Travelling and Holidays With a Toddler

The risks are not the ones people plan for

Families preparing for a trip with a toddler tend to worry about unfamiliar diseases and pack for tantrums. The travel health literature points somewhere else. CDC travel guidance identifies motor vehicle and water-related injuries, including drowning, as major health and safety concerns for child travellers, and notes that the risks children face when travelling are largely similar to those faced by the adults they are travelling with.

In other words: the car, the pool and the sun deserve more of your planning than the destination's disease list, for most trips.

Book the travel health appointment early

This is the single most time-sensitive item. The NHS advises that "you should try to get advice from a travel health professional at least 4 to 6 weeks before you travel", because "some vaccinations involve a course of doses, and others take time to build up protection against the disease." Leave it to the last minute and you may not be fully protected when you go. The NHS also notes that all travellers, including children, are recommended to be up to date with standard vaccinations such as measles.

For children specifically, CDC guidance notes that vaccinating children for travel requires careful evaluation of whether routine childhood immunisations need accelerating, as well as consideration of indications, precautions and contraindications for particular travel vaccines by age. That is a consultation, not a checklist — a toddler's routine schedule may need bringing forward, and some travel vaccines have minimum ages.

Take your child's immunisation record to the appointment. It saves a great deal of guessing.

Cars, taxis and hire cars

The gap most families fall into is assuming that a hire car or an airport transfer will have a suitable restraint. Car seat law differs by country, hire company provision is variable in both availability and condition, and taxis in many places are exempt from restraint rules altogether.

Decide before you book whether you are taking your own seat, hiring one you have confirmed in writing, or choosing transport that does not require one. If you take your own, check that its approval mark is recognised at your destination: a European R129 seat and an Australian or New Zealand AS/NZS 1754 seat are approved to different standards and are not interchangeable.

Water

Holiday accommodation is the classic drowning risk because it is unfamiliar and usually unfenced. A toddler can drown quickly and silently in very little water. The practical rules are the boring ones: constant adult supervision within arm's reach, a designated watcher who is not also cooking or on a phone, doors to pool areas kept shut, and paddling pools emptied when not in use. Armbands and floats are toys, not safety equipment.

Sun and heat

Toddlers overheat faster than adults and burn faster too. The NHS advises that children aged under 6 months should be kept out of direct strong sunlight, and for older children recommends covering up with suitable clothing, spending time in the shade — particularly between 11am and 3pm in the UK from March to October — and using a sunscreen with a sun protection factor of at least 30 and at least 4-star UVA protection.

Two things change abroad. Peak UV hours are different at different latitudes, and the sun is stronger than the UK equivalent even when the air temperature feels similar. Reapply sunscreen every two hours and straight after swimming or towel drying, and treat shade and clothing as the primary protection with sunscreen as the backup rather than the other way round.

Heat also disrupts sleep and appetite, which is worth expecting rather than treating as illness. Offer fluids more often than you think necessary.

Food, water and tummy bugs

Travellers' diarrhoea is the commonest travel illness and toddlers dehydrate faster than adults. Take oral rehydration salts with you, because the branded sachets you know are not always available and the dose matters. Know the signs of dehydration in a small child — fewer wet nappies, a dry mouth, sunken eyes, unusual drowsiness — and seek medical advice rather than waiting if they appear.

Where the water is not safe to drink, it is also not safe for brushing teeth, ice, or rinsing a dummy. Bottled or boiled water applies to all of those.

Flying with a toddler

Take-off and landing are the pressure points. Something to suck or drink at both ends — a cup, a bottle, a breastfeed, a snack — helps equalise ear pressure, and a child with a heavy cold or an ear infection may be uncomfortable enough to be worth discussing with a GP before flying. Cabins are dry, so offer fluids regularly.

Beyond that, plan for a child who cannot be reasoned with when tired. Pack more nappies and one more change of clothes than the flight duration justifies, keep essential medicines in hand baggage with their original labelling, and accept that a nap on a plane is a bonus rather than a plan.

Paperwork

Check the destination's entry rules for children on GOV.UK's foreign travel advice, including any requirement for documentation when a child is travelling with only one parent or with someone else. Passport validity rules differ by country, and children's passports expire faster than adults'.

For healthcare, a UK Global Health Insurance Card or European Health Insurance Card gives access to state-provided healthcare in participating countries on the same terms as a resident, and the NHS is clear that it is not a substitute for travel insurance. Take both, and check that your insurance covers your child's existing conditions.

What to pack that is easy to forget

Infant paracetamol and a syringe or spoon, oral rehydration salts, a thermometer, plasters, insect repellent suitable for the child's age, high-factor sunscreen and a wide-brimmed hat, any regular medicines in more than the quantity you need, the immunisation record, and a written note of any allergies. Familiar comfort items do more for a toddler's sleep in an unfamiliar room than anything else you can bring.

Expect the first two nights to be bad

New room, new noises, different light, different routine. Most toddlers settle by the third night if the bedtime sequence is kept as close to home as possible. Recreating the order of events matters more than recreating the room.