A Baby and Toddler Survival Guide to Visiting Relatives for the Holidays

How to make it easier when you visit a house that hasn't been babyproofed since '93.

Nov 29, 2024

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Even though Christmas decorations have been up since (checks calendar) October, I’m only just starting to think about our holiday travel strategy now.

The holidays are both more fun and less fun since having a kid—fellow Moms hustling to make some magic know—and throwing travel into the mix can be a real challenge. I’m incredibly lucky to have the majority of our family so close (3 hour roadtrip) and during the holidays we try to visit as many branches as we can if it’s not our turn to host.

What makes visiting family tricky for us is that my toddler is an outside toddler. We are a whirlwind! We are touching fragile items! We are turning the knobs on a gas stove! If it’s dangerous, chances are they’ve already tried to touch it. This makes houses that I used to think of as charming, full of interesting family heirlooms and history into absolute death traps. Add extra people and dogs running around a small house and it can get stressful. Which is not what we want the holidays to be!

If you’re one of the 3 million people who traveled over the holidays last year, then you get it. It’s the busiest time to go anywhere, people are HYPED over seasonal traditions, and your toddler is just trying to figure out why there’s a big tree in the middle of the living room and wants to touch it. Here’s how to make visiting relatives and friends easier with a toddler in tow:

Prep your host ahead of time.

One thing I learned very quickly is that while a lot of core tenets of parenting are the same 30 years later, most of our well-meaning family members have completely forgotten what it’s like to have a toddler-saurus or a baby around. The details you obsess over on a daily basis (like nap schedules or the “correct” way to cut a sandwich) your relatives forget they had to deal with, and either way every kid is different.

A few weeks before your trip, call your host and talk about some of these things, especially what kinds of foods your toddler will *always* eat, what kinds of outings/plans make sense, and what toys are/aren’t appropriate they may have stashed away. You can also ask some questions to help figure out what’s going to work best, like:

Which room is best for us to play in as a homebase? (For example, a basement/rec room or a bedroom)
Do you have fragile items you really don’t want touched? If you can’t remove them, let’s talk about how to protect them.
Where is the dog/cat stuff set up and can we separate or remove those toys ahead of time?
What are some house rules we should know, like shoes off in the house?
Is there a bathtub in any of the bathrooms?
Can you clear space in the fridge for toddler/baby food? (This was more relevant with bottles of milk/formula)

Your host wants this to go as smoothly as you do, so communicate your needs with them. (This is always my advice for almost anything. You can’t get mad at someone for not providing something if you never told them you needed it!!)

Send a few pieces of gear ahead.

Sometimes, lugging every single item you have just won’t work. (This is true of flying especially, but even for our roadtrips there is a limit of what can fit in the car with all of us in it!) For places we go often, it’s worth buying a few extra pieces and letting them live at your destination. Some things grandparents have offered to buy and some we’ve ordered and shipped ahead of our arrival. Others I’ve found on FB marketplace locally while we were there (it’s easy to change your location) or found secondhand and brought up the first time we went.

Either way, I’d recommend:

A high chair you can pull out when you’re there.
A pack n’ play to leave there so you don’t have to lug a gigantic travel crib.
Portable travel shades (I too did not think I needed these, and boy was I wrong.)
An infant tub if you’ve got a baby with you.
A potty seat that lives in their guest bathroom.
A stepstool or toddler tower.
Toddler place settings, which just makes everything easier for feeding.

There may be more “big” things you’ll want to send—we went through a biiiiig bouncer phase for a while that meant we brought it everywhere—but these are the big ones. Our wonderful family also has a whole stash of toys and books that are extra special to play with while we’re there.

Take a tour of the house with your toddler soon after you arrive.

I find this helps us anytime we go to a new place, but especially houses with lots of random hazards—we take a tour of every room, talk about what we can/can’t play with and why, and introduce everyone. It takes a while for my toddler to warm up, and this helps with the overwhelm a little bit. (On subsequent visits sometimes they point the hazards out to me, which is hilarious.)

We don’t have a dog, so spending time with our dog-cousins is always a highlight!

This is also a good time for you to get everything set up. If you’re with a partner, they can do the tour while you peel off and create a diaper changing station/set up the bathroom, remove fragile or hazardous items (some examples: pills, remote controls, crystal photo frames, trays of m&ms) from low tables, and get some toys out for when the tour is over.

Have a containment strategy.

The holidays have SO much extra fun in them, especially for kids, and sometimes it can just be Too Much. Plan ahead for the inevitable overwhelmed meltdown, the tug-of-war between cousins, and the inexplicable refusal to nap.

For me, that usually means mandating quiet time in the middle of the day. It could be taking them out on a stroller walk with a blanket so they fall asleep. It could be investing in an indoor-outdoor tent so they can play without terrorizing the dog.

Don’t be afraid to hold your boundaries.

Family dynamics are so, so tricky. Especially when you’re a guest. It’s easy to type out and my harder to do, but I try to hold 90% of my boundaries when we’re traveling. What I mean by that is if we fudge bedtime by a little bit, that’s fine.

An example of my favorite fudge-bedtime Christmas activity, Night Lights.

But we don’t fudge bedtime and skip naptime and go on a super overstimulating excursion all in one day. That’s disaster.

So pick what is most important to you as a parent to hold consistent even when you’re breaking the rest of your routine and stick with it. Even if your relatives are like, “Really?” Yes, really, we don’t let our six-month old eat cake! Yes, really, we are going to bed now, at 6:30 PM even if Uncle so-and-so just got here! Yes, really, we are going outside to play when it’s 35 degrees because we will tear this house down if we stay here another minute!

Most of the time, this isn’t because your relatives are out to get you. It’s almost always forgetting/not knowing what having a toddler is like. It really is a “IYKYK” situation, and YOU KNOW what’s best for your family, so you gotta do you.

Enjoy your time together.

This makes it sound like visiting relatives isn’t fun—I LOVE seeing our family because it makes my heart so happy to see them with my toddler. I was close to my grandparents growing up and to see that relationship blooming with my own kid is extra special. I am so excited for the holidays this year and all the fun we’ll have with both sides of the family.

Part of why I can relax (besides how amazing our relatives are) is because of all this prep/gear ahead of time. It’s true for any trip, really, but the more I can prepare, the less issues we seem to have. (It’s kind of like how I bought $200 rain boots in a panic a week before my wedding because the forecast changed, so it didn’t end up raining.)

This week’s rapid-fire recs:

Absolute genius for roadtrips.
Have you heard of parenting complinegs?
I love travel stories like this - so cool. (NYT Gift Link)
Winter packing with kids is soooo hard. All the tiny layers! This guide from Where is Briggs is in my saved folder.
I always look forward to Coffee + Crumbs in my newsletter — it’s more general reflections of motherhood and womanhood, but the essays are always beautiful and sometimes hit me so hard I have to sit for a minute. This one about getting it together really resonated with me.

Thanks for being here.

I’m getting really excited about the holidays this year, especially because my toddler is old enough to really get it. (We had SUCH a fun Halloween for that reason.) Our favorite farm gives out cider donuts when you purchase a Christmas tree so that’s where we’ll be this weekend. In the meantime, I’m putting together a bunch of travel toy recommendations for your Christmas shopping—let me know if you have anything on your mind you’re looking for as gifts or for upcoming travel yourself!