in one go. My rationale like yours is that it won’t be restful with an overnight stop anyway at that age. Once they are older it’s different as you can chill in a hotel room and they can sleep or watch iPad etc independently. Just take each leg of the journey at a time and it will be great. Once there we found kids were super quick at getting over the jet leg if they stayed awake the first day. Good luck!

Not sure if one of your stops can be Singapore but there is a rooftop pool in one of the transit hotels within the airport that you can use. It’s about £10 each and to be honest isn’t an amazing pool but it did really break up a long transfer time for us.

I do the opposite of you as I’m in Australia but our family are back in the uk.
I’m a bad / fun mum on flights. Unlimited snacks, screen time and new things to play with (small lego sets, new colouring books etc). I thought the children would take advantage of it but they pretty much sleep the entire duration of the journey each time. Emirates, Garuda Indonesia and Singapore I find are the most family friendly.

On our very first flight back years ago, I was so worried about travelling with the children as the were younger and my husband was coming in on a different flight. So I booked business class with Emirates on a plane our eldest son was obsessed with. All of the children slept the entire journey, so I feel it was very much wasted money, because my children sleep even on the most basic airlines in the most uncomfortable seats. Must be the white noise and motion.

Good luck and try not to stress. Toddlers can be tricky but we were all one once.

I recommend flying straight through. Have done this flight more than once. We once made the mistake of stopping overnight and that just meant the kids never slept on either flight!! One of us was constantly walking with a child or making sure seats weren’t being kicked. At 5.5 ours were pretty easy. Just make sure they have headphones, something to watch and food. It’s harder with a 2.5 year old, but having an amazing holiday in NZ made it worthwhile

I'd break the trip up and try to get overnight flights, with a couple of day's break in between, for all of your sanity.

Go via LA on air new Zealand and pay for the sky bed in economy.

We took DC to LA that way and it was great we all got some sleep.

Thanks again for the replies, I'm starting to get excited that the trip will happen!

Ideally I'd wait until they were a bit older so they'd remember the trip, but my parents are aging so quickly now, and they've not met my youngest.

I'm definitely looking at Air NZ skycouch, but based on our dates it'll probably only be available for 1 out of 4 flights.

Any advice on taking DD out of school? It'd be either the last week of school in December, or the first week in January. I'm thinking January as there will be all the Christmas activities I wouldn't want her to miss out on.

@Usernameinsponeeded I definitely don't think that makes you a bad mum in any way at all! I reckon a good mum does what's needed so everyone survives!

As a teacher, I'd say take your dd out for the last week of December. Yes, she'll miss out on fun stuff but you'll be doing lots of other fun stuff with her.

She'll be missing more learning time if you go in January. Some parents think it doesn't matter in Reception or Year 1 but the early phonics and number are building blocks for later learning so it's best not to miss more than can be helped (some time is inevitable with illness)