It was 4:47 in the morning at Phoenix Sky Harbor and my grandson Jack, twelve, travel-baseball-trained, normally a small machine of cheerful logistics, was standing in front of the Delta kiosk crying because his backpack was too heavy and he had forgotten to use the bathroom and I had, in my infinite wisdom, told him he was old enough to handle his own boarding pass.
His sister Emma, sixteen, looked at me over her phone with the specific expression teenagers reserve for adults who have made the bed they are now lying in. Frank was four states away, asleep, probably, or pretending to be. He had driven us to the airport at 4 a.m., kissed me on the forehead, said, "Don't lose them," and gone home to a house with no co-pilot for either of us. He'd told me a week earlier he wasn't coming. "Italy is your thing," he said. "And if I'm there, you'll spend the whole trip telling me to stop standing in the middle of the sidewalk." He wasn't wrong.
Two grandchildren. Two passports. One folder of paperwork. One flight to JFK in forty-three minutes. This was skip-gen travel. Nobody had warned me about the 5 a.m. part.
Skip-gen travel is having a moment
Grandparents traveling with grandchildren, parents staying home, has gone from a niche thing your great-aunt did once to an entire travel category. AARP's 2024 travel research found roughly 40% of grandparents had traveled with a grandchild in the prior twelve months. Tour operators like Road Scholar, Tauck Bridges, and Adventures by Disney now run dedicated grandparent-grandchild itineraries with their own brochures and their own waiting lists.
The reasons are not mysterious. Working parents are exhausted. Grandparents have time, savings, and a quietly ticking clock. Kids old enough to remember the trip, young enough to still want one with you. That window is small. You can feel it closing if you let yourself think about it. (I try not to.)
The pandemic did something to all of us, frankly. After 2020 I stopped saying next year about anything. So when Tom called last September and said he and Lisa were burnt out and his work was bleeding into every weekend and was there any universe in which I would take Emma and Jack to Italy in June, I said yes before I could find a reason not to. The girls in book club, when I told them, all said the same thing in some form: do it now. Two of them had been waiting for the right time for a decade. The right time, it turns out, never sends a postcard.
The paperwork is the part nobody talks about
Here's the thing about flying internationally with somebody else's child: your face does not count as authorization. Neither does the fact that you are visibly the grandmother and the children call you Grandma loudly in three different airports. Border agents and gate agents want a piece of paper.
For my trip that meant three documents in a manila folder I clutched like a hostage:
- Notarized travel consent letter from both parents. Not a form you sign at the kitchen table. It needs both legal guardians, full names of the children, dates of birth, passport numbers, dates of travel, destinations, my name and passport number as the accompanying adult, and emergency contact information for both parents. Tom and Lisa signed it in front of a notary at their UPS Store for $15. Some countries want it apostilled, a fancier kind of notarization for international use, but Italy was fine with the standard version. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection website is clear that without this letter you can be turned around at the destination (CBP guidance). I read multiple stories on travel forums of grandparents pulled aside for two hours of interrogation because they'd shown up with vibes instead of documents.
- Medical authorization form. A separate notarized document giving me permission to authorize medical treatment for Emma and Jack in case of emergency. Lisa's pediatrician's office had a template. It listed each child's allergies (Emma: amoxicillin; Jack: none, knock wood), insurance info, primary doctor, and the specific phrase "I authorize Victoria Sinclair to consent to medical treatment, including surgery, for my child." Reading that sentence in a notary's office gives you a moment of clarity about what you have agreed to. I signed and did not blink.
- Copies of everything, plus PDFs in my email. Two paper copies in two different bags. Photos on my phone. Birth certificates because someone in a Facebook group had warned me Emma and Jack don't share my last name and a suspicious agent might want proof of the chain.
I overprepared. I am not sorry. The carabiniere at Fiumicino glanced at the consent letter for about three seconds before waving us through, which means it worked exactly the way overpreparation is supposed to.
REAL ID and the Identity-Check Backup at the Checkpoint
My own paperwork was where I almost lost the trip before it started.
REAL ID enforcement at U.S. airport security kicked in May 7, 2025, and the TSA has gotten serious. My Arizona license was REAL ID-compliant, the little gold star in the corner, so domestic flights weren't an issue. But the kids? Jack didn't have any state-issued ID. He's twelve. The TSA does not require ID for domestic travelers under 18, but when a boarding pass gets flagged, a TSA officer at the checkpoint can run an alternative identity verification — checking documents you brought (school ID, birth certificate, the notarized consent letter), asking the accompanying adult to vouch, and pulling commercial data in rare cases. It is not a separately-bookable fee-based program. It is a discretionary backup procedure that happens at the checkpoint when needed.
A kind agent at PHX sorted us out the old-fashioned way (Emma's school ID plus Jack's birth certificate plus my notarized consent letter plus Grandma-energy). She told me with a sigh that next time I'd save an hour by carrying both kids' birth certificates and a school photo ID in the manila folder, in plain sight, so the line behind me doesn't sigh in unison.
I also did the smartest thing I did all trip and called TSA Cares, 855-787-2227, three days before departure. TSA Cares is the help line for travelers with disabilities, medical conditions, or other situations that need assistance through security. I called because I have a knee that's been editorializing for two years and I knew JFK's terminal layout would defeat me. They arranged a Passenger Support Specialist at both PHX and JFK to walk us through screening. Best $0 I never spent. (I cover the same number in my solo flight at 68 piece on TSA mobility assistance.)
