Int'l Flight/Jet Lag Tips for 2.5 yr old?

[dahlsk]

Will be flying to Europe this fall and I am already dreading the flight and jet lag. I've done flights before with my ds, but never this long. I'll guess I'll just take all the usual tips and triple them for the longer time. If you have anything esp. good for this age, I'd love to hear it though. More importantly, how in the world do I explain jet lag to a toddler? Any tips on that would be great. The time difference will be about 7 hours ahead, hopefully he will sleep a bit on the overnight flight. Otherwise, what should I expect and how do I make it easier for him to adjust? TIA!!

[Plaid Leopard]

I just flew from England to US with my 2 1/2 year old, and then back a month later. He did really well, and slept a bit during the flights.
We arrived back in England around 9:30 am after our 10 hour flight, and he took a couple of naps that day, went to bed early and then woke up really early the next morning. I don't think you can explain jet-lag to a toddler or do anything to prepare for it, but in my experience my kids always handle jet-lag better than I do. In any case, just be prepared to take it easy the first couple of days, and not plan too many activities.

[Plarka]

Before we travelled long haul with our daughter, everyone was saying how kids deal with jetlag better than adults. I'll just warn you, that's not always true! We live in England and went to visit my family in the US when dd1 was 5 months and then 16 months, and went to Thailand when she was 22 months. She is soooooo bad with jetlag, and it's always the worst going west. Like coming home to England from America is bad, and going to Thailand was bad. She hardly sleeps on the plane, and then when we arrive and expect her to sleep loads cause she hasn't slept for like 20 hours......she doesn't sleep! It's really unbelievable and we want desperately to sleep ourselves, we can't understand why she won't She goes to bed at like 2am.

Now it's easier because we know to expect it!

Maybe you'll be lucky, but wanted you to know what might happen!

[NicaG]

We took a trip to Spain/Germany when ds was that age. I recall that ds slept a lot on the flight over, and then on the flight home we watched a lot of videos on our laptop. We were able to plug it in (the battery wouldn't have lasted the whole flight). I do vaguely recall a couple of crying jags on the flight home, but in the end it's one day. You can deal with it...and 3 years later you won't even remember it. I think ds got over the jet lag faster than we did. We did a lot of outdoor sightseeing, and he usually just slept in the stroller when he was feeling tired, and after a day or two he had adjusted.

I highly recommend seatguru.com for selecting your seats--that site is great for pointing out potential problems in seating arrangements, as well as suggesting better seats.

Have fun!