How to Keep your Kids from becoming HANGRY Travelers
I might be the scariest, most illogical hangry person… besides my four year old, who is even worse. There is screaming, crying, falling to the floor, and then you have to see what my four year old does. What a nightmare we both are. The only reason we are still a family is because we take extreme food measures, especially when we travel.
Hangry (verb): A state of anger and irritability resulting from being hungry.
The 3 Worst Times and Places to be HANGRY when you Travel
On the Plane
At the Hotel in the Morning
Sightseeing around Lunchtime or Dinnertime
1. On the Plane
Our four year old says, “I’m hungry,” more than he breathes. (We feed him constantly. I promise.) The last place I want to hear him say he is hungry is on the airplane because food is limited, which can be a scary thought, so plan ahead.
Be Prepared for Life to Mess Up your Preperation
Before an international flight, I bought our favorite snacks at Trader Joe’s: sliced apples, little carrots, cherry tomatoes, peanut butter cups, veggie sticks, granola bars, baby cheeses, and Joe’s Os. I divided them into little zip lock bags, so each person would have their own snacks… really, to prevent me from eating everyone else’s snacks. Everyone had his or her own large Ziploc bag with his or her little bags inside. I was killing it!
During the night, our upstairs toilet stayed running. It overfilled and flooded the floor. It happens to be right above the kitchen. Oh. Heck. No. It dripped down all over the kitchen onto my Ziploc bags. I hadn’t sealed the big bags yet because I was going to add the fruits and vegetables in the morning. Toilet water got in the big bags, and they smelled. I wiped them off, and they felt all gritty. The whole thing made me want to vomit, so I threw it all away.
After cleaning the kitchen and throwing away everything in the kitchen that was ruined, it was time to leave to the airport. I took the fresh fruits and vegetables and bought airport food. It was an expensive save, but no one freaked out.
So always pack food. If all else fails, buy expensive airport food--because it’s worth it.
2. At the Hotel in the Morning
I am not a morning person, but my kids are. It causes a lot of problems. They are up at 5 am and want to eat before breakfast starts, and when breakfast starts, I am just getting out of bed and want to shower, and I’m really slow at getting ready. I don’t know why. It’s who I am. Stop trying to change me! Mornings like this can end in everyone hating each other. Here’s what we do so that doesn’t happen.
If the hotel has breakfast, my husband just takes the kids while I get ready, then I quickly eat while they pack up the baby bag.
If the hotel doesn’t have breakfast or it just isn’t worth it to buy the breakfast there, my one and only goal when I wake up is to get ready as fast as possible. The kids can only last so long before they start banging on the door wanting to leave. Sometimes I kill at this, and we all eat happily together.
But sometimes I’m just to slow, so my husband goes out into the town and eats with the kids while I get ready. They bring me something gross back, and my husband complains that I don’t like it even if I’m thankful and didn’t say I hated it.
Usually, the day before, we buy food at the grocery store: some apples, bread, oranges… things like that, so when they wake up, we can give them little things until it’s time to go.
3. Sightseeing during Lunchtime or Dinnertime
I hate it when we are walking around having a good time, and everyone gets really hungry, but we don’t know where to find a restaurant, especially if the area doesn’t have a lot of restaurants on yelp.
Be Prepared for Life to Mess Up your Preparation
We chose a restaurant in advanced from a guidebook. It sounded great. I was pregnant, and we waited until I NEEDED to eat… a minute more, and I’d start eating people. We got to the restaurant, and it wasn’t there. It must not have been very good because it was a different store. There weren’t any restaurants in the area. I ended up eating a person.
Now we always have food from the grocery store with us when we are out sightseeing. My kids eat whole cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, peaches, apples, bananas because that is all we have. This lazy way of preparing food has been very healthy for us. If we see a bakery, we will also buy bread to keep with us just in case we need to hold them off until we get to where we are eating.
(I never actually ate a person. I just cried and said mean things.)
Does your family get hangry? Let’s hear it.
