Lessons from the road… and air… and junior suite :: Part II

Read part 1 of my lessons in travel with kids here.

Continuing on the theme of hassled looking mother, here is just one more lesson in that respect:

Looking like a hassled mother chasing a hyperactive three year old around the lobby of a five-star hotel just may entice the sympathetic reception staff to upgrade one’s booking to a junior suite

That’s fairly self explanatory really. Thank you Hyatt Perth. The separate bedroom was VERY much appreciated. In fact I don’t know how we survived without it.

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And that’s all the ‘Looking like a hassled mother’ lessons I can think of at the moment. So we’ll move on to some general lessons about travel with kids. Well, my kids in particular.

Any break from routine will muck up their sleep and likely make them hyperactive. And there ain’t much you can do except suck it up

By the time we arrived in Perth, the Sproglette had not slept, hence her desire to run around in circles, head for the door and aim towards the nearest road at full pelt. Of course, she didn’t sleep until 10pm Perth time – 11.30pm Darwin time – and woke up at 5am. The lesson here is that there is no point having high expectations about kids sleeping normally on the first few days of a trip, especially if you cross timezones. I know 1.5 hours is hardly a timezone cross, but it wasn’t enough to reset their clocks. And waking up at 5am instead of 6.30am is painful.

Don’t underestimate the understanding of a three and a half year old

I’m still so accustomed to the Sproglette being my baby that I forget she’s a little person who is starting to figure things out for herself. This means that I can’t just hustle her into doing what I want to do with no explanation; I need to give her a heads up first, with a realistic expectation of what we’re doing today. This probably won’t make much of a difference to the whinging factor, BUT, she isn’t getting any younger, so it’s just something that I need to remember to do.

It is better to let the kids nap late rather than not nap at all, even if this means that they stay up til 9pm

Kids staying up late has never been acceptable to me. I want some me time at the end of the day. Call me a selfish cow, but getting up with kids at the crack of dawn (or often before) means that I want to have a quiet hour or two at the end of the day just for me, before I go to bed.

Well, the Sproglette – who has varying nap requirements (i.e. can survive without one) – kept falling asleep at the really inconvenient time of around 3.30pm. Which meant that she was up til 9/9.30pm every night. And guess what I discovered. It was OK. The nap usually put her in such a compliant mood that we hardly realised she was awake – she coloured in, ate dinner with us, played a bit more then went to bed. Obviously I will not encourage this when we’re at home, but I was surprised to find that it’s actually easier to have her nap and stay up late, than to deal with a stroppy preschooler in the evening who hasn’t napped.

That’s about all the lessons I can think of at the moment. We certainly did it very easy this time, in a city with a car and a spacious hotel room. Do you have any tips for travel that you swear by?