I have lots to share about our recent trip to Arizona, but the unfortunate thing about a terrific vacation during which one goes completely offline for days at a time is that things tend to pile up a bit. And since many of these things are actually remunerative, I need to attend to them. So you’re going to have to wait for my Arizona day trip adventures and for my dreamy post about the amazing resort stay Matt and I enjoyed (which is a big part of the reason I’m behind in the first place).
So this week, in place of my usual content, I’m going to offer a series of short posts about what I learned (or as is often the case relearned) on this trip. You know – those quick little nuggets of hindsight that follow any extended trip with children.
Note this picture of Tommy. Now, he is a bit wild-eyed after countless games on Grandma and Grandpa’s Wii, I’ll give you that. But you may also notice the black circles and the vacant stare, a product of complete and utter exhaustion. Although our trip to Arizona was wonderful in many ways, the poor child had this very look about him almost every afternoon we were there.
I’m of the firm opinion that it is always easier to travel forward in time than backward. By this I mean that I’d rather take the red-eye to Europe than a daytime flight to California from the East Coast. Last summer when we flew to France, we flew overnight and got there early in the morning, which you’d think would be a nightmare. But the kids had a quick nap on the way to our apartment and then we kept them up most of that first day. Sure we were all in bed early, but after one night we had no problems at all.
For some reason I thought this approach would work going the opposite direction as well. I had booked our flight first thing in the morning, so we got up very early to go to the airport and both kids had a short nap on the five-hour flight. We arrived in Arizona midday and headed right for the pool. Although both kids were clearly pretty tired by 2:00, I declared that we’d just keep them up and put them to bed a little early.
The result? They were both passed out by 6 and up at 3? 4? Something along those lines.
My tip for this is simple: when you are traveling west and gaining rather than losing time, give your kids a nap that first day, even if they don’t normally take naps. Especially if you got up early to catch the plane. Poor Tommy could not get his clock set right until we got home and was up really early and pretty tired the entire time we were there. This of course had an impact on some of the activities on the agenda (more on that later in the week).
One would think that I would have learned this particular lesson some time ago, but you know, I’m an eternal optimist and seem to always be surprised when we have sleep troubles on the road…
If anyone else has ideas or thoughts about this, I’d love to hear them!
I've taken with my children and those I want to take. Explore and you'll find family travel tips, information about vacation destinations, and lots of stories about our adventures! 
Jet lag is really awful for us when we travel transpacific; last time we went back to NJ, we spent 3 days trying to forceably adjust Jess’s clock before realising that we had to take it in stages. We ended up having a few days where her day started at midnight and ended by 10 a.m. as we gradually pushed her towards acclimating to US time. It was about a six day process – three making the mistake, three remedying the situation. What we learned is to just let Jess do her own thing the first day, and then adjust the internal clock based on where she does her 10-hour sleep. I wonder how she’s go as a four or five year old the next time we go the US!
I’m worried about just this issue when we travel this summer to Egypt/Kenya. And for myself — not for our nonexistent children! We had planned to do exactly what you did with your children — just start out really tired that first day and sleep, sleep, sleep to get onto the new schedule. But damn those circadian rhythms. Looks like that won’t work. I’m curious to see what others say. Thanks for bringing up this topic!
P.S. — am loving the new design on your blog — it’s great!
I just had this very discussion with someone today. During our trip to Europe in the fall our then-5-year-old was grouchy every afternoon (he will not nap unless he is sick). My husband and I realized that we too felt miserable at about 3p every day and our savior was our afternoon coffee … well, kids can’t have that little pick me up. The person I told the story too said on her recent trip to Italy with her kids she gave them a bit of soda (coke etc) during the first few afternoons during the “witching hour” and it worked perfectly to keep them going until bedtime. Not something she would do at home, but seems like a fine idea to help get older kids through those tough spots if a short nap is not possible during really extreme time changes.