How to help DD aged 2.8 pop her ears on a flight?

[MrsBloomingTroll]

DD is 2.8 and we have our first flight with her since a baby coming up in a couple of weeks.

When I last flew with her she was still bf, so helping her to sort her ears out was easy.

This time, she's too young to suck on a sweet. I was thinking about having a carton of her favourite fruit juice ready (not a Fruit Shoot, I promise, just plain old apple!) and having her suck on that after take-off.

I'm sure she'll be fine as it's a long flight, but I'm worried it'll be painful for her if I don't give her something to help.

Does anyone have any other good ideas or tried-and-tested methods?

haribo sweets. Nice and chewey,

Lollipops worked for us.

We used to use "special aeroplane sweets" when our DC were small. They were just plain ol' 'juicy fruits' or similar but they only had sweets when they flew. She'll need them on the descent too, so have plenty handy.

Sorry I can't offer any more helpful advice but my mum worked as cabin crew, and this is what she used to do when I had that problem on flights:

Take a plastic cup and put some paper towel soaked in warm water in the bottom. Put another plastic cup inside the first, with the paper towel sandwiched in between. Repeat, so there are two of these.

She would then give the cup-sandwiches to me and tell me to hold one over each ear. I have no idea if it had any effect on my ears, but it certainly distracted me for quite a while. :)

Best of luck!

Chewy sweets, or get her to try and blow a balloon.

Thank you for the replies!

The blowing-up-a-balloon has given me an idea. DD is too young to blow them up IRL but I do have an app on my iPhone which involves pretending to blow into the end of the iPhone to blow up a balloon, which then becomes a balloon animal.

If I can get her to play that, I'm onto a winner!

Failing that, I'll be searching for some cups and a paper towel...

lollipops; chewy sweets as suggested.

Also show her how to open and close her mouth (very wide) repeatedtly which should help her ears pop.

good luck (ballon blowing a good idea!)

I know she's too young to blow them up for real, but it's the trying that will help - it doesn't matter if she can't do it.

The iPhone app sounds much more fun though!

Maybe she and I can pretend to be fish, opening our mouths wide.....

The good news is that I bought her a pair of mini JVC headphones with a sound limiter to use on the flight with the in-flight entertainment and the iPad. She's been trying them out at home. And she looooooves them!

Could you take a dummy for her to suck on just for the flights, this is what we're thinking of doing with our DS who is the same age?

2 words - Chupa Chup!

We've just flown long haul with our DD who is 20 months. Despite her not normally using a baby bottle, we did take one with water in for her to suck on, it was a bit of a joke but she did use it! I also packed a couple of the pouches of fruit smoothy (like the Organix Squeezy ones) as that ensured she was sucking up the straw.

HTH.

Agree with MadameCastafiore, We have bought some for our dc for a flight in July and have bought my nephew who is 2 a small pack of the mini chups which are ideal for little mouths, :)