Berkeley Parents Network: Dealing with Time Changes

Berkeley Parents Network

Dealing with Time Changes

Berkeley Parents Network > Advice > Going Places > Dealing with Time Changes

9-hour trip to Europe

March 1998

Hi, We're taking our 2-year-old to Germany at the end of April. I've never taken him on a plane flight this long or dealt with a 9-hour time change for him before. We leave SF at about 5 pm and arrive in Germany about 6pm the next day. Has anyone done this? How do you adjust your kid's nap/nighttime sleep to get him or her to do the time change? I'm trying to figure out whether to try to keep him up during the plane flight so that he will sleep when we get there. Of course entertaining him for 11 hours on a plane flight doesn't sound much more fun than being up all night with him the night we get there. Any ideas? Carol

I don't have advice on the sleep. She's never adjusted her clock on any trips (3 to 4 hour time differences). Initially we tried but it was too frustrating trying to get her to sleep when it didn't seem natural for her to. We just carried on with what we wanted to do and if she fell asleep in the rental car or at the dinner table we just let it happen. Kathy

We took our daughter to Europe when she was two and a half, and left on a flight at about the same time as your 5 p.m. departure. DO NOT keep your child up all night in hope that it will somehow help him reset his clock! At some point he will be exhausted and shrieking and the entire plane will be glaring at you. Not worth it.

Try to get a seat on the right hand side of the plane. Why? We were on the left, and found that we were flying into the eternal day...it never really got dark, and just after our tired and wired little girl finally fell asleep (during the movie, as I recall), the passengers ahead of us opened their shades and let light come streaming in, wakening our daughter and precipitating her exhausted shrieks "I want my bed, I want to go home!" Awful, awful. Let him sleep through as much of the flight as you can.

We found that our daughter's clock reset itself quicker than ours did! She slept every time we got on a plane, train, or vaporetto (Venice) and was happy to wake up in new places. Maybe we were lucky. Part of the key is to eat lightly, but regularly, drink lots of fluids, get some exercise and spend as much time as possible outside so that the system can reset itself. Good luck!

P.S. It now comes back to me that our first few nights were weird. Julia fell asleep pretty well but would suddenly sit up around 2 a.m. and shout something like "cottage cheese!" and then go back to sleep. Natasha

We have made several trips to see family in Europe with our sons who are now 1.5 and 4.5. We all try to get a good sleep the night before we leave (we usually have an early flight which can make this hard) and then let the kids sleep whenever they want on the planes. I think being as rested as possible is more important than worrying about the time change while still traveling. Once in Spain, we let the kids take a nap, but do wake them up several hours before what we hope will be bed time. I don't know what you'll find in Germany, but our routine in Spain is so different and everything happens several hours later than here, so we don't actually have to get used to a 9 hour change. For example, our kids go to bed at about 8:30 here, but not until about 11 there. That makes it a little easier. We've found that the kids are so tired that we've never had to deal with being up all night. One of them might wake up at about 3:00 and stay up for several hours, but we try hard to keep them in bed, stay with them for a while without playing, and keep saying that it's still night time. If the sun's up, we get up. We try to be very flexible during the first few days and have found that all of us start to sleep well soon. Enjoy your trip! Robin

I've been known to give my daughter children's dramamine or benedryl to help her sleep on the plane. I take these too so if we're lucky we get to sleep through most of the flight. Good luck! Debbie

In response to the travel to Germany. We have traveled twice to France with our son -once at 3 months once at 15 months. We encouraged him to sleep as much as he could on the flight - going it is pretty natural given the evening departure from here. The hardest part of the trip was recovery from jet lag. It took our son (at the older age) several days (basically a week) to recover. He woke up at night crying and had a rough time for awhile. I would say plan on a 3-4 transition days after you arrive. We went on two to three week trip. The second and third weeks were definitely easier than the first! Fargeix

Re keeping your 2-year-old up on the flight to adjust his schedule: Are you nuts? If he's sleeping, let him lie and thank your lucky stars. I have flown often between the US and Asia with infants and preschoolers and it's never easy, but the flight itself is always much harder than the time adjustment. Kids often adjust easier than their parents to a new time zone, I find. Susan

Oct 2001

We are going to Europe next month with our 4 month old. Any advice on time changes and sleep? Thanks, Sally

When my son was four months old, I traveled to five cities over three weeks on a business trip for my work. He adjusted to the time change quickly because I did these things:
- I would not let him nap for longer than two hours during the day (even on the day we arrived and we were so exhausted. We put him in the stroller and walked around Barcelona for hours and hours until it was 7 p.m. and we all went to bed.)
- at night, I put him to bed when we went to bed, and roused him when we woke up in the morning. (Baths and massages help make him sleepy even when he didn't feel like going to sleep.)
- when he woke in the middle of the night (because his internal clock said it was daytime), I nursed him silently in the dark, then put him back down in his porta crib.
- I brought with me from home the pillowcase I had been using the past two weeks and laid that under his head in his crib, and brought his regular blanket from home. (I still do this when I travel with him. He's 11 months old and has been on 26 airplanes rides.)

warning: When we returned from Europe, our time adjustment was brutal because I was so exhausted from the travel (and working and pumping milk and schlepping.)

Advice for return: Stick to the same rules as above: get your child back into the local time zone and routine as soon as possible by not letting him/her nap very long during day, and putting him/her to bed at actual local bedtime.

