Planning Family Holidays

Nina Sebastiane: Welcome back to Baby Talk on the Baby Channel. I'm Nina Sebastiane. We are talking today about holidays and joining me now to advice us on ideal holiday destinations to take the little ones off is travel journalist and mother of one, Sarah Tucker. Hello! Welcome to the show. Sarah Tucker: Hello! Nina Sebastiane: So, you have written lots of books about traveling with toddlers traveling with children, what's the must do tip for anybody wanting to go with their kids? Sarah Tucker: I think it depends, first of all, what sort of parent you are, and obviously the age of the child. And my son, Tom is now seven but I remember when I was pregnant with him, I got very excited because I was a travel journalist then but I was very much into adventure travel. And I thought my days with traveling would be over. And I had quite a few colleagues who were family travel experts. And I contacted to them and saying I'm going to have a child, where do I go? And then said, well, wait for four years, about three-four years and then you will have the kids clubs in the hotels but really it's so do I stay in the UK. Nina Sebastiane: Really! Sarah Tucker: Yeah, and I thought no, I don't want to do that. I want to travel. I wouldn't say that I would go tracking to India with my child especially as a baby. But I wanted to research a lot more about it. And I -- so what I did was I started off in a very gentle way. I just sort of like when he was about two weeks old, I just went up to London and when his head was no bigger than sort of like a tennis ball, and really started to travel around the world and I wrote the book, Have Baby, Will Travel as a result of it simply because I thought that if you start traveling with children of very, very young age, when they were baby -- they do, they do and it becomes very, very natural and they realize that traveling long hold traveling by air is boring. So I think it's really -- if you start young, not only it will get your children engaged to traveling and being good travelers, it will also get you engaged as a parent. Because I think, I interviewed thousands of parents with the Have Toddler Will Travel book and a lot of I think was about over 1,500 toddlers, which was a very interesting experience because toddlers are very honest. Nina Sebastiane: Yes, there are different officials together than babies, aren't there? Sarah Tucker: Well, yes. It goes from the sublime experience of traveling with a baby where I do little hours than sleep, eat, and poo basically. Nina Sebastiane: And you do have all the kid that you have to take care -- Sarah Tucker: Yes, yes. Nina Sebastiane: That's the thing that drives me crazy about kids though, about babies. Sarah Tucker: Then again I was - and a lot is said about breastfeeding and I am sure you have done a lot about breastfeeding in the channel. When you travel, breastfeeding really comes into its own because the baby is taking all the antibodies of your milk and it's very, very simple. Nina Sebastiane: And it's very sterilizing, it's no packets. Sarah Tucker: But the only, only problem and I encountered this when I was in the UK, is that breastfeeding in public when you go overseas it's fine in this country, you know it sucks. Nina Sebastiane: Exactly. It depends on where you are going. For example, if you are going past to an Arabic country then you know that might be a little bit more difficult. Sarah Tucker: But I certainly found when I was researching the books is that as soon as you leave this country, the attitude towards children, towards traveling with children and traveling with babies, it's brilliant, it's wonderful. And in the book called I have listed the best short hold destinations and long hold destination because I think, I think it's the journey that scares a lot of parents. Nina Sebastiane: Let's touch on that Sarah, because, you know, within this, I am just filling out couple of things, top-ten toddler friendly countries, places like Portugal, Spain, France, Greece, and even such as the Caribbean is surely that's too far away. Sarah Tucker: Well again, with my research, and I said I was completely new to this, I never had a baby before, I never had a child. I always have been involved in my much of the free spirit. When I investigated airlines, the best airlines with the baby, with the young child, with the long hold ones, basically may not because they have to be. If you have a screaming child for 12 hours, it is much more painful to have a screaming child for one hour so you have got airlines, like Emirates and Qantas and British Airways are excellent now. In fact, all the airlines since my son was a baby have really up to their game, the cabin crew are much more good to handling both anxious, not only anxious children, but more importantly anxious parents and it's the one time where being a single mom is a really good idea. Because if you are a single mom with children they would really take the care of you on flights. Nina Sebastiane: So I was really, when I was writing the books both the toddler and the baby book saying that if you are going to travel, as far as if you are going to go by air, long hold is a really good idea because the long hold airlines are much better geared to it, they have much more space, their in-flight entertainment is good, they have a good sense now of not feeding them chocolate, or fizzy drinks. So anything and there is lots of advice in the book saying about what you should do and what you should not feed the baby and how you should -- Okay, I mean, I have got two kids, and I have got a toddler and my baby, I can pretty much do anything with because you know as you said, have