intuition

I understand there is no best age per se, just looking for input and different views/experiences.

I am looking to travel longhaul with my daughter, most likely without the other parent. The purpose is both to spend time with relatives who live on the far end of the world and to visit different cultures and give her a glimpse of the world. I am primarily looking at the age span between 3 and 6 years old, but up to 12 years old can be of interest. (The 3-6 y.o. timeframe is influenced by the relative ease to pull kid out of pre-school and my access to parental leave). Looking to stay abroad and on the road anything between 1-4 months.

Things on my mind are for example: manageability onboard for multiple 10h+ flights, kids ability to get something out of the trip, disaster planning (coping with stuff kids easily gets like like stomach flu), homesickness and so on. I am looking to make a plan for such things, in order to prep me, the kid and most importantly the other parent!

LapLap

The problem before the kid is five is that they won’t remember any of it later - and if they do, it’s because of photos and stories about the trip.

Have been doing what you’re describing with my own daughter (usually without my husband) and the trips get more and more enjoyable each year as she gets older and she becomes more and more of a companion than a charge. But every year brings its advantages - I kind of miss the times when I’d book us bulkhead seats and we’d have fellow travellers come and visit (sometimes children, sometimes adults), hanging around to play and chat. It was like witnessing a Princess with a parade of courtiers. Ever since she was a year and a half old (her first long haul flight) she’s loved long flights and has a blast on them, if an infant or baby is crying because they’re bored, she goes to cheer them up and everyone is happy.
I know the consensus is that long haul flights with a young child is hell - you might find that is the case for you - but it isn’t a given. Flights can be every bit the magical experience your destination turns out to be.

rickg523

IME - traveling with 8 to 10 year olds was remarkable. They're seeing so many things for the first time, the wonder is infectious. Under 8 yrs old I found the kids were not really getting it. We traveled extensively while the kids were in the "sweet spot" - it was just really fun - and consequently they are excellent travel companions now in their early teens and will be ready for independent travel by the time they're 16.
OTOH, I'm not talking about traveling to visit family, which is, let's face it, an obligation that must be met especially when the kids are small.

intuition

We did and had exactly that at age 1, on a 8h+ intercontinental flight. First a small kindergarten session with a family seated nearby and then, I swear, every single flight-attendant of the entire crew came one by one to look and cuddle. True princess moments!
Once onboard she was really manageable (and immobile!), just eat, play and then sleep. No crying and the only hell was pre-flight: to keep track of all boarding-passes, carry-on bags, get baby-food and stroller through security and so on.
Now, at 2, with full mobility, energy and stubbornness it will be quite a different story!

I am starting to realise I am trying to wedge two things into one. Better to do the trip to the end-of-the-world sooner with the sole purpose of displaying kid to relatives! And then save the more ambitious travels until later.

Did you use school holidays for such trips?

rickg523

Yes. Mom and I disagreed. I was "they'll learn more traveling than in any classroom." Mom was more conventional. Mom won, as always . So quick trips, (domestic, Mexico, or Canada) during the Easter break and longer, overseas trips in the summer, often leaving the day after school let out. Xmas reserved for relative visits.
Btw, I found that the kids (@8-10) could at most go about 3 weeks traveling if I'd book 3 one-week
stays in 3 different places (Rome, Naples, Venice or London, Paris, Amsterdam, for example). If we were moving more often, they'd get antsy after 14 days.

yno

We've been extensively travelling with our kids from 2 months onwards and still continuing, both short trips and long haul (first flight o for our youngest was a transatlantic flight at 2 months old). This allowed us to have our kid loving the travel part, even on longer travel (18+ hours including transit).

It might be your kids don't remember, but they will get to love the travel. And if travel is to visit relatives, that's the best thing you can do. Super important to develop these connections as a family. And these connections will stay, irrespective of the age of your kids.

Few tips: have food with you, get all your stuff ready (boarding passes, passports, etc.), have a few toys, lots of drawing stuff, and forget about screen time if your kids want to watch tv... (mine prefer doing other things than TV). And talk to your kids before the travel, explain what they will see, what happens at the airport etc.,

GUWonder

Every child is different about what they remember and don’t. I remember a few trips of mine abroad and domestically from before I was 3 years old too, with me remembering less from the ones before I was three than after. I have some young relatives who have traveled extensively over the years and some of them remember trips from when they were 2 or 3-5 years old while others of them don’t seem to remember anything of their trips before they were 3/4 years old. And learning — even perhaps linguistic/cultural stuff — from trips isn’t the only way to learn the kind of lessons picked up during travel.