Good luck. Danielle

I traveled to Europe (alone) with 2 kids this summer (2 year old and 4 month old) and here what I've found: it was more difficult for the younger one to get over jet laeg and it took 3 nights of crying and 2 more nights of just waking up and then going right back to sleep ... so it was not "too bad". I didn't switch on the light during the night, I just rocked her back to sleep and gave her some milk to drink, and that was from 1-2am to 5am. In the morning I would wake her up at 9am and stick to the normal routine for nap and meal schedule. For the way back I got (in France) some sleep medecine (prescription) . It's called Nopron, it's pretty strong but I used it only once on the first night and she slept 11h like an angel and didn't suffer any jet lag ... unlike me ! Good luck ! valerie

We have been to London twice when our son was 6 months and 18 months old. Be prepared to have a very tiring vacation...you and your husband could be up at night and sightseeing during the day. Our child was very curious about where we stayed(my Grandfather's house) and didn't feel comfortable in his new surroundings. My husband and I traded off with our child in 2-3 hour shifts at night. Then we lowered our expectations about what time we could leave the house, and of what we could see and do in a day. It also helps to be very organized. Make plans and prepare baby things the night before so you can get on your way more quickly.

We were also lucky in that our child took all his naps in his Maclaren stroller - so we could go anywhere(restaurants, museums, monuments etc.) and he would sleep for hours. It would be a real drag if you had to go back to a hotel or flat for your child's nap everyday. For a city like London, a stroller is ideal. After hours in the baby bjorn our backs hurt like crazy. Maya

14-hour trip to Australia

Jan 2001

We will be taking our 6-month old to Australia. The flight leaves at 11:30pm and arrives at 9:00am with time change (14 hour fllight though). Her bedtime is usually 8:30pm. Should we try to keep her up until the flight leaves (because of ear pressure and want her to sleep most on the plane) with a catnap in the car? How do we deal with the time change when we arrive - try to get her as quickly back to her nap schedule as possible? I particularly don't want any day-night confusion if possible. I would appreciate any advice! Sharon

We travelled to Australia with our 10 month old twins and it went fine. I would recommend the following. First and foremost, reserve the bulkhead seat with the bassinet. I took a sulu/sarong with clothes pins to drap over it to make it dark. Our departure was a little different because I had temporary brain loss and booked us through Los Angeles. But I would recommend letting her sleep before departure as much as you can. The airport was so interesting to our 10 month olds that they wouldn't sleep there. Nurse/bottle feed during takeoff for the ear pressure (we've never had a problem and have flown quite a bit). Our girls slept for a few hours then were up for an hour or so then slept for a few hours the whole trip. Arrival is in the morning so we went into day mode. They had their usual 2 naps during the day in a not very dark room. We tried to keep them up to a semi reasonable time (bedtime is 7-7:30 usually). Then did the usual bedtime routine and I went to bed myself. They woke up at 3ish, I nursed them and they weren't sleepy at all so we played quiet games in a low light room for an hour or so and then I nursed and put them back in bed. After that it was a gradual lessening of the mid night wake and play until about 3-4 days and they were completely adjusted to the new time. Travel and sleeping in a new place always disrupts their sleeping so an extra waking/feeding is the norm for us. Have fun. You can email me if you have more questions. Karen

I would recommend trying if possible to keep the baby up late if possible on the way to the airport, and usually the airport seems to provide the stimulation to keep a child awake. The reason I say this is that if you (children and parents) can manage to get on the plane completely exhausted and sleep on the plane to Australia AS LONG AS POSSIBLE the transition going there is relatively painless. (This is my ideal for trips to Australia and have managed to accomplish it about every time I've gone by staying up late the day before and getting up early the day of. The last time I went, with my daughter, we both got up early the day we left, got on the plane exhausted, were asleep before take off and slept for 12 hours straight.) The planes leave SFO at night, you sleep for a really long night, then get to Australia and it's morning. You usually find yourself going to bed early and waking up early (once there), but this can work out well, especially with children. My memories of going to visit Australia as a child include an awful lot of falling asleep in a bed with lots of coats at my parents friends' houses at 6 in the evening. I was flexible about reinstigating a rigid nap policy with my child when there because the change its easy to forget about but extremely important to babies and small children is the change in meal pattern. I felt it was really important to feed my child when she was hungry, and she mostly just napped when we were driving or riding. On the way back though its usually the opposite (i.e. very long day) and a much more difficult plane flight. Having a jet lagged baby is no fun, but probably unavoidable, but the return trip is going to be harder for jet lag. Personally I've been on planes, well, a reasonable amount with my daughter and she has never seemed particularly uncomfortable about her ears and she is pretty sensitive all around. I wouldn't assume that take off and landing will make a baby cry...necessarily.

When we came back from Australia, I thought it would be important to give my daughter a few days off pre-school to let her adjust (which I did), but the structure of nap and meal times at school actually seemed to help her adjust faster than I did to being back, even though I was working. So once you get back, try to just be persistant with the previous meal and nap time cues without trying to force issues. It's funny how children are both more and less flexible than adults. Have fun... Elizabeth

The opinions and statements expressed on this website are those of parents who subscribe to the Berkeley Parents Network. Please see Disclaimer & Usage for information about using content on this website.