When traveling with your grandchildren, the packing list should home in on that particular sweet relationship. Here are some ideas:
• Indestructible clothes. This is pretty obvious. Unless your grandkids are in their 20s (and in some cases, depending on their creativity, even then) your clothing must be ready to withstand mustard, ice cream, chocolate sauce, mud, spit-up, and even worse. Leave the silks at home, the suedes in the closet; reserve the dry-clean-only pants for adults-only travel. You’ll have more fun with the children if they know they can jump on your lap, or you can climb on a jungle gym with them, without worrying about stains.
• A little gift appropriate to where you’re going. A book about grizzly bears if you’re going to Alaska; a make-your-own kite kit if you’re going to kite festivals; or a blow-up beach ball if you’re heading to warmer climes. This does not have to be an expensive gift — in fact — it shouldn’t be. You spend plenty on their birthdays and holiday gifts. This travel gift should be considered a non-display of wealth, but thought of as something that will add to your upcoming travel experience.
• Jewelry. Surprised? So was I, when I wore my gold charm bracelet on one of my first trips to see grandson Sam when he was only a year and a half old. When we were driving to one site after another, and he was confined to his car seat, he delighted in trying to put his little fingers into a tiny gold mug on the bracelet. He loved to look at the other charms and, as he jangled each one, hear stories about where I acquired them. As he got older, Sam was delighted to learn that one of my charms was my grandchild charm, with a boy’s head on it, and Sam’s name and birth date. It was yet another connection to him that he liked to see. Now 1-year-old Ruby is as charmed by my bracelet charms as I am by her smile. Same thing with my earrings. Since she was about 6 months old she has loved to pull on my dangly earrings, and I can allow this, as I wear clip-ons when I travel with her.
• Old photos of their parents when they were the age of the grandchildren traveling with you. Pick out relevant pictures that show her mother, at age 3, in the same park as your grandchild is heading for now. The circle comes fully around to the little one.
• Foreign money for them to use, if you’re going out of the country. Travel is an educational opportunity in so many ways. Your grandkids can be counting euros or figuring out how many pesos equal how many dollars even before they've left the United States.
• An empty notebook or journal. Get them started on writing about their trip; help them along each day with a diary of their own.
• Several plastic Ziploc bags for them to take back their treasures from the trip, whether it’s shells or rocks or feathers, for show-and-tell at school back home.
• Maps of where you’re going. Why not make travel the way of teaching your grandchildren geography?
• An open mind to their newfangled electronic devices. Children today have toys and games that are unfamiliar to us. Let your grandchildren teach you something. Learn how to turn these devices on, for starters, and appreciate that the new toys, too, have educational value.
• A deck of cards. Whether it’s Old Maid, war, poker or bridge — depending on their age — you can bond with the youngsters over a good card game, and cards take up very little space in your luggage.
• A cheap throwaway camera. Let your grandchildren take those photographs of the trip that he finds interesting. My son lent (with caution) his digital camera to 5-year-old Sam on a recent llama trek in the mountains near Taos and told him to take some pictures. Rather than taking shots of his llama or the gorgeous mountain scenery, Sam headed straight to his fellow trekkers and took hilarious close-ups of them making funny faces.
• A sketch pad and colored pencils. Grandchildren may surprise you with their creativity in sketching pictures of their travels. Another good show-and-tell project, too, for them to take home.
We’ve got plenty of card games and coloring pages to keep your grandchildren busy. Or, they may prefer to go high-tech with a video journal device. Before your trip, you may want to review our 15 Tips for Taking Great Vacation Photos.
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