How to Keep Toddlers Busy during Traveling
How to keep toddlers busy during traveling sometimes can be hard as they seem to have unlimited energy! After traveling many times with Ariella, here are the tips on how to keep toddlers busy during traveling.
1. Let Them Play
Either it is busy book on the plane or road trip, playing in the playground, playing in the hotel kids club, playing whatever they want will help them to cope with the boredom during trip. Unlike adults, they have not got the ability to stay still in the seat without doing something, unless they are very tired to fall asleep.
Read here for DIY travel activities for kids under 1 year old.
2. Let Them Help
Toddlers are the ones who want to show up that they can act like adults. Underestimating them is a mistake. Simply ask them to throw the trash to garbage bin, put dirty clothes inside the plastic bag, help parents to take water bottle from the far-away table, etc, and you both will happily enjoy the trip and learn how to help each other.
3. Let Them Explore
When you visit a place with big space, let them explore with their senses. Let them run, see, touch, smell. Ask them to listen to the birds’ tweets, taste a bit of bitter fruit, take off their shoes to run on the grass, play dirty and feel the texture of sand, show them the colorful flowers and smell them. This activity will definitely make your job much more easier than limiting her space. It will also stimulate her sensory skills.
4. Let Them Mess Things Up
This is one of desperate but amazingly working tips on how to keep toddlers busy during traveling. If we are too tired, sometimes we let her mess things up, such as: unpacking the suitcase, unfold all the clothes, unpack her own bag. It is just because of 1 reason: it gives us peace for a moment.
5. Let Them Socialize
In public area, instead of keeping her sit still quietly, we can let them socialize with the people sitting next to us, shake hands with other children, talk with the security, or anything which can sharpen her social skills. In this way, she will fell comfortable when meeting new people.
6. Let Them Do Sports
This one is vital to spend their energy out. In big space area or garden, let them run, let them fall and get up by themselves, let them chase the butterfly, let them kick the ball, let them run after you, let them spend their energy out! This is good for their motor skills, and help to sleep later on. One of the “definitely working” tips on how to keep toddlers busy during traveling.
7. Let Them Walk
In this point, I’m not talking about sport, but literally walk with you. Many parents will sit their children on the stroller to more easily watch them, to walk faster around the city, to be safe for children. This might be true for busy or big city. But if you are going somewhere for vacation and the place has a safe path to walk, let them walk with you. Adjust your speed as theirs, and you will have a good and relaxing time together. You can also tell her what you both see along the walk.
8. Let Them Eat & Rest
After they spend their energy, they need to recharge. Eating and resting well are needed to keep their mood to be not cranky. If you see they start to not so happy doing busy things, give them water or feed them, and tell them to rest for a while before next activities. If they don’t want to rest due to over-exciting atmosphere, we usually go back to the accommodation and rest/sleep with them to let them know that they will not miss any fun moments.
How to Keep Toddlers Busy during Traveling
Traveling with kids is not harder but easier than spending time at home. At home, we should provide them activities to stimulate or make them busy.
But during traveling — if they are given much opportunities to interact with their surroundings — you’ll be happy to see that nature & people will provide them with much more chances to learn about various REAL things in the world. And you? Save your energy. You’ll see that they will be more cooperative to do most of the things by themselves.
Hope you have a great trip with your tods! 🙂
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tesyasblog
Hai Mba, salam kenal…
Mau nambahin ah nomor 9: Let them take pictures… hahaha…
By the way, blog nya boleh aku masukin ke list Indonesian Family Travel Blogger? Take a look for the list at my Bahasa Indonesia blog: http://www.tesyaskinderen.com
Diana Suciawati
Halo Mba, salam kenal jugaa..
Makasih udah mampir ya 🙂
Aku udah mampir ke blognya dan seru banget ya! Dan tentu aja mba, kami bersedia dimasukkan ke list nya Indonesian Family Travel Blogger di blog Mba Tesya.
Dan tambahannya, bener banget! Hahahahaa.. Tapi buat seumur Lala belum bisa kali ya, tapi nanti pas dia gedean, pasti seru banget 🙂
Thanks tambahannya, Mba 😉