poo to travel with, and all problems but with the two year old what would you consider is the ideal type of holiday to take to your two year old daughter? Sarah Tucker: Ideal type of holiday, I would recommend, I've mentioned -- you mentioned Portugal. Portugal is an excellent destination and although I sort of like slide off, it's a nice destination for several reasons but the most importantly you said about - yeah, I think the first question you asked is what is - what travel tips would you give? I think basically if you are a chilled out parent, you have a chilled out child, I am not, I am not a psychologist, you have got other people coming into to talk about that but in my experience as a travel journalist, when I have interviewed the parents, you have a neurotic kid, you have a neurotic parent is that's the correlation somewhere along the line. But I found that Portugal, its climate is good, you don't want somewhere that sounds obvious that too hot or too cold and again as I have mentioned before, this country is the climate is good, I know it, we were having a mishmash of everything at the moment but I remember interviewing this father of four and very wealthy guy and he's spent about £4000-5000 in a two week holiday to a wonderful hotel, 5-star hotel, excellent beach, came back of summer holidays, also as a long holiday, came back has a day and it was frosty and windy and that was sort of like a crabs on the beach and stuff, and the kids went back to school and the holiday they spoke about, because they have had not more fun, because it was too hot and it was boring and they have to stay in a shade all the time, and they were getting blisters and as you may enjoy as a parent but your kids - Nina Sebastiane: That's total commonsense though, isn't it? It doesn't occur to you, I suppose then go to Mauritius, go to Colombo for your holidays. Sarah Tucker: But I think this is when I wrote the toddler book I interviewed the kids because I wanted to give them the voice because it's although a parents' thing oh well, if the hotel has got a kids' club it family friendly. That's rubbish, that's absolutely rubbish. Nina Sebastiane: That's interesting you say that, because again, I suppose that touches on the kind of holiday you want to have with your kids. Do you want your kids being looked after somebody else while you frankly get sitting in front of the pool sunning yourself and reading the magazine or do you want to interact with them the whole duration of the holiday? There is a few things that were picked up by your book and I want to touch from those quickly. What toddlers like on holiday? And the top one of course was building sandcastles on the beach. It wasn't hot sunny weather; they don't care whether it sunny or shady, as long as you know, they have got a bucket and a spade they forget the sun. Sarah Tucker: And also the first things, the top ten tips, and it was highly illuminating, sometimes very pointing and touching interviewing these four or five year olds because they love being with their parents, they love it. I think the first five things all to do with the beach, I think, one is actually going daddy in the sun, but not mummy, because you might get hurt, so you know that she is coward and it's all to do with -- and something is like, things like in the goody bags like Virgin Airlines have the best goody bags as far as children are concerned and it was having a torch in the goody bag and so that when they went camping, like it's sort of shine the torch she is underneath their bed and these simple things, the simplicity of things and I think with parents is the one time where they can let go and get to know their kids a lot better. But always as I said, I'm a travel journalist and I'm a writer and I'm not a trained psychologist, and I am getting into the sphere now of making value judgments about parenting, but definitely, I found that when I give an advice about sort of family holidays, it is important to you know, often people say, well how much I have got sort of grant to spent how much? What sort of holiday should I have? It also depends how much time you want to spend with your child? If you want to spend a lot of time with your child, go self-catering I always think camping, camping with young children is an excellent - they will love it, anything outdoors is wonderful. In the winter, skiing is good because it's a nice bonus. Yes there's the kid clubs but it's important and they have a sense of fun. With anything outdoors will completely tire the child out. This is good for the child and good for the parent. And it's a very healthy environment. Anything indoors, I know there's lots of hotels and really good hotels that are now developing sort of like clubs and activities for children. Nina Sebastiane: Well there's tons of that in your book and I hate to cut across you and because we are running out of time, but you know it's Sarah Tucker, have toddler will travel, have baby will travel, they are out in the book shops and you know, there is tons and tons of information in here be it the kind of holiday that you want with your kids, as far as away as possible or you want them as close to you as possible, but Sarah I am sure we will have you in again because we've just touched on a lot of these subjects and didn't go into deeply, but thank you very much. Well you are still my guest today, now if you have got any thoughts comments or questions on anything that you have seen on today's baby talk or indeed anything else from the baby channel, well drop us a line. You can phone us on 09050280090 or you can text the word baby plus your message to 82540. Thanks very much for joining and see you next time.