Travelling with kids can be a nightmare at the best of times, but when you are trapped in a car with them on a long journey, it can be unbearable. Kids get bored very easily, therefore fidgety and often upset. Therefore it’s imperative, for everyone’s sake, that we make road trips with kids as easy as possible.
Before we had kids, we thought nothing of just chucking our stuff in the boot and simply hitting the road. However now we have two kids in tow, we need to plan and prepare for our trips a lot more.
Having taken a number of car journeys, some a lot more challenging than others, with them now we have discovered a few ways to make road trips with kids a lot easier. Here are just a few ways, we manage as a family to get from A to B without one or all of us generally losing our shit.
Travel At Night (Or At Nap Times)
Junior ESLT does not nap, she’s well past that point. Also, Mini ESLT does not have daily naps anymore. However, the gentle rock of the car always sends her drifting off into the land of nod. This is great at the moment. However, it’s only a matter of time before she grows out of that.
If you have small children you will completely understand that there is nothing worse than an overtired child. Their meltdowns can be epic. Especially when you cannot comfort them and keep moving at the same time.
Therefore, one of our top tips is to try to take your journey at night if possible. The combination of dark and car motion is almost guaranteed to send little and not so little ones off to sleep. Therefore, making your journey a lot easier, at least for a few hours.
If night travel is not doable, natural nap times, if your kids are still young enough to nap, are also a great time to hit the road. Again you may get an hour or so where you do not have to worry about keeping the kid(s) entertained and happy.
Make A Lot Of Stops
Making a lot of stops is sometimes easier said than done, especially if you children are like ours – once they have a taste of freedom, getting them back in the car and strapped in their car seats can be tricky work. However, we do find a little bribe usually works.
Stopping is a great opportunity for little legs to burn off a bit of energy by having a little bit of fun. We have found that breaking up our journeys, especially the long ones, results in the kids getting less adjusted and they are more willing to sit still and relax.
Also, it’s great for keeping in a routine which we find our children thrive off. Therefore, when we are taking a long journey or a road trip, we stop at their usual snack or meal, if possible. This also means they have something proper to eat instead of overloading on snacks.
Yes, making frequent stops makes the journey longer but it keeps everyone happy. So gets a big thumbs up from us.
Have Snacks To Hand
Any parent, grandparent, auntie, uncle, carer – basically anyone who has ever had the responsibility of looking after children knows that snacks solve a number of problems. That includes boredom during a car journey, especially a long one.
Therefore, whatever you do ensure you have a good variety always in arms reach. If you can time getting a snack from your bag/pocket to the kid just right, it has been proven to avoid a full-blown backseat meltdown.
However, the key is not to rely on snacks completely – we have made that mistake. Mini ESLT, when not asleep, can kick off royally. In fact, we have never heard another human screech so loudly. Therefore, on a couple of long journeys, we took in the early days of parenting we plied her with snacks to keep, for want of a better word, quiet. This did not end well.
Yep, she’s a spewer. You’d have thought we would have learnt our lesson the first time we had to strip, wash and redress her in an industrial estate car park. But no, we made the same mistake again. Now snacks are limited and restricted to savoury titbits and fruit.
Provide Various Entertainment Options
If our kids had their own way, the only entertainment option they would choose would be the Frozen and Moana soundtracks on repeat. Which is all good and well for the first 12 1/2 minutes or so but when the journey is 5 hours and you cannot survive another rousing rendition of Into The Unknown or Shiney, you need other options.
We have tried a few.
We, always on long journeys, allow both girls to take the teddies that they sleep with in the car as a source of comfort and in the hope that they cuddle them so tightly they bob off. Unfortunately, they normally end up in the footwell by the time we have reached the top of our street.
The main thing we have found because we have two children is that whatever one had the other wants. Therefore we always try to ensure that whatever toy they decide to take with them in the car they both have the same. Barbies are a firm favourite at the moment. They play lovely together with them until one loses a shoe then all hell breaks loose!
I think we are on the verge of introducing screens to car journeys in the form of kid’s kindles. At the moment the only screen time our kids have is cartoons on the TV after school and nursery. They do not have access to tablets (yet) and we do not allow them to play on our phones. We’re not passing judgement and completely understand why people do, it’s just not for us.
Stay Calm
‘Trapped’ in a car for a long period of time can be tough, particularly so if you have kids in the car with you. Therefore the key to ensuring you have a smooth as possible road trip is to stay calm. Whether it’s someone cutting you up or hogging the middle lane on the motorway or the child in the back throwing the tantrum of the century. If you are calm, the journey will be calmer.
Getting angry or upset it not going to make anything better, in fact, it is more than likely going to make things worse. Therefore, deep breaths, block out the noise (if you can) and concentrate on the road. If you are unable to remain calm or feel an outburst coming on try to wait until safe to stop and compose yourself.
We hope these basic tips help on your next road trip with kids. We cannot wait to take more especially as international travel is currently off the cards.
Please let us know if you have any tips or tricks to making taking road trips with kids as easy as possible that we could put into practice.
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