Flying with a three year old... help!?

[Honeybee83]

If your little one likes to watch movies, make sure you have kid friendly headphones, and that they will wear them. Anything that makes noise must be used with headphones. Or with the volume off.

I'd also pack along some disinfecting wipes, to clean the tray table off. That thing is germy!!!

AGREED on the sanitizing wipes. You'll want those for around Disney too.

 

[Honeybee83]

Keep in mind you usually cant use an ipad or tablet during take-off/landing so you may have to be strategic and have something in your back pocket which is even "better" than the tablet. The trick we used was to alway carry a bag of potato chips (or some other treat our daughter rarely gets) to bribe her to put the tablet away. Not an ideal parenting technique, but it gets us through the flight without incident

Aviation laws have recently changed. You can now have a small device (phone or tablet out on takeoff and landing. No laptops though. Good trick with the snack. Also, dole the snack out one chip at a time yourself to make it last longer.

 

[luvmy2babies]

My two children say the gummy snacks work really well with ear pressure. So we generally have gummy fruit snacks for take-off and landing. I used a CARES Harness rented from ebay when my son was 2.5; but just that one time. When he flew again at 4, he had just the regular seat belt and he was fine with that. He had his iPad set to airplane mode, some triangle shaped crayons (don’t roll away) and coloring pages. That was enough as the flight for us is under 2 hours.
Since this is her first flight, I’d probably also talk to her about what happens in the airport and on the plane ahead of time as well. There’s some videos online too (one I found was animated) that I watched with my son before his flight at age 4. He’d flown before but he wasn’t old enough to know what was going on or question anything that was happening.

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

Aviation laws have recently changed. You can now have a small device (phone or tablet out on takeoff and landing. No laptops though. Good trick with the snack. Also, dole the snack out one chip at a time yourself to make it last longer.

The FAA changed the rule in October 2013.

 

[lilmape]

Thank you all! So many great ideas. I love the triangle crayons idea! She's so inquisitive I think the videos will be a great idea.