whats are you thoughts on kids and a 10hour flight?

[donna1901]

i am contemplating taking my children to jamacia for ten days. they are 8 & 5 do you think the traveling would be ok for them?

[anneasquith]

what time is the flight......children tend to sleep on long flights, if they are usually well behaved children i see no reason not to take them.

[NazNomad]

So you actually want to know if jet-lag can affect children? ... yes, of course.

[Sqad]

Phenergan, Sudafed,..........both good ideas to dose then with.

[ljdksa]

They have as much right to fly as anyone else. As others have said, the more you can keep them in routine, the better they'll handle it. A night flight would be a good idea, so they could sleep for most of it and should be fine for the holiday. In my experience, adults suffer more from flights, jet lag etc, than children do. They'll be fine.

[donna1901]

yes that is what i want to know. I would actually book a night flight in all honesty but if it affected so many days of our holiday i wouldnt go that far!

[puzzled54]

My youngest was 9 when we first went to Florida and she was fine. Let them sleep on the plane if they want to, and take some games and snacks. If you land when its light, just try to keep going until their normal sort of bedtime.
BTW, sudofed keeps me awake!

[rockyracoon]

I flew to Phuket with my two, they were ages 5 and 7 at the time and they were fine. It was a dayflight so their sleep pattern went really out of kilter for a bit. As already been said lots of activities and snacks, if it's a decent airline they may have personal screens to watch films etc. Go for it and have a good time.

[KARL]

A time difference of five hours or so will be felt by children but less and for a shorter period than by adults. In my experience, travelling west leaves a greater dent in your energy levels and for longer than the opposite direction. I put this down to the fact that you feel it is bed time long before the daulight pattern is into night - similarly, you wake up or at least surface before it is really morning. To get over this more quickly I have started skewing the sleep pattern (later sleep) in the days approaching westerly departure and at the destination go to bed earlier than others for the first couple of days. Going east I tend not to bother because I can go to bed early and catch up quickly - the only difficult one being the first day if I have travelled overnight and arrive straight into a day's work. Regarding behaviour, we regularly travelled/flew with our boys from age 3 months up to 12 years and I can honestly say there was never any problem with them. The only time I recall anything untoward was when our younger reclined his seat an hour or so into the flight and the person behind forcibly shoved it forward again - I concluded that this was a habitual complainer because he and wife muttered from take-off to landing that they would never again travel with that airline or in economy (no idea who/what they thought they were). Other advice already offered is correct and unless your children are otherwise inclined toward difficult behaviour then flying will not change them. If they are good at amusing themselves and have with them something they can while away the time then there is no reason to expect problems. Only one bit of new advice here: Make sure they take sips of something at 2-3 minute intervals during take-off and climb and again in the last stages of approach - to reduce risk of pressure differences giving rise to earache.

[KARL]

*daylight

[bushbaby_de]

Donna - you will probably find that the flight out to Jamaica is a daytime flight whereas the one coming back will be nighttime. So in terms of enjoying the holiday, you'll spend a day on a plane and just go to bed earlier than normal then you'll probably feel right as rain the next day. On the way back, unless you all manage to get a good nights sleep on the plane you'll probably all suffer a bit as you'll land early morning (usually somewhere from 6am - 9am) and have to get through a whole day, tired. So make sure there are an extra couple of days after the holiday when you can all sort your sleep patterns out!