Much of the long-haul travel for my young relatives over the years has been because we typically have family living across different continents. In one case close to the OP, for a time it was typical for a 10 to 14-15 day intercontinental trip every 5-7 weeks for the preschooler. Harder on the accompanying adult than on the child. And it gets harder for both the child and accompanying adult as the child gets older .... until it possibly gets easier again if the child can get enough space to sleep on the flight and the flight achedule works well for sleep. With the plethora of possible entertainment options on flights nowadays, whether it’s BYO entertainment or seat-back displays, it seem that the toughest age to travel with kids is for those kids who are in the crawling/toddler ages and up until they can seem to be mesmerized for an hour or three by an iPad/drawing pads/books/games. Fortunately, it sounds like the OP’s child is on the verge of being n the easily mesmerized and very communicative stage.

When you become a captive to regular school schedules, the cost for travel with children will tend to rise substantially over when a child is free from a regular school calendar. And the more children you have, the fewer such trips you may be able to make. Consider making use — even creative use — of SAS’s “children fly free” campaigns.

Toddlers and other preschool kids may seem less hit by motion sickness on planes than regular school age children. And no amount of flying experience will necessarily change that for all children. The worst plane motion sickness amongst my young relatives hit the most frequent flyers amongst them, and began after they were in regular school.

I am not of the school that travel by itself is a great learning tool. So the idea of kids skipping school to go on vacation, near or far, is an anathema to me. Sure, kids who travel learn different things, but there is no substitute for a proper academic environment at home or anywhere else.

If doing these trips without a parent of the child, it will be important to maintain communication between the child and the parent(s) at home. Fortunately, audio and video calling is borderline free nowadays, and you just have to coordinate times that work to do that. If the trips are being done for the sake of relatives living abroad and maintaining family/cultural ties, best to acknowledge it as that. If wanting to live abroad just because the opportunity is there — whether for family visits or not — best to just say that is it too.

Make sure to have the health care (and insurance) side covered for both of you. Unlike in Sweden, healthcare for children often will cost the parents something .... unless they have insurance coverage of sort in the host destinations.

I assume your child goes to a daycare in Sweden and that you will want to maintain the same daycare as much as possible when back. As it sounds like she may be going in and out of it with extensive gaps in between, that may have its own issues to consider. The older daycare teachers at one of my relative’s daycares in Sweden were used to the child and parent suddenly giving same-day or prior day notice for trips away for weeks at a time, and it wasn’t a problem in any way — not for the child and not for the daycare teachers. But not all children and daycares are alike in that way. And daycare staff changes can make a difference over time. [For example, the older daycare teachers know this has been a family pattern previously, but one of the new additions seemed to think it was a child kidnapping case underway. ]

LapLap

Having gone through an intense period of anterograde and retrograde amnesia, I realise that afterwards, it becomes impossible to differentiate between actual memories and those that we piece together and put into place after the fact.
Every time you talk about (or even think about) a memory you reinforce that memory, and if you are someone with a tendency to elaborate and embellish the account of an experience, if you do that enough, your embellished version will eventually “write over” the original memory.

This means that with photos and regular conversations with a young child about experiences they have had, memories can be reinforced and survive the hazy before-they-reach-5-or-so phase (or whenever it is that your child’s memory becomes more permanent). If something wonderful happened, keep telling them that story and it will, hopefully, solidify and become something they can take along with them into later life. Rogue memories will make it through regardless, but talking to my own child, I realise that quite a few of her recollections are false - but they seem real enough to her, and a few of these aberrations will no doubt become part of her own cache of childhood memories.

GUWonder

One thing I left out: kids need to play with other kids, but some kids do better at just getting into the action with new kids, while other kids don’t and some of the latter may become clingy while away from home and sometimes even when back at home if gone a lot and for extended periods of times. The children the child is used to playing with at home — and this is a big issue in Sweden — may form new cliques or adjust the clique so that the child who is “different” or returns is “different” and a sort of outsider even to the group in which they were previously immersed. It’s not a show stopper and can be a good thing IMO to be just as comfortable to go it alone as to engage in groups, but each child can be different in this regard.
My suggestion is to see how it goes and then make additional plans after the initial trip/trips.

LapLap

My husband went on long overseas trips as a child and never felt he fitted in when he returned to Japan. This put into play a chain of events that led him to go to a Boarding School in England where his English overtook Japanese as his dominant language. Of course, jackpot for me as it led to us meeting and becoming a family, but one never knows what the consequences of our decisions will really be...

andrewben

traveling with 8 to 10 year olds was remarkable. They're seeing so many things for the first time, the wonder is infectious. Under 8 yrs old I found the kids were not really getting it. We traveled extensively while the kids were in the "sweet spot" - it was just really fun - and consequently they are excellent travel companions now in their early teens and will be ready for independent travel by the time they're 16.

Kate Bregovic

There's no perfect age! Everything depends on your child and you!

Kate Bregovic

I started travelling with my little one when she was only 2 weeks and it was a perfect experience.