Traveling with intense kids is no small feat.
One must tackle the planning, and the packing, and the travel itself. Then, there is the question of how to keep those intense children occupied and engaged while on your trip. Of course, you’d also like for those children to sleep. And then there is the aftermath.
All good things must come to an end, and getting back into the swing of things after a fun vacation can be a bit of a challenge!
Resources for Traveling with Intense Kids
Traveling with intense children is not for the faint of heart
I have a good friend who always says, “When you are traveling with kids it’s no longer a vacation, it’s a trip.” The line always makes me laugh because it is so true.
Here are a few posts to let you know you are not alone, and maybe make you laugh a little too:
Keeping intense kids busy while on the road
I have learned that one of the keys to traveling with intense kids is to keep them busy while on the road. I rely heavily on books, games, audiobooks and stories, and – if we’re being honest here- caffeine for myself!
Here are some of our favorite travel pastimes:
- The Best Travel Games for Your Family
- 10 Waterproof Games for the Beach or Pool
- Fidgitz: The Perfect Game for Wiggle Worms
- How Around the World Stories Helped Me to Muddle Through March
Perfect travel games and activity books for the road:
How to keep intense children engaged and learning while on vacation
It can be hard to keep up with gifted and intense children. They crave information! When we travel, I make sure to have back-pocket plans for keeping the kids engaged and learning.
Here are some of our recent favorites:
- How to Homeschool on Your Vacation
- Have Books, Will Travel: How to Homeschool on Vacation
- The Best Geography Games for Your Homeschool {Gameschooling}
- Pin It Maps!
- Simple Vacation Learning: Journals
- Learning with Postcards While On Vacation
Some of our favorite portable games:
Not quite ready to travel with those intense kids of yours?
My husband and I always imagined traveling with our children. We figured if you started early, it would be something they would learn to adjust to and grow to love it. The thing is, some kids are more intense than others and sometimes, despite best-laid plans, traveling feels impossible.
Here are some ideas to help you survive until traveling feels manageable:
Wondering if your child is gifted/2e?
We love to share homeschool and gameschool resources for keeping intense kids busy and engaged!
Be sure to follow My Little Poppies because we share snapshots of gameschooling moments… and heaps of incredible books!
Now it’s your turn. Tell me: What advice do you have for traveling with intense kids? Share here.
This post has been part of the June 2017 Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page Blog Hop: Traveling with Gifted and Intense Kids. Please click the image below to read more posts in this series.
Caitlin Fitzpatrick Curley
Cait co-hosts The Homeschool Sisters Podcast and is co-founder of Raising Poppies, a community for parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children. Cait is also founder of the Family Book Club at My Little Poppies, a fantastic community of book-loving parents and the Gameschool Community at My Little Poppies, a vibrant community of gameschoolers.
Cait is a contributing writer for Simple Homeschool. Her work has also appeared on The Huffington Post, The Mighty, Scary Mommy, GeekMom, and many others. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram
and G+.
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Thank you! I can’t wait to explore some of those games with my boys.
Just in time for our 4 poppy, 20 hour EACH WAY vacation!
I hope you treated yourself, mama!!!
We were traveling by car this summer and I really missed those games, had to think thomething out. We counted blue cars, then yellow, then red, then we sang songs out loud like in karaoke (my husband first was against it, but eventually joined us)) It was fun but just a little exhausting.
So I’ve saved your list to get ready for our next vacation!