Traveling with Children - Car Tips

[CW&M Mom]

Leave them hom???

My favorite answer and dream that some day...I'll get to leave the little buggers at home.

[JulieDB]

I bought some things for car travel. Might have been through AAA, I can't remember. It was 7 years ago when we made the last car trip. One had state stickers and you had to collect them for the license plates you saw. It included some international ones. In the end I think we were still missing three.

Another one had stickers for various signs you might see.

Another thing was a book that had assorted games such as sweet and sour. For that one you are supposed to wave at the people in the other vehicles. If they wave back they are sweet. If not they are sour. Note, this will not work if you have tinted windows like we do. Heh.

Daughter was allowed to bring one bag of books and another of toys. Small bags. Only a few toys were allowed to be played with while we were driving so as not to make a big mess. We did have a cat so much of the drive was spent arguing over who would get the cat in their lap.

Two big musts! Plenty of snacks and drinks. Also a bathroom stop at least every two hours. At the stop one must look for machines where we can buy more drinks and snacks. Or better still a store!

Another thing that takes some time is looking for food signs to stop for lunch and dinner. And we always look for attractions where we can stop. Kind of hard to do with a cat though. Mostly we planned those ahead of time so we could keep the cat in the air conditioned motel/hotel room.

[amylynne01]

We just took a 12hr drive from MA to VA with my girls who are 3 and 2. I bought the Crayola Color Wonder markers and paper which my 3yr old loved! We brought the Leapster and Tag Jr - another hit. I bought them new princess Barbies at Target for $4 each, and they played with those for a while. I bought fun and different snacks as well as lots of blueberries - easy to eat in the car and they love them. We also got a dual screen DVD player with headphones.

We stopped every 3hrs for potty breaks and to regroup - prep new snacks and drinks, dig toys out from the bottom of the bag, find whatever they stuffed in their car seats lol. They were so awesome on the drive. DD2 got really cranky when we were about 45 minutes from home on the way back. However, it was past her bedtime, and she was DONE. She wanted nothing else but to hold my hand.

I think with a lot of planning and thinking ahead, driving with kids doesn't have to be bad! I always had a trick up my sleeve about what to do if a meltdown was coming. DH's job was just to drive, and mine was to entertain kids and keep them happy (and pass drinks/snacks to the driver lol). I got some reading done while they napped.

[hillaryef]

We are heading out the second week of august with a 1 year old, 4 year old and 5 year old...I'd love any more hints if you have them!!

[Jen1]

One little trick that worked when they were old enough to get on each others nerves (elementary school time frame) was we would give each of them a roll of dimes (or quarters as age appropriate) and tell them that each time we had to address their behavior, they had to hand over one of the dimes.

GREAT IDEA! I love it!

[moxi]

With my older kids we traveled alot, the one thing that has not been mentioned, that was an absolute hit, for my kids(they were probably tweens then) was campfire "scary" story books on CD that I would borrow from the library. Some of those stories are so good! And then the kids would "retell" them when we would go camping. Turned into a fun family tradition type of thing. Most of them have several stories, per CD. Most of the stories are 10-15 minutes long with great sound effects, etc.

**Warning**Please pre-screen these stories-some are very scary and/gory, so very important to listen to them first, before you potentially scar your child for life!

[mommaof2kiddos]

We are going on a trip later this year and it will mean being in the car for 12-14 hours FOUR separate times by the time we get back!! I have decided, as family planner/organizer, thinker-aheader, to treat each leg of the trip as it's own trip and pack accordingly. I don't want all the snacks that I am stocking up on at coupon prices to be gone after trip #1 and then be stuck buying over-priced gas station snacks!! And movies watched won't hold as much attention the 4th time around either.

SO, my plan is to stock up on movies from the $5 area of Walmart - older scratched movies don't play on our portable dvd player and I don't want to deal with that while strapped to a seat! I am also loading both of the kids mp3 players with new music and even library stories that are FREE from my library and allowed to download. I also have a plan to bring my laptop, stocked with more music/stories to put on the mp3 players before each leg of the trip - so its new each time! Headphones are a MUST, pack an extra just in case.

I am getting stocked up on small toys, like LPS from the Dollar Tree and taking them OUT of the package and putting in drawstring mesh bags so to reduce trash in the car. I have found great coloring books and activity books with stickers at Dollar Tree too. The dollar spot in Target had some more great activities too, lots of characters that my kids like.

I'm finding it harder to pack for my older one this year - he is 10. He has an iTouch and I will load with games too, but there isn't much room because his is an older one with like 8 gigs. We can do some pass-n-play games on my iPhone, like Words (scrabble, free version is available it just has ads). I may buy him Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and see how that goes.

All I want to do is sleep while on the road - that's what my parents conditioned ME to do as a child LOL!!

[cybilx10]

If a minivan or something similar, how about portable dvd players that can be shared or what about card games?