By Corinne McDermott - Have Baby Will Travel

One of my biggest concerns when I was figuring out how to travel with children, was how to prevent jet lag in babies and toddlers.  When I’m jet lagged, I’m tired, cranky, out of sorts, and I tend to feel like I’m reacting a few seconds behind everyone else.  It’s difficult enough keeping yourself together, never mind caring for a little one who’s suffering like you are.

The good news is that conventional wisdom says that babies and children tend to cope better with time changes than adults.  Now matter how difficult it may be to believe, kids are less inclined to fight their bodies’ inclination to sleep–but that might be a problem when bedtime falls at wake-up time at your destination and vice versa.

If your trip is short and the time change not terribly significant, consider sticking to home time for your trip.  Heading “back in time”, or west, is easiest to cope with: keep your child up until bedtime local time by whatever means possible, and start your next day at your usual time, but on local time.  Headed east? It’s a bit tougher as you cannot force a child to sleep when they aren’t tired.  You can, however, wake them up when they “should” get up–and again, stick to naps and bedtime in local time.  After a day or two of being sleepy, you should be back on track. That is, until it’s time to go home!