Question: What do Atlanta, Ga., Winnipeg Canada, and Icheon, South Korea, have in common?
Answer: All these cities have airports with built-in playgrounds ideally suited for purging preflight wiggles, which I appreciate as a father of seven children under 8.
Airport wiggles can strike at any moment. Sibs squabble, squirm, and whine at the gate. Parents cringe as snacks and ointments fly through the air with a frequency that puts planes backed up on the tarmac to shame.
But wait a second! The airport is a playground! My mutinous mass discovered this on a recent family reunion trip East, as they gobbled up a good 45 minutes of gate wait zigzagging along carpet patterns and racing moving sidewalks.
Fun parachute
For longer gate waits, our seven-headed Hydra needed a little something extra. This is when my wife and I pulled the ripcord on the “fun parachute.” Try bringing one of these on your next trip. Contents may include:
Jump ropes. Great for sweat breaking would-be wanderers. Tip: Only unpack jump ropes at empty gates. Fellow passengers don’t take kindly to having toes whipped.
Squeeze balls. Great tension tamers for kids with flight jitters. Also good for low-key ball games like mini bowling. Tip: Try using empty toilet paper tubes or markers as pins.
Tape with a twist
Painter’s tape is as good as a game of Twister. Tape shapes on the floor (instead of colors) and participate in the pretzeling of pint-sized limbs.
Heart felt
My 6-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a heart condition as a toddler, and we’ve been particularly mindful of heart health ever since. A recent furor over the risk of coronary embolism during air travel came with scores of doctors’ orders (for everyone, not just high-risk individuals) to move before and during flight.
My wife and I found that nothing in our fun parachute encouraged movement more than simple 1-inch x 1-inch felt squares. Really! Our kids used these shockingly versatile squares for hopscotch courses, race markers, and to turn shoes into skates on hard polished floors. My eldest even stuck velcro tabs to his “skates” to keep them attached to his feet. Eight to 12 squares work for any number of improvised games. Tip: Felt with high wool content slides better.
By-the-book scavenger hunt
Reading is a good in-flight activity and can be a wiggle buster as well. Pack books about airports — like Richard Scarry’s Airport — and using them as scavenger hunt templates. Tip: Draw grids on flip sides of felt squares and have hunters mark grid boxes with paper tabs for each find. The first to fill the grid wins a piggyback ride or a couple of “Dadiator presses” (dads gotta de-wigglate, too).
Our kids marked individual window maps with velcro tabs when they spotted things from their book (baggage conveyors, fuel trucks, etc.). We rewarded champion tab-gatherers with piggyback rides and “Dadiator presses” (great for getting out our own wiggles).
By takeoff, our efforts had tired out seat-kicking legs, winded shrieking lungs, and promised to save our fellow passengers countless dollars on in-flight cocktails. The fun parachute, having performed its function, quickly turned into a dirty-diaper bag. Ah well! We can tame wiggles, but it’ll be a while before our precious cargo flies “doodie free.”
Sheff Otis is a local writer and fitness fiend. To learn more about his unusual approach to exercising with his kids, go to Dadiator.com.
For ideas on how to contain in-flight wiggles and other useful tips for traveling with kids, check out JetWithKids.com.
