Traveling With Young Kids

Travelling with kids can be a bit like shooting a herd of wild goats on holiday. Whether they're your own or someone else's, factoring a child's needs into your journeys involves a lot more than sticking on a CD filled with pop songs and making toilet stops. Here two Rough Guides writers share their hard-won wisdom. To start, mum of 2 Hayley Spurway offers guidance on traveling with toddlers, subsequently Ross McGovern shows how he manages to travel with older kids. Hayley Spurway's hints for traveling with toddlers

Take your time

The greatest thing you'll be able to choose - whether at the airport, sightseeing or getting from A to B - is additional moment. Toddlers love to explore and don't care for your time pressures of traveling, so you're prone to all retain your cool if you factor that the faffing, gawping, stalling, bathroom slips and stops in your own timeframe.

Keep fleas

If you're travelling to Paignton or Peru, antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer are purse essentials. A wipe of the cutlery in restaurants at which you're unsure of hygiene, or even a squirt of hand sanitizer if there's no washing facilities, can zap several germs and stop toddlers catching some common bugs.

Encourage them to keep a travel journal

Get your children drawing and listing things that they 've observed and interesting foods that they 've tried. Who knowsthis may also encourage them to try different foods. Collecting postcards from areas that you see and requesting them to compose themselves a message on the back means that they can reach adulthood with a library of memories all their own.

Check your passports

Children's passports only last five years and they have a habit of exercising when you're not looking. Allow at least four weeks to rekindle one. The cost of a last-minute passport is astronomical, and particularly galling if you just realise it's necessary if in the ferry queue at Calais. Don't ask us how we know that. We just do.

Engage and involve older kids

The best way to avoid a soul-destroying sulk from the adolescent is to involve them in the planning of this vacation and ask them to get input on which they'd love to perform. You may be amazed to hear it isn't spending all day online.