Traveling With Kids: My Best Strategies After Years of Holiday Trips
Traveling With Kids: My Best Strategies After Years of Holiday Trips
If you are preparing for traveling with kids and already feeling stressed, I promise you are not alone. I talk with so many parents who love the idea of holiday memories but feel overwhelmed by the reality of holiday trips. Even as a clinical psychologist, I feel this too. There is something about airports, long flights, packed schedules, and overtired children that brings out the hardest parts of parenting.
Over the years, I have made a lot of mistakes while traveling with kids. I have packed the wrong things, offered screens too early, expected too much, and tried to convince my children to be flexible when I had not set them up for success. The good news is that these experiences taught me the best strategies for smoother, calmer holiday trips. These are strategies that I use myself and share with the families I work with. They rely on emotional regulation, predictable routines, and simple positive parenting tips that genuinely help kids stay grounded on the road.
This guide pulls together everything I have learned from years of traveling with kids, especially during the busiest travel season of the year. Whether you are preparing for a long flight or a several-hour road trip, you can use these best strategies to make your holiday trips more manageable and more connected.
Why Traveling With Kids Feels So Hard
One of the biggest challenges with traveling with kids is the complete loss of control that comes with the process. Travel removes the structure our children rely on. They are in new environments, surrounded by unpredictable noise, movement, and stimulation. Their bodies are out of rhythm. Their routines are disrupted. Their preferred snacks might not be available. Their toys might not be accessible. Everything feels harder.
And if we are being honest, holiday trips require more from us as parents. We are tired. We are anticipating delays. We are trying to pack the entire house into one suitcase. We know our kids will struggle and that we will have to stay regulated through it all. When I acknowledge this upfront, I feel more prepared. When I forget it, I get frustrated more easily.
This is why the best strategies for traveling with kids start long before you ever get in the car or head to the airport. They begin with how you prepare, what you pack, and how you think about the experience. When we combine preparation with empathetic, positive parenting tips, children feel safer and more supported, which makes the entire journey easier.
The Best Strategies for Traveling With Kids
Below are the best strategies that consistently help me and the families I work with when traveling with kids, especially during holiday trips. These are simple, practical, and rooted in child development.
Strategy One: Pack Screen-Free Activities First
Before you think about screens, think about variety. One of the best strategies I rely on is packing several no-screen activities based on each child’s interests. When I begin traveling with kids, I want their first experiences of the trip to be anchored in creativity and connection rather than stimulation and instant gratification.
For younger children, this might look like small figurines, water coloring books, or reusable sticker activities. For older kids, it might be sketch pads, craft supplies, or mini building materials. I make sure these items are easy to access so that when boredom hits, I have tools ready that do not involve screens.
There is a reason I emphasize no screens during the first part of holiday trips. Screens are incredibly effective but also incredibly stimulating. Once you offer them, it is difficult to transition back to quieter activities. If your child burns out on their screen too early, you have nothing left to offer when the real travel fatigue sets in. Saving screens for later is one of the best strategies you can use.
Strategy Two: Move Their Bodies Before They Have To Sit
Movement is essential for traveling with kids. A child who is dysregulated before they sit down will only become more dysregulated once they are confined. One of the most effective positive parenting tips I can give is to prioritize movement before boarding or before starting your drive.
For flights, find a quiet corner of the airport and let them run, jump, stretch, or play a simple game like Simon Says. If your young child needs heavy movement, playful running alongside you can be incredibly regulating. For road trips, build in time to stop at a playground or grassy area so your child can release energy.
This is not just a bonus. It is one of the best strategies for traveling with kids, especially during holiday trips when everything feels more chaotic. Movement regulates their nervous system, which means less whining, fewer meltdowns, and more flexibility once seated.
Strategy Three: Delay Screens For As Long As You Can
Here is where the no screens approach becomes powerful. When traveling with kids, I wait until the moment the flight attendants announce that you can take out your laptops before offering screens. On a road trip, I wait until after the first rest stop or after lunch.
This is one of my most reliable best strategies because it buys you time. It preserves the novelty of screens. It keeps kids grounded in real-world interaction. And it keeps you connected to them during the early part of the trip.
If we want our children to handle holiday trips with fewer meltdowns, we cannot model being on our own screens too early. That is why I avoid using my own screen until they are using theirs. This is also one of the most powerful positive parenting tips I use. Children notice everything we model.
Strategy Four: Connect Frequently During the Trip
When traveling with kids, connection is regulation. I check in with my children often. I make eye contact. I offer small interactions. I acknowledge how they are handling the experience.
This is especially important during holiday trips because so much of the environment is overstimulating. When I stay grounded and responsive, my children feel calmer. When I am distracted or frustrated, they feel more overwhelmed.
