Hello to everyone..
I just would like to tell you the end of the story, in case someone else is going to have a similar experience.
I took something from all the advices you gave me, and it worked well.
First of all, TPA airport has a brand new playground area for kids just before boarding, and that was a great start.
JFK doesn't offer anything like that, but getting around the airport with the train was nice too. Then we went to visit some monuments dedicated to 09-11-01 that are around the airport, and that gave us the opportunity to stop and think, for a while. Finally we stop at terminal 3, very big, colorful and unusual, where we had a nice lunch in a restaurant close to a huge toys store.
so time really flyed faster that we thought, and soon we were on board.
inbound flight was really good, they were tired and slept almost all the time
SO DID I!
no need to say next year I won't be so worried about it. ( Some mums I met during the day in jfk told me that just 3 portable like nintendo or similar and some new games would have worked well to.....)
thanks anyway, and see you soon...
Franniefly8