Small kids travelling in Europe get gifts all the time. This started on Austrian Airlines, flying from California to Vienna. Our three daughters, aged 3, 5 and 6 got a little toy and some craft books from the flight attendants. United Airlines had never bothered with this. Once we arrived in Austria, the gifts kept coming: Hotels, restaurants and even public swimming pools kept giving our kids little presents, from candy to coloring books to boxes of dominoes and other games. In the US, this rarely happens. The only time I can recall was a clerk in an Indian grocery store giving them some candy, after asking me rather shyly if it’d be okay. Nobody in Europe bothers with such silly questions.
Gifts directed at kids make everyone happy. The kids obviously, but also the parents, who know that their children will have something new to occupy them on the way home, and I assume also the receptionists and airline attendants, who get shining eyes and a mumbled “Thank you” in return.
Nehaveigur 
One response to “Small Gifts for Small Kids”
[…] larger families, as the United States. This is only partly true. My impression was that on average, businesses like restaurants are slightly more family friendly than in America. It’s true that food in the grocery store is packaged with singles or small families in mind. […]
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