You do not need perfection. What helps most is presence. A few minutes of focused attention at the right moment can prevent an entire meltdown. This is one of the best strategies for traveling with kids and one of the strongest positive parenting tips I teach.
Strategy Five: Set Realistic Expectations For Everyone
When I approach traveling with kids with unrealistic expectations, I get frustrated more quickly. Children who are tired, overstimulated, and out of their routine will not act like they do at home. Anticipating this helps me respond with more patience.
One of the core positive parenting tips I rely on is giving myself grace during holiday trips. I cannot make travel perfect. I can only make it easier. I can use the best strategies I know, keep screens for later, rely on connection, and stay flexible.
When parents stay regulated, children have a much easier time. Your calm is one of the greatest gifts you can offer during traveling with kids.
Why These Strategies Work
These best strategies are not about perfection. They are about predictability and emotional safety. Children need structure, connection, movement, and thoughtful use of no screens to stay regulated. Parents need simple routines and realistic expectations to stay grounded.
When you use these positive parenting tips consistently, traveling with kids becomes far less overwhelming. And when you apply them during holiday trips, you reduce the stress that often comes from long lines, delays, and overstimulation.
You cannot control airports or traffic. But you can control the environment you create around your children. These best strategies make the environment calmer, more predictable, and more supportive.
Final Thoughts
Every parent wants traveling with kids to feel easier. With the right preparation and mindset, it can. When you rely on positive parenting tips, thoughtful no screens planning, and the best strategies for movement, connection, and expectation setting, you give your child a much stronger foundation for the challenges of holiday trips.
You are not trying to avoid difficult moments. You are trying to show your child that even during stressful experiences, you are a predictable and steady presence. That is what allows children to feel safe. And that is what turns traveling with kids into something less chaotic and much more meaningful.
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[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: Welcome to the Educated Parent Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Leah Clionsky, and this is one of our chats and we're going to talk about how we are gonna survive traveling with our kids for the holidays. Yes, it is a tricky one, but don't worry, I have some strategies and some tips that are gonna help you out.
[00:00:25] Leah Clionsky: So are you gonna travel with your kids over the holidays? You know, I am for Thanksgiving, luckily, and not in an airplane. We have a four hour car ride instead, which actually is a little bit less stressful, but I've traveled with my four and 6-year-old many, many times now, and I feel like I've had it down to an art.
[00:00:48] Leah Clionsky: A little bit a science plus art combined, and you may have some strategies that work a little bit differently. It depends a lot on your kids, but I wanna make sure that we talk about some things that might make the travel a little bit easier for you. Especially because right now our airports are an even bigger disaster than they ever have been.
[00:01:10] Leah Clionsky: And the day before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the entire year. So we wanna set our kids up for success when we're traveling with them. Travel is hard on everybody. Travel is hard on all of us because it requires a lot of preparation and then we are out of our element, right?
[00:01:36] Leah Clionsky: When you are on an airplane or in the middle of a road trip, you don't have all the normal stuff you typically have, right? You don't have the favorite toy, you don't have the favorite snack. If you didn't bring it with you, you're just not able to pivot the way you could if you were in your own home.
[00:01:59] Leah Clionsky: And also, we don't control things like we don't control if the flight is delayed. We don't control. If traffic is bad, we don't control any of those things. So there's also that element of just lack of control for everyone involved. And honestly, that makes us more stressed out. As parents, I like to be able to control how things are going, and if I can't and I see my kids getting worked up, that can be a little bit tough.
[00:02:27] Leah Clionsky: So there are many, many things we cannot control. But what we can control is how we prepare for the trip and the things that we do in advance that will pay off when we're actually traveling. So my first strategy, I'm just gonna jump into strategies early today. My first strategy is to make sure that you have a variety of non-screen based activities prepped for your kids.
[00:02:57] Leah Clionsky: Based on their own interests. So for my son who just turned four, what this means is that he needs a bunch of little tiny figurines that he can play with. He loves Lion King. He loves Lion Guard. As long as he has the right little lions and tigers and animals all set out. He can play with those for quite a long time.
[00:03:23] Leah Clionsky: So I often will fill a, a bag up with his favorites of those and pack it in my own carry-on so that I know that is readily available to him when he gets bored. Um, other activities that he likes are water. And that's easy for a little kid to do. It's not like precision coloring. So I'll make sure I have one of those packed.
[00:03:45] Leah Clionsky: My daughter loves crafts and activities like that, so, and she loves to sketch, so I always make sure I have a variety of markers for her. We always have paper. Um, I try to get some interesting things that she can color as well. Like on a recent flight when it was just her and I. We spent an hour of the flight coloring Halloween stickers, and then she took the colored Halloween stickers and put them into a different notebook that she had, but any sort of like a craft activity that's gonna keep her really focused.
