AsiaLIFE

Flying with kids is a necessary evil for the expat family; it requires patience, determination and a fair dollop of courage. Words by Zoe Daniel.

I recently read an article that argued that children under 12 should be banned from aeroplanes. The writer, a mother of three (now teenaged) children, had been unlucky enough to be allocated the seat next to a baby and a toddler on a 14-hour flight from Sydney to the United States.

Scarred by the experience, she argued that parents who travel with young children are moved not by the desire to share their travel experiences with their offspring, but by a misguided attempt to appear youthful, intrepid, worldly and unhampered by the mere appearance of a couple of small extra pieces of hand luggage – namely kids.

She argued that all other travellers pay for this ego driven ambition by having to put up with screaming children on flights. I read this piece of prose with some annoyance the day before I left for a holiday in Australia, carting our two-year-old and one-year-old on my own. I’d like to think that they will develop a special sense of the world from living overseas at such a crucial time in their development as people. I would hope that they’ll be more open to other cultures, languages and environments than they would have otherwise been. I aspire for them to be adaptable and independent because of these early travel experiences. But I have to admit, that as I packed the suitcase and the nappy bag and the snack pack and the toy trolley, I wondered whether it’s really about them – or me?

I do vaguely remember that long gone ”intrepid” feeling BC (before children). Striding into the airport, backpack zipped, gastrolyte packed, camera and tripod over the shoulder, no country was too far or too tough. Albania, Bosnia, Croatia...Sudan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone...the tougher the destination, the bigger the adventure, the purgatory was part of the fun. Since kids, naturally, the destinations have changed. Now, we look for kids’ clubs, paddling pools and air con instead of bamboo huts on deserted beaches and untravelled roads. Once we would have switched seats if we were near a crying baby – now we have not one but two and we’re the people to avoid on the plane – in the seats down the back near the loo.

This last trip was the first time I have taken the two of them on a long plane journey on my own. It was planned with military precision; crayons and books for entertainment, snacks for bribes, pyjamas and toothbrushes for some semblance of routine, and the key weapon against toddler boredom – the portable DVD player with Diego and Dora at the ready.

I was dreading it. How would I carry all the hand luggage plus two kids on my own? How would I even get up to go to the loo with the two of them? What if one of them cracked a major tantrum? Previous trips to some of the world’s trouble spots seemed simple compared to this. After all, in this case the two trouble spots would be sitting on top of me.

The high point was probably when we boarded the plane in Singapore and my two-year-old son claimed a seat in business class and wouldn’t move. I have to admire his standards, but that admiration was lost in the tantrum that followed when I left him and walked away into economy with the baby under one arm and the hand luggage in the other. A single glass of wine (allocated medicinally to myself) was lost when the one-year-old octopus grabbed it off the tray table and threw it all over me, her brother and the poor man sitting next to us. And I pity the cleaners who followed us onto the plane to deal with the crumbs and detritus we left behind.

But by my meltdown benchmark, with two toddlers in tow, we did pretty well. We walked Singapore Airport, snacked, stared at planes, checked out bright lights and glitzy shops. We played on the slides in the family zone –Whoever thought of that is a genius by the way. When we all got tired, we enlisted the help of Diego and Dora and the portable DVD player to get us over the hump. We then slept through most of the flight. I’m pretty sure no one sitting near us wanted to press the eject button. We arrived in Melbourne feeling a little bleary but in one piece. We exited the airport into the sunshine, two kids and a Mum, a pram, a suitcase, a snack pack and a toy trolley. We are intrepid and proud of it.