Dana Obleman: Hi. I’m Dana. Welcome to this week’s video blog. Nothing really
puts more fear in a parent’s heart than considering taking a long
distance journey with your children, especially if you’ve worked
really hard to get them onto an excellent sleep schedule.

It’s really daunting to consider, first of all, long plane rides,
time zone changes, and all of that. It just makes people say,
“Nope. Forget it. We’re not going anywhere.” I’m going to give you
some tips today for handling travel, because I do want you to go
somewhere. Family holidays are, for me, one of my favorite memories
from childhood.

I don’t want you to put that all aside, because you’ve got children
that sleep well. I’m going to give you some tips here today. The
first thing is plane travel. My advice around that is do whatever
you have to do to just survive.

Really, there’s nothing you can do. You’re confined in a small
space. For the most part, you can’t even leave your seat. If you
have to resort to old ways, like nursing your baby to sleep, or
rocking to sleep, or feeding treats, letting them watch TV.

I don’t know what it is. All rules go out the window a little bit
when you’re traveling on a plane. Just get through it. Just survive
it. Make sure you have snacks, and coloring, videos, and you name
it, to keep your children occupied as best that you can while
you’re traveling.

When you get there, now you have to get back on track, right? One
thing I see people do all the time when they travel is that they
over schedule themselves. I’d say that’s the biggest traveling
mistake that people make is over scheduling.

What happens then is this baby, you know, is being dragged around
to all of these things, sites, friends, and family, and they’re
missing naps. They’re going to bed too late. A few nights of that
and now this child can become so over tired, that she just has a
complete meltdown at bedtime, screams the house down for an hour,
because she’s lost the ability to cope.

Then the parent thinks, “What? Why is she crying? She doesn’t ever
cry anymore.” Now, you’re nervous. You’re in a hotel room. You’re
at your mother in-laws. You’re thinking, “Ooh, I can’t let this
baby cry.”

Now, you’re going to back step into all of your old habits. By the
end of the two weeks, you’ve got a baby in your bed, breastfeeding
all night, and you name it. Just be careful of that. You really do
need to honor your child’s sleep needs the same way you would food.

You certainly wouldn’t drive them all day long and not feed them.
You really do need to honor it. One missed nap here or there, a
slightly late bedtime once in a while, not likely the end of the
world, but certainly keep a close eye on it.

A few tips for handling jet lag. The good news here is that
children handle jet lag really well. Especially if they’re well
rested going into the trip. Adults, totally different story,
because we are often operating on a sleep debt already, and then
jet lag is just going to make that monumental when we get to our
location.

The good news is it should only take a couple of days to get your
child on track. There are some things you can do to help encourage
it along. First of all, try to get into the new time zone as
quickly as you can. Get on that schedule, put naps in the
appropriate place, and get bed time on track right away.

The faster you do that, the faster your body clock will come
around. Make sure you get lots of daytime sunlight. Go out for
walks. First thing in the morning is really optimal. If you can get
out of the hotel or out of the house first thing in the morning,
even for just a half an hour of direct sunlight, in the early
morning hours, will really help get our body clock inline.

In the evening, make sure you minimize light, so turn off anything
that’s unnecessary. Close curtains, put the blackout blinds closed,
and really help get that melatonin kicking in so that your body
comes around to the idea of daytime alertness, and night time
sleep.

Then when you get home, if everything falls apart, which sometimes
it just does, you’ve tried to honor the schedule, you’ve got a same
situation while you travel as you do at home. Make sure you have
the same expectations for your children.

I used to travel, well we still do, but when our kids were little,
we traveled all the time. We made sure we honored their schedule.
We made sure that they had their own sleep environment that was as
similar as we could get to their home situation. I had the same
expectations for their sleep.

Even if for a night or two, they were a little off, and maybe did a
little bit more protesting, because it was somewhere new, I taught
them quite quickly, that, “You know what? It doesn’t matter where
we are, you need to sleep. That’s the rules.” They came around to
that quite quickly.

I hope that gives you a little bit of reassurance that it’s still
OK to take those trips. Thanks for watching. Sleep well.

Transcription by CastingWords