How to tackle jet lags in kids: practical tips we learned on our travels

Jet lag and kids don’t mix. Crankiness, lack of sleep and stomach upset can ruin your travel experience but there are some tricks to make jet lag less painful. Here is our selection of doable jet lag tips that work.

Jet lag has always been one of my least favorite parts of travel.

I don’t function on lack of sleep and it takes me forever to get over a time change and things got significantly worse when our kids came along.

We started traveling long haul with them when they were tiny and despite following all the well-intended tips for flying with kids we could find, jet lag with kids was just brutal on our family and especially on my daughter, who reacted to a change in time zone with stomach upset, on top of crankiness and restlessness due to the upside down routine.

Despite a terrible first experience or possibly thanks to it, I put a lot of effort into figuring out how to tackle jet lag with kids and how to make the children go through jet lag in the least painful way.

I am happy to report that I found some things that work!

These are all our tips for jet lag and kids, based on our own family travels.

What jet lag meant for our kids

I would like to start this post about jet lag with the effect the time change had on our kids.

I believe this can be useful as the reaction our children had was different from my experience of jet lag and also different between the two of them.

This means that our way to tackle jet lag had to go a little beyond and adjustment of bedtime routine or keeping them up a little longer.

Our kids (or I should say why daughter, my son was absolutely fine and hardly noticed it) reacted to jet lag with:

Stomach upset. My daughter always got sick with jet lag. The sickness wouldn’t last long and would settle easily but would hit usually when waking up, so potentially up to several hours or even a night into our trip.

Crankiness and lower ability to withstand frustration

Continuous requests to ‘go home’, which I out down to anxiety triggered by the tiredness and lack of familiarity with the new place

Difficulty adjusting to the new bedtime

Once we saw this was her reaction, we were able to improve things for her significantly and easily!

Jet lag and kids: easy tips that really help

Don’t think it will be forever

This may sound like a silly tip but I found it helped keeping my anxiety at bay.

Yes, the routine may be all over the place, they may not sleep at the right time and they may be overly cranky but they will bounce back.

If you have a routine at home, it won’t be undone by a temporary change in time zone: it may take a bit of patience but your hard work has not gone to waste.

I found that keeping this in mind helped me be calmer and less anxious; this, in turn, always translates into my kids being calmer too

Understand the problem

As I mentioned before, tiredness may not be the only thing playing a role here.

My daughter would always have an upset stomach and once we realised that was the case, we were able to find a solution. In her case, apples!

One morning, when we strolled into a Starbucks looking for a much needed caffeine fix, we discovered that they had a box of apples, cheese and grapes – she devoured it and became a new child in a few minutes!

I don’t know if it was the acidity of the apples, the sugar of the grapes or what but ever since, we either beelined to Starbuck as soon as landed or we made sure to have our own apples, cheese and grapes not matter where we were!

Another thing we notices was an issue for my daughter was anxiety.

She would be feeling odd and she would be too little to understand why so we found reassuring her, explaining why she feels like that and that it will go, it made a huge difference.

Consider flexible routines at home

Jet lag is temporary and your hard work to establish a routine will not be lost because of a few days. I

If you have a strong routine established, it will be easier for them to get back to it, a little bit like when the routine get disrupted by a cold or illness.

All efforts were not wasted!

However, depending on how many time zones you will be crossing and how long you are going to be away, you may consider changing your routine slightly even before your trip.

The trickiest thing, apart from sleep, is mealtimes: if you can, start aligning mealtimes with the new time zones in the last few days before you leave home, to minimize hunger pangs in the middle of the night on arrival.

Or if you have a strict routine with exact mealtimes, experiment with more flexible ones so they can be used to the changes the trip will inevitable require.

Avoid flights that mean a white night

It is very hard to recommend what flight time is best as you never know if your child is going to sleep on the plane and how well but I can tell you what flights did not work for us: those that left North America in the afternoon and landed in Europe early in the morning.

Those for us were the worst!

ecause unless you sleep well on the plane, you will get to your destination sleep-deprived and have a long day ahead of you.

If this is the only option, read below!

Don’t be a vampire: seek daylight

Experts say that the  best thing you can do to prevent and fight jet lag is to expose yourself to daylight.

Reading on internet I found advice that sounded very technical and not easy to implement (I stopped reading when I realised it involved  my latitude and longitude coordinates and a compass!) but it seemed to all come down to a pretty simple principle: both before and after travelling, stay outside and in daylight as much as possible.

Unless you are already on holidays, being out at specific times to minimise jet lag can prove tricky, but if you can, I found this cool free tool that tell you when to be out in preparation for a long haul flight: Jet Lag Rooster.

Luckily, is suggests staying out during ours that make sense for me and the kids, so no harm in trying!

Exercise gently

As well as being out, physical exercise can help: do not over exert yourself when tired, but do try to go for a walk and encourage your kids to move too – gentle exercise or a long stroll boost endorphin and will help you and your kids feel better.

We usually do this by walking to the local playground (we research them specifically in advance) or the shops

We prefer to avoid anything to do with water like the pool or the sea as I don’t feel this would be safe, with the four of us all exhausted.

Plan a fun but gentle activity

The best way to keep children up and entertained until bed time if by keeping them engaged so a fun activity that doesn’t require a lot of effort can be ideal!

Some we love, as well as the playground trip mentioned above, are open bus tours, tuk tuk tours, golf cart tours and similar: a fun vehicle and fresh air work wonders!

Let them nap a little

Lack of sleep is awful on the body and is a different kettle of fish from tiredness.

If you have a child who has not slept at all, let them have a short nap.

Not all day and not too long but they may really need it (I know I do!) and even just a 1 hour nap or so can make the difference between a sleep deprived child and a normally tired one – two very different scenarios!

Beat jet lag on the plane by changing your clock to destination time as soon as you board

Experts say that what you do on the plane can have a big impact on how you react to jet leg and their first tip is to change your clock to your destination time as soon as you board.

This is a psychological, more than a physical trick, but they swear by it and I can see it working with kids.

For instance in summer, days are very long in Ireland and my kids find it sometimes hard to reconcile that bedtime happens at a time that they perceive as day.

Changing time on a plane can work similarly: they might find it odd how the time is passing but are likely to comply.

Plan plane food

What type of food you can bring on the plane depends on your destination but, if you can, plan something healthy and hydrating for you and your child.

The first time we traveled we didn’t realise our kids would simply not eat plane food and they ended up filling themselves with white plane bread and chocolate snacks.

As you can imagine, that didn’t do any good to their mood, energy levels and ability to fall asleep!

Read here >>> our favorite toddler and kid friendly snacks for travel

Take care of you too

One of the hardest things about jet lag and children is that you also deal with your own.

As much as you can, be gentle with yourself and give yourself grace: if they need extra screen time to function, a meal at a random hour, an extra bribe to calm down, it can be worth giving in, if it means you can get your own rest!

All will return to normal soon enough and you’ll have your vacation memories with you!

Safe family travels!

This post was originally published in 2016 and has now been fully updated with experiences from our many trips with kids since then.

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