How to Find Child Care While Traveling, According to Moms

Last year, my 1-year-old collected passport stamps seven times on three continents. As a travel journalist with a decade of globetrotting behind me, I never doubted I’d continue exploring the world after having kids. But—as parents inevitably do—I quickly learned that traveling with children is a lot more turbulent.

With remote work still on the rise, more and more families are taking multi-week—and even multi-month—vacations. They’re trading snowy winters for beach days in Florida and exploring Europe during summer vacation. Home rental platforms make it easy to settle into a home away from home, where families can reestablish sacred familial routines on longer getaways.

But without grandparents in tow or a kids club to rely on, how do parents carve out time to work and occasionally enjoy their destination child-free?

Nicole Cunningham, an attorney and mom to two boys, describes travel as her passion. She’s brought her boys all over the world, spending weeks at a time in destinations like Hawaii and Japan. She quickly discovered that finding child care abroad “is necessary for parents to have a vacation, too.”

“Traveling with kids is amazing in so many ways,” Cunningham explained. “But it can also be more stressful than being at home.”

As an anxious first-time mom, I was worried I couldn’t find quality child care in countries where we didn’t know a soul or speak the local language. Yet we’ve found loving babysitters for our toddler everywhere from Mexico to Malaysia, and Cunningham and many other frequent traveler families have done the same. Here’s how we do it.

Find a Facebook group.

I’m not normally a huge fan of social media, but Facebook is one of the best travel resources out there. The day we decided to spend the summer in Mexico City, I joined a “Mexico City Moms” Facebook group. Scrolling through posts, I filled my phone with screenshots of kid-friendly restaurants and info about playground meetups at lush Roma Norte parks. When I posted about looking for a babysitter, I was spoiled for choice with personal recommendations from expats, local moms, and quality nanny agencies.

Finding these Facebook groups takes some trial and error. I search for different combinations of “city name” plus “expat” plus “moms,” and then join the most active groups. For example, the group “Girls in Puerto Vallarta” was the best resource for mom-related inquiries while we lived there, while “Expats in Athens” was the most valuable on our trip to Greece. It’s best to avoid babysitter-specific groups. These are often just babysitters promoting their services and don’t come with the same firsthand recommendations as expat or local mom groups.

Fellow globetrotting mom Hana LaRock, who traveled to Portugal with her infant daughter, also found the child care help she needed from Facebook groups.

“If a couple of people recommended the same person, then we would talk to them on the phone and do our own due diligence,” LaRock explained.

Once in Mexico City, with our highly recommended babysitter in our apartment, my toddler’s eyes filled with tears and I nearly called it all off. The sitter noticed the tears, too. Calmly, she opened her bag, pulled out painter’s tape, and began creating “roads” on the wood floors. Before long, our truck-loving toddler was vrooming his cars all over the “streets,” and we finally enjoyed a much-needed dinner out, reassured he was in capable, loving hands.

Tap into local parent networks.

On another trip, when my son was only 18 months old, I became extremely ill while in Thailand. My partner had work commitments he couldn’t miss, so we needed help with our toddler fast. We were staying in an apartment rental that was part of a self-contained community of privately owned and rental condos. I contacted the manager via WhatsApp to explain my situation and asked (pled, really) for babysitter recommendations.

Thanks to the manager’s local connections, I soon had a doctor at my bedside while her friend’s daughter—a lovely university student from Sweden doing her internship on the property—entertained my toddler in the next room. For the next few days, I was able to rest and recover while my son and his new friend explored the tropical Thai nature within our complex, searching for monkeys and playing in the sandbox.

Ask the hotel receptionist, Airbnb host, other moms at the playground, or even the friendly waiter at a nearby cafe—any local can be a good resource to help find a quality babysitter.

Use websites and apps.

Not everyone can wait until they arrive at their destination to know they’ll have the child care help they need. For those traveling in the United States, online platforms like Care.com or Sittercity are great for finding well-vetted local babysitters and nannies.

As a single mom, Cunningham took her young boys on many domestic work trips and often relied on these platforms to find help. “These websites tend to have a lot of reviews available, which is great,” she said. They also include background checks to give parents peace of mind when using short-term sitters on vacation.

Different countries and regions have websites and apps for the same purpose, like the Marypop app that works with bilingual babysitters all over Europe.

Befriend other families.

The more Cunningham traveled alone with her kids, the more she saw the value in having a helping hand while on vacation. This led her to start a company that arranges group trips for single parents. Copilots for Coparents was created to “make single parent travel less intimidating and less stressful—so it feels like more of a vacation,” she said. Group trips with other families are a great way to guarantee extra support while traveling.

LaRock and her husband also learned the value of befriending fellow parents while on vacation in Spain. While traveling in Alicante, they met another couple with young kids and spent nearly every day of their trip together.

“Having those other parents who just get it—and can help you out even for a few minutes—is invaluable,” she explained.

Whether they needed to run to the bathroom without a baby on their hip or take a private call, an extra set of eyes helped everyone relax and enjoy their trip.