The moment in row 32
We flew Delta. Emma and Jack on either side of me on the transatlantic leg, which meant I slept exactly zero minutes and watched two and a half movies I could not later describe.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, five hours in, the cabin lights dimmed, the air the specific dry cold of a long-haul flight, Jack put his head on my shoulder and said, "Grandma, are you scared?"
"Of what, honey?"
"Of being in charge of us."
Forty-seven years married to Frank, three kids raised, four grandchildren held as newborns, and a grown grandson asking if I was scared to be in charge of him at thirty-eight thousand feet.
I said no. I lied a little. Then I said, "I'd be scared if it were anyone else. But it's you two. I've got it."
He went to sleep. Emma, who I thought had been asleep, opened one eye and gave me a look I will think about for the rest of my life. Then she closed it again and pretended she hadn't heard anything.
Trip insurance is not optional, and most policies are wrong for this
Let me tell you what I almost bought. Then what I bought instead.
I almost bought the cheap travel insurance at checkout from the airline. $89, looked official, had the word protection in the name. I almost clicked. Then Tom, my insurance-adjuster son who has never failed to be useful in a way that is also exhausting, emailed me a five-paragraph breakdown of why airline-bundled insurance is mostly useless for skip-gen travel.
The issue: most cheap policies cover you, the traveler. Skip-gen travel needs a policy that also covers cancellation if a non-traveling person, the children's parents specifically, has a medical emergency that requires the kids to go home. It also needs to cover grandparent illness as a reason for trip interruption, since a healthy grandmother is the entire premise of the trip.
I ended up with Allianz Travel's OneTrip Prime plan ($247 for the three of us, nine days), which covers cancellation and interruption for medical emergencies of immediate family members not traveling, including the children's parents. Travel Guard's Preferred plan was the runner-up and would have worked similarly. The travel-insurance comparison site Squaremouth has a filter specifically for "family member not traveling" coverage, which is the search term you actually need (Allianz OneTrip Prime).
Airline unaccompanied minor rules also matter, and most grandparents miss this. If you book the flight as a regular ticket with a non-parent adult, most airlines treat the child as adult-accompanied, not a UM. The supervisor responsibilities sit with you. If you get sick or separated and the kid gets diverted alone, they're not in the UM system. Worth a phone call to the airline before you book.
The trip itself
Nine days. Rome, Florence, a hill town I won't name because it's still mine. The kids ate their weight in pasta.
We climbed the dome of the Duomo in Florence, 463 steps. My knee gave its full opinion on every fourth one. Jack ran ahead of us laughing while Emma stayed back with me and said, "Take your time, Grandma," with a tenderness that nearly undid me on a stone staircase in front of a hundred strangers.
One evening on the apartment balcony, kids asleep inside, I FaceTimed Frank. He was in the La-Z-Boy. He held up a piece of leftover pizza and said, "Pretty good without you, but only pretty good." Forty-seven years of marriage and the man can still surprise me.
I cried a little after I hung up. Mostly because I'd been so afraid of this trip, and I was halfway through it, and they were mine for these nine days in a way they would never quite be again.
Practical lessons I'm passing along
A few things I'd tell the next grandmother who's about to do this:
- Pack lighter than you think. I packed for nine days, three people, two climates. Then I unpacked half of it on the bed before we left. I still overpacked.
- Build in a slow day every three days. Not a day in the apartment day. A one museum, long lunch, gelato, nap day. Eleven-year-olds and seventy-two-year-olds have remarkably similar stamina.
- Bring a printed itinerary for the kids. Emma read hers every morning and felt like a person with a job. Jack used his to track meals.
- Prepaid Visa for the kids. I gave each a $100 prepaid card for souvenirs. This eliminated 90% of the arguments. The other 10% were about pizza.
- Decide who's the disciplinarian. You are. There's no other adult. You cannot be the fun grandma the way you are at Christmas. Be ready for it.
- Check your home situation before you go. Frank was fine. He had a list, the neighbor Diane had a key, and the kids' parents had his number. If your spouse is the one with health issues, that matters more than the itinerary. Some friends of mine came back from a similar trip to a flooded basement.
For more on the planning side, I'd point you to my earlier piece on solo senior travel in 2026. A lot of the principles overlap, especially the dining-alone-confidence and the not-overscheduling parts. If you're a woman thinking about doing any of this without a husband or partner, my solo travel after 60 guide for women covers the part nobody else does. For destination ideas with grandkids in mind, these 10 senior-friendly travel destinations are a good starting list.
What I'd tell Carrie now
Tom and Lisa picked us up at the airport in Phoenix nine days later, and Emma fell into Lisa in the parking garage and cried for thirty seconds and then said, "Mom, did you know the Trevi Fountain has fish in it?" Jack told Tom about the pizza incident with what I can only describe as pride.
In the car on the way home, after Tom thanked me about four times, I said, "You know what nobody tells you about this?"
"What."
"That the kids will remember it. But you'll remember it more."
He said, "Yeah, Mom. I figured."
Frank made dinner that night. Spaghetti. He'd been practicing. It was, and I mean this, pretty good. Not Florence. But pretty good.
I'd do it again. (I'm trying not to say next year. But, you know.) For grandparents who are doing more than visiting, who are raising their grandchildren, the issues are different and the resources are real; my colleague's piece on grandfamily housing for grandparents raising grandkids is the place to start.
The paperwork was heavy. The trip was heavier. Worth every ounce!
