On Instagram, travelling with a toddler looks magical. There are cute airport pictures, matching outfits, beautiful beach pictures and pictures of children looking at the sunset, as if they have already understood what life is.
In reality, someone is crying, someone is having a meltdown, someone is hungry, someone has thrown a snack on the floor, and the person responsible for keeping everything in check is wondering if this was all a good idea.
Spoiler alert: that person is usually the parent.
The holiday that becomes a job
My idea of a vacation was very different before I became a parent. Then I had a baby, and suddenly a vacation became an exercise. Basically, the location changes but the job description remains the same. You still have to feed them, entertain them, manage their moods and plan their nap time around the flight time.
Travelling with a toddler is a very interesting way of discovering that you can spend so much on a trip and still spend most of it in the hotel room, looking for a toilet or trying to find the perfect meal for your child.
And the adventure actually begins long before the trip itself.
Packing for a baby should be an Olympic sport. As a parent, you are supposed to be prepared for every possible situation. You pack everything, from extra clothes to medicines, from bottles to a bottle steriliser, from snacks to their favourite toy. Before you know it, you're carrying enough to survive not just a four-day trip but a month-long one. And somehow, even after packing everything and going through the list a hundred times, you will still forget something.
Getting there
Then comes the airport, where your toddler refuses to give up his luggage at check-in, cries at security because they are checking his favourite stuffed penguin, and all he wants to do is run around and refuse everything you tell him to do.
Before boarding the flight, I usually download something nice to watch, select a good seat, charge my AirPods and prepare myself to relax once my toddler is asleep. But I often forget that he has his own itinerary, and it might not match mine.
A very funny incident happened once. About 15 to 20 minutes after we had settled into the flight, my toddler suddenly didn't want to sit inside anymore, and he kept asking the air hostess to open the door so that he could go out. The air hostess looked at me, not knowing what to do. It took me a while to calm him down and distract him.
You land, collect your luggage, and the moment you sit in the taxi to your hotel, you feel like you have accomplished something big and extraordinary. You have successfully taken a tiny human from one country to another without losing your passport or your luggage.
The sequel
On our very first trip, I was really anxious about the flight, and once we landed, I thought the difficult part was behind me. But a toddler has a wonderful way of reminding you that the universe is always ready with a sequel.
And what a sequel it is.
We were so excited to show him the world that we made a packed itinerary, ready to explore as much as possible. But planning and executing are two very different things, especially when your travel partner is a toddler who doesn't fully agree with your plans. That's when I realised that you can make the most detailed itinerary in the world, but it doesn't necessarily mean you will get to do everything on it. Sometimes, the only thing you end up ticking off your list is making sure your toddler has eaten, slept and is in a good mood.
And then there's a part of travelling with a toddler that isn't quite so funny. On one of our trips, he fell ill. I had packed everything I could possibly need in a situation like this: his medicines, a travel thermometer and fever patches. I was convinced I was prepared for any situation. Except I wasn't. I didn't have any antibiotics with me, and finding a doctor in a foreign country to examine him and prescribe the right medication turned out to be far more difficult than I had imagined. It taught me that no matter how well prepared you are, travelling with a toddler comes with a certain amount of unpredictability that no one can foresee.
So, is it worth it?
Experiences like these make you wonder whether it would have been easier to wait a few more years, until your child could tell you what is bothering him and what he wants to eat, and would remember more. And this is where I think every parent who travels with a toddler eventually arrives at the same question: is it actually worth it?
Would it be easier to leave them at home? Absolutely, in some ways. Would it be more relaxing? Definitely. But does that mean you shouldn't take them along? I'm not too sure.
Let's be honest. Travelling with a toddler is expensive and exhausting. You pay for theme parks and Universal Studios, which he might refuse to enter, or where he might fall asleep the moment he gets in. You plan your day around his naps and meal times. And most of the time, the moment you come back from a holiday, you need another holiday to recover from it.
I feel there is nothing wrong with travelling without your child. If you have someone to look after your child, and he is comfortable and happy staying with them, I feel it's absolutely okay to leave him and go. After all, he won't remember anything.
But on the other hand, I feel that it's these experiences that shape children and their little personalities.
I remember his face the first time we took him to the beach; he didn't want to come out of the water. Or the time he saw a musical fountain and was in awe. Or the time we took him to the zoo and he saw all his favourite animals. Or when he tasted pizza for the first time and, surprisingly, loved it. It was like seeing and experiencing everything again through his eyes. And these are the moments when you forget how much the trip costs or how exhausting it is.
Travelling differently
Personally, I don't think the question should be whether you should travel with your toddler. The better question is whether you're willing to travel differently once you have one.
You cannot expect a holiday with a toddler to look like the holidays you took before becoming a parent. You might not see everything, you might not visit every mall, you might not be able to go to the beach, and I'm sure that more than once you will question your decision to come on this trip.
But the mistake is expecting the same holiday with an additional tiny passenger, rather than accepting that this is a completely different holiday.
My answer
So, should you travel with your toddler? I would say yes, if you want to, if it works for you and if you're prepared to accept that your carefully planned itinerary might not work out.
And if you decide to wait a few years before travelling with them, that's fine too. There is no parenting award for taking your toddler on an international trip.
As for me, despite everything, I'm planning my next trip around what my toddler will enjoy seeing. Each holiday gives you the confidence for the next one.
Because at the end of the day, the goal isn't to have a perfect holiday; it's to experience the world together, one chaotic and fun trip at a time. And if everything fails, there's always the next holiday, hopefully with better meals, fewer meltdowns, better naps and a toddler-approved itinerary.