[00:04:19] Leah Clionsky: I know people are really loving those mini magnet tiles. I haven't gotten any of those yet, but those could be a really great activity. But you want a variety of screen free activities. To entertain your child, and let me tell you why. And this is, I'm gonna jump almost to the third point now, but here it is.
[00:04:39] Leah Clionsky: You don't wanna start off offering a screen to your kid because the screen is the most exciting thing you can offer them. So if you start off early with this screen and then eventually they get bored of the screen time or they, it starts making them weird. You know how like you can kind of get weird if you've been on a screen for too long?
[00:05:02] Leah Clionsky: There's no option after that, you can move up, you can move from non-screen activities to screen activities, but it's really hard to move from screen activities to non-screen activities for kids. So I suggest you have a bunch of a non-screen activities prepared. The other thing that, my second tip is that before your kids have to be constrained.
[00:05:29] Leah Clionsky: Let them run around as much as you can. So if you're at the airport and there is a place like a corner of the airport that is not full of people, that is a great opportunity to get your kids to run around. And you can have them do it in a way that's more controlled. Like you can play game where you have them pretend to be frogs, so they're using more core movements.
[00:05:53] Leah Clionsky: You could have a game. Where you play, Simon says with them, but you want to try to get them to move around while they still can because it's gonna regulate them once they get into the plane or into the car. Um, some airports have those really cool like kid play zones. If those exist, I always go to those first.
[00:06:14] Leah Clionsky: So I'm wanting as much physical activity as I can. Before we move into the non-screen activities, before we eventually move into the screen activities, I just find that my children, and most kids I know behave a lot better if they have that opportunity. One year, um, we were flying with my son who was like 18 months old, so he had all the motor movement, but absolutely no ability to follow directions.
[00:06:39] Leah Clionsky: That's a fun combination, and we literally would just run through the airport with him next to us. Like I would just run and be like, come on Alex, come on Alex. And he would just run along beside me and I was just trying to help him get as much movement as possible. So when we got on the plane, he was more likely to sit still having gotten hell of his sensory and motor needs met.
[00:07:04] Leah Clionsky: Okay, so pack the activity that doesn't involve screens. Number one, to look for opportunities for your kids to move around, physically, encourage them to get that physical activity need met, and you know, and there are lots of places to do it. So if you make it a priority and you give them some constraints about how to do it, it can be a really positive thing.
[00:07:31] Leah Clionsky: The third part is don't allow screens until you really have to. So my rule on an airplane is that we don't take out the screens. Until there is that part where they tell you can take out your laptop computers. Right. I am delaying it for as long as I can get away with. Um, sometimes I'll try to go over that if possible.
[00:07:54] Leah Clionsky: Again, because once the screens are offered, then it's really hard to move back into like, let's read a Dr. Seuss book. The hard part there is that I don't think it's fair for us as the adults. To go on a screen before we allow our children to, it just sends this really weird mixed message, and then we're not involved with them.
[00:08:16] Leah Clionsky: So I'm not gonna pull out my own iPad or screen activity. I'm not gonna start watching Netflix myself until I'm allowing my kids to watch their own tablets. So until that time. I might read a book or I might play with them, or maybe I, I'm trying to decide if it's cheating to listen to music with one AirPod in.
[00:08:38] Leah Clionsky: I have mixed feelings if the screen is invisible, but like, I'm trying to do something where I'm not looking at a screen. And then when I say to them, okay, you know, you can watch Bluey now, like, we've been playing for a good two hours, then, um, then I'll put on my own screen at that point. So obviously you have to make this work for you, your child and your family, but so far this combination has let me get through many, many trips with my kids and I plan on doing the same thing on our four hour drive.
[00:09:13] Leah Clionsky: So we're gonna get a lot of movement before we get in the car. I'm gonna bring those non-screen activities, probably, um, maybe even we'll listen to like a book, like an audio book while we're driving non-screen. And maybe after the first rest stop or after we have lunch or however, however we divide up the trip, that's when LLL screens is on that second part, and I'm curious if it will work for you as well.
[00:09:40] Leah Clionsky: Um, but that's my travel hack. Those are my strategies for traveling with young kids. Of course, I'm interested in your feedback, how you feel about doing something like this. Um, what you find works for you and doesn't work for you. I think it just being really understanding of the fact that this is hard on everybody and that it's especially hard on our kids, and the more regulated we can be, the better that can really make the travel situation even better.
[00:10:10] Leah Clionsky: All right. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're listening to Educated Parent. I hope you have a relaxing travel time with no delays, with absolutely no problems, and you get to your destination safely, and I will talk to you next Tuesday.