On plane trips, what keeps your kid occupied?

A book. But she’s 11. If there’s built-in TV in the seat she watches that. Sometimes I’ll let her watch a video on my laptop or ipad.

There are many portable games that are easy to carry and have few pieces that have worked for long car trips that would work on airplane flights as well. Some of the best toy stores often have staff who can show you some good options. My children are all adults, so I have no current experience with specific games.

Chloroform.

My kids have yet to taste the pleasures of flight, mainly because their dad is a scaredy cat powder puff who refuses to fly.
I’m sure when they do take their first flight they’ll have plenty to occupy them, comforting me for one.

We have traversed the Atlantic a few times with my son. The first time was excruciating. He was young enough to share a seat with me, but he was a big active kid and we were stuck in with people surrounding us. Thankfully, the lady sitting to our right was a grandma and very kind and patient and mesmerised by his charms. Food was a good distraction. Snacks that took time to eat, like Cheerios and small tactile things where he could focus his attention for a decent period of time. I also discovered, coincidently on this trip, that my son loves to sort and organise, so giving him a tray with separated sections, and then a jar of coins kept him busy for a crazy amount of time. He just started doing it… pennies in one spot, nickels in another and so on. He was less than two years old this first trip. When he was older, he loved the inbuilt movies he could choose and when he didn’t like that, we had a laptop fully charged and CD’s of tried and true movies we knew he would watch over and over. Now, he is 7 and is reading books, so I am sure, if we EVER get the chance to travel abroad again, he will be fine.

I don’t know, but I’m anxiously following this thread. Soon I will be making a flight with 3 kids who have never flown, and a wife who would rather take a train… and it’s almost an 8 hour flight. (add a Scott Bakula “Oh Boy” here)

My daughter is in her twenties now but she was 7 the first time we flew long-haul and she was kept occupied with books, paper and felt-tipped pens. When she got a bit older, a Game Boy.

sleeping

Several hundred pounds worth of electronics with signifacntly more computational power than it took NASA to get to the moon just so they can read harry potter books without having to carry the book. Ain’t progress grand.

Playing with toys, drawing, watching cartoons. I’ve made them travel with me since they were infants so they’re pros.

With all that insulation around them in the cargo hold, I’ve never really noticed.

I just tell my kids to kick the seats in front of them while screaming and pooping their pants.

We tried Nintendo DS, but they got airsick and hurled.

I bring a bag of stuff. It’s the same bag I keep in the car when we go to restaurants. I call it the bag of fun. It has maze books, coloring books, wiki sticks, small puzzles, stickers and paper, toys like little action figures and cars, portable cd player with headphones with a couple cds. Small reader books, notebook with pens, colored pencils, markers. We have this really cool pack of cards for travelling. the cards ask you to do different things and you can draw pictures on them and erase the marker. @digitalimpression…I feel for you. Its hard to travel alone with kids. I’ve even had to have a glass of wine on one of my trips because I couldn’t settle them down, so I settled myself down instead! Lol