Tips for Taking your Toddler to a Concert
With the music festivals time of the year coming closer and closer, all those announcements or rumors regarding your favorite artist or band coming to perform near you will start popping up soon enough. Maybe it’s a musician you have always gone to see perform whenever they came anywhere close to you and made it a sort of tradition to not miss out on their shows, or maybe it’s a band who rarely got to play anywhere so accessible before and it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime to go now, but either way, it’s very tempting to just get those tickets secured and figure out a strategy on how to juggle both looking after your toddler and going to the concert later on.
So if you’ve gotten those tickets for yourself and whoever else will be accompanying you, it all remains to figure out how to properly go about taking your toddler along as well. Maybe you have decided that this could be a great “first show” for them to experience, to show them the hype about concerts and maybe be able to share your passion for the artist(s) you’re going to see as well, or maybe you just didn’t have many other alternatives about leaving your child at home for the time being, but either way this leaves you with the need of putting together a list of necessities to have on yourself for the trip, and a dire need for tips and tricks on how to make your toddler’s concert experience as good as it can get.
However, if your child is much too small to be taken to a live show, we highly recommend you find a babysitter for them, or leave them with a trusted family member, since they will grow bored fast and they won’t appreciate the loud music, and their squirming won’t allow you to enjoy the show either, not to mention how it will even bother the ones around you.
Now, if you consider that your child can enjoy their time at the concert, here are some tips you should take into account when getting ready for the trip:
Headphones
A toddler’s hearing is very sensible and not preparing them properly for going to an arena full of loud music and people can quickly become the worst decision taken. It can backfire by causing damage to the toddler’s ears and inducing hearing loss at a young age to various degrees.
What you can do to prevent that is to get them a pair of headphones (not earbuds!) to cover the entirety of their sensitive ears and keep them safe from painfully loud noises. It won’t ruin their experience at the concert and they will thank you later for not accelerating the process of losing their hearing when they were way too young.
Snacks
Every concert-goer knows that there are plenty of stands with food, sweets and just snacks overall as well as water and soda of all kinds available to be bought, but the prices can be awfully exaggerated. The concert tickets are rarely cheap, and to have to pay another 50 bucks just for a decent amount of munchies for the little one already sounds like robbery. The solution? Stock up on snacks from home. If you’re going into an arena, do some research on what the guidelines are on what’s allowed inside and what isn’t and prepare a nice bag of supplies for when either your toddler or yourself get hungry.
Now, with keeping hydrated, this is an entirely different issue. You can obviously also bring water and whatever juices with you as well, and save up on money, but depending on the kind of concert and if your tickets had assigned spots, drinking too much will turn out to be a bit of a challenge when your toddler will start asking to be taken to the bathroom. If they grew out of the diaper stage and are opposed to wearing one again, then you might want to keep an eye on how much they drink and maybe insist they go to the bathroom at home before the concert just to be sure you get a good start. If they’re not opposed to wearing a diaper again though, that can be very helpful for when you find yourself surrounded by too many people to be able to dash for the bathroom. Just make sure you have spares for when you eventually do reach the restroom.
Show Strategy
If you’re going to a larger concert only for a specific artist and don’t mind skipping a few acts, then you should put together a plan for attending the concert. Opening acts can stretch even for an hour and a half sometimes, so if that’s not sung by someone you take a particular interest in, then that’s an hour and a half of staying home and not risking to have your child get bored before your favorite artist even gets on stage. Just make sure you research properly before and figure out the approximate hours for each artist and plan bathroom breaks whenever possible. If it’s a festival you’re attending, you can browse merchandise stands whenever your child gets bored as well.
Have talks prepared
You’re attending a music festival or a concert, targeted towards an adult or young adult audience, so not seeing other toddlers around shouldn’t surprise you. Something else that should not surprise you will be the sight of people drinking or smoking, depending on the concert. If your child is old enough to ask about such things, then you should think ahead and either just go with the truth or make up convincing stories until they’re old enough to become curious again.
Your Choice of Concert
In my opinion, the more adult-oriented the concert is, the less suitable it is to take your toddler along. So you might have a good time taking them to pop artist shows who are bound to attract a younger, less “wild” audience, like Taylor Swift or even Bruno Mars, but neither you nor your toddler might be able to enjoy a heavy metal or rap concert together. One, because the toddler won’t like the noise and won’t be able to understand too much of what’s going on, and they’ll get bored or fidgety, and two because you’ll have to pacify them and keep them under control at all times instead of being able to enjoy your favorite artists instead.
As well, you might not want to have to deal with inebriated concert-goers around your toddler, so it’s best to just make sure the whole environment will be child-friendly.
