Get your kids involved by assigning them certain responsibilities

Between early morning wake-ups, multiple suitcases, bickering siblings and crying toddlers, family trips through the airport can be enough to make parents wonder why they decided to travel in the first place.

Unfortunately, some aspects of airport travel — like surprise pat downs and flight delays — are completely out of your hands. However, if you make a few changes in areas you can control, you’ll be able to get your family through the airport with these five tips.

Double-Check Your Reservations a Few Days in Advance

Something as simple as putting the wrong flight time in your planner could result in a missed flight or a few extra hours at the airport. In addition to making sure you have the correct flight time, Melanie Pinola at Lifehacker suggests confirming any reservations with your hotel and car rental service. It’s rare, but sometimes reservations can be lost or services can be overbooked. In either case, you’ll want to be prepared.

Don’t Let Them Log On

No matter how badly your teens and tweens want to send an email or check Facebook, enforce a no-Internet rule for the whole family. Staying offline while you make your way through the airport will keep everyone alert and undistracted. Taking this small step will also keep your family safe from stolen information and identities, as airport Wi-Fi connections are notoriously insecure. Many have taken the step in approaching companies like Lifelock to ensure they get notified of any discrepancies. This could prove as a great investment if you anticipate having to log on to unfamiliar networks later on in your trip. Travel and identity theft go hand in hand and receiving immediate notification of compromised security could really come in handy when preventing a trip from going sour.

Eliminate Extra Tasks

Avoid standing in line for food or weaving through the aisles of crowded gift shops by packing all your airport entertainment and snacks before you leave home. Granola bars and trail mix make great travel food because they’re healthy, filling and portable. By the same token, choosing books and magazines well before you get to the overpriced airport stores will save you money, time and the stress of having to make last-minute decisions. To eliminate one more step, print all of your boarding passes at home.

Carry On All of Your Family Valuables

Caroline Morse of Smartertravel warns that if an item in your checked luggage is damaged or goes missing, airlines won’t offer any reimbursement. Pack any valuables in your carry-on luggage and don’t just consider your high-priced items. If your daughter loses her diary or your son’s favorite stuffed animal disappears, it could put a damper on the whole trip. Keep all your valuables — whether expensive or sentimental — with you at all times.

Give the Kids Their Own Tasks

Let yourself have a break by giving your younger child the responsibility of regularly counting everyone’s bags to make sure nothing has been left behind. Assign an older child the task of finding your gate on the map and locating a bathroom stop on the way. Allowing your kids to take responsibility for simpler tasks will not only give them a sense of control, but it will keep them occupied and leave you with fewer things to worry about.

Going through the airport with your family can quickly turn into a train wreck — but only if you’re unprepared. If you make a few arrangements at home, take steps to safeguard your valuables and keep your kids engaged, you’ll find that your airport experience will be much less stressful for the entire family.

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I came up with a forty-seven plan itinerary that of course includes my daughter’s gigs, our hotels, and transportation between cities via automobile and Amtrak, but which also includes a compendium of tips, restaurant choices, and a collection of sights all our family members want to see either collectively or independently. In printing this epic, I realize that every family needs a guide of some sort to make the most of their vacation travels. Here are some ideas to make this kind of planning relatively painless and your trip – pain free.

Almost every family I know has at least one member that serves as the travel planner, seeking hotel bargains and upgrades, finding restaurants and grocery stores to accommodate a variety of diets, researches time tables for planes and trains, rents the automobile, and more. If you’re that person – or if you’d like someone else to take over those duties for you – then read on!

1. First, get the kids interested in your destination. Read aloud from travel guides, show them photos on line, find appropriate kids books or DVD’s and let them explore the region they’re headed to before they get there. Let your kids think about how they wish to document their trip – help them put together a journal or scrap book they can take along with them, their own cameras or put older kids in charge of taking the photos or videos of the trip.

Let your kids take photos when they’re old enough – memories they’ve created and encapsulated!

2. Second, select the time you’re going. On this trip, due to scheduling issues, I was unable to avoid the height of summer tourist season. In general we like to go to the southwest in the summer and we don’t mind the heat. The costs are down and we enjoy visiting National Parks when the tourist flow is at its lowest point, usually early fall or early spring. Look for hotel bargains and don’t be afraid to snatch up a vacation you didn’t consider when it shows up on your travel radar. I’m still regretting not purchasing hugely discounted round trip tickets available for one June week only – to Anchorage, Alaska.

When restricted by your children’s school schedules, pick destinations that will be the least crowded for the time – for example, don’t look at Florida beaches, Palm Springs, or Las Vegas during college spring break season.

3. Third, when you’re looking for a place to stay, look at square footage. Sometimes a big room with a roll away or two in a gorgeous old school hotel trumps a chain suite hotel with yes, separate rooms, but less square footage and a bumpy sofa bed. And sometimes not: know when the most beautiful bed and breakfast in the world is not going to win out over a swimming pool and breakfast muffins at a chain motel.

Sometimes having a motel swimming pool is more important than the most luxurious hotel

Look for special travel points in the summer: will staying two nights at one chain give you a free night down the road? Will your auto club or other discount travel membership offer a better deal at one place over another? Are you able to work with the blindness of Priceline or Hotwire? How many beds do you really need? But don’t drive yourself crazy. I’ve spent days hunting travel bargain and insider travel sites to get the best deal – but there comes a point when saving twenty dollars a night isn’t worth the twenty nights you spend to find the bargain.

4. Fourth, consider a tour. Not necessarily a bus with a group you’ll be sharing ten days with on your journey, but consider a boat trip across a lake, an urban “Duck” tour or guided half day open air bus ride through a city, a park ranger led expedition through a national park’s treasures. Sometimes you’ll gain knowledge you wouldn’t otherwise, sometimes it’s just so much easier to view the major sites of a place you’ve never been before if you’re only staying a short while.

5. Fifth, food. Yes, we have special diets in our family, and they’re not all the same special diet. But even if your family can happily consume hot dogs for days on end, there will come a time when you need something that didn’t come from either a four star restaurant or a fast food pit stop. Look for grocery stores and speciality purveyors such as fruit sellers, chocolate makers, juice bars, and the like near your hotel. For us, that avocado roll from Whole Foods deli can mean the difference between staying on time rolling down the highway or snapping at each other over a gas station mini-mart’s candy bars. And, check out the local farmer’s market. A recent happy memory: discovering the fresh tomatoes, fresh-from-the-hen eggs, and hand-made hummus at a small farmer’s market held roadside in Cambria, CA — there was dinner.

6. Sixth, trust your kids. From the time mine could talk, they had “ideas.” Some of them led to chocolate syrup covered twinkies inside a house built from a giant fallen redwood on California’s Lost Coast, some led to actual conversations with work artists, some to exploring museums or shops I would never have put on an itinerary. It doesn’t mean you should change your Everglades expedition for a day in Disney World, but it does mean include them, and listen to their suggestions. And that goes for impromptu road stops as well.

Related Family Travel Planning Articles:

Travel with Kids – Essential Planning Tips

Road Trip Essentials for Children, Activities and Food to Entertain

Lugging the bare necessities

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