Getting Lila Ready for a 9-Hour Flight at 14: The Travel Routine That Stuck
The pre-flight ritual eight years in. What Lila packs, what I pack, the airport snack negotiation, and why the noise-canceling argument is finally over.
The first time I took Lila on a 9-hour flight she was six, and I packed for her like she was going to a sleepover at the moon. Pillow shaped like a fox. Three changes of clothes. An entire ziplock of dry Cheerios that I now realize I was packing for me. We landed in Paris and I had not slept and she had watched the same episode of Doc McStuffins seventeen times, which I know because I counted, because I was the one watching it with her.
She is fourteen now. She packs her own carry-on. She does not want the fox pillow. She would, in fact, prefer that I sit one row behind her, and Last August she got her wish for the first time and it was a complicated five seconds. So this is the routine we have landed on — me, her, eight years of trial and a lot of error — for getting a teenager onto a long-haul flight without either of us crying in a TSA line.
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The night before: we no longer pack together
This is the biggest change from age six to fourteen. We do not pack together anymore. I tried, last spring, to do a side-by-side packing party with a movie and a candle, and Lila looked at me like I had suggested we milk a cow. She packs in her room with the door mostly closed, AirPods in, and emerges around 9pm to ask whether her flat iron will explode in France. (No. Dual voltage.) I pack at the kitchen counter with a glass of wine and a checklist I have refined to the point of religion.
Her carry-on is a backpack — the school one, scrubbed of pencil shavings. Mine is the Béis weekender, which has been on, conservatively, twenty-two flights. It zips flat. It fits under the seat. The handle has not fallen off, which at this point feels like a relationship.
The packing list, divided
A teenager will pack five outfits for a four-day trip and zero pairs of socks. So I do not negotiate her clothes anymore. I just keep an extra pair of her socks in my bag, and a backup phone charger, because the day she forgets hers is the day we are stuck in Heathrow for six hours.
What I always pack now, regardless of destination:
- The Anker PowerCore. Charges both our phones twice. Size of a deck of cards. I have lost two and bought three. The current one has a strawberry sticker that Lila put there in 2024 and I am leaving it.
- An AirTag in her suitcase, one in mine. Non-negotiable since the Madrid incident I will not be discussing.
- A universal travel adapter with USB ports. We are two phones, two earbuds, my Kindle, her flat iron, and there is one wall outlet in every hotel room in Europe.
- A pair of compression socks for me. Lila has the circulation of a fourteen-year-old. I do not.
The noise-canceling argument is over
For about two years Lila refused noise-canceling headphones on the grounds that they were “mom headphones,” which was correct, because they were my headphones, and I had given them to her. The argument ended last summer when she flew with her cousin who had a pair of the Sony WH-CH520 and reported back that they were “actually fine.” They are over-ear, comfortable, and run about $50, which is the right price point for something a teenager will leave on an airplane. I bought her a pair for Christmas. She thanked me. I almost cried. Separately, I keep Loop Quiet earplugs in my bag for myself.
The airport snack negotiation
The deal we have struck: she gets one “real” thing at the airport (a sandwich, a hot pretzel from the place near gate B22 that I will not be naming because it has a line) and one snack-pack thing for the plane. I get to veto neither. She does not get to make fun of my $8.50 decaf almond milk latte, which I refuse to apologize for.
Charging strategy: which device, when
Phones charged to 100% before the Uber. Headphones charged the night before. PowerCore charged Sunday evening, no exceptions. On the plane, phones charge from the seat USB if it works, which is roughly 60% of the time. When it does not, the PowerCore comes out at hour four. Lila will tell you that she “has no service” on the plane and therefore does not need her phone, which is, every time, a lie. She is going to want it to watch something downloaded. She is going to want it to text me from row 22.
Hydration and the small parental indignities
I drink water like it is a job. Lila drinks her one airport Coke and considers herself hydrated. I no longer fight this, but I do hand her a refilled Stanley somewhere around hour five, and she usually drinks it without comment. If you are flying to Paris specifically, we stay at Le Petit Hôtel in the 6th when I am not crashing with my friend Vivi, because the location lets us sleep-walk to a café that opens at 7am.
The thing nobody tells you about traveling with your kid as she grows up is that the version of the trip you took at six is gone forever, and the version you take at fourteen is going to be gone in a year, and at some point she is going to fly somewhere without me and I am going to text her to ask if she remembered her charger and she is going to ignore me for twenty minutes. We are not at that point yet. We are at the point where she still lets me hold her passport in the customs line, and I am going to take it.