When people think of traveling with kids, often times it evokes strong emotions. So many people think of how vacations become mere “trips” when kids are involved. This may be somewhat true, but we are here to tell you that you can still have an amazing trip with your kids in tow…and this includes a long road trip! How can you take a road trip from an experience of misery to one thats’ tolerable? Or dare we say…enjoyable?
Stay tuned!
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- Expectations: If you ask us, setting expectations is the key to all travel with children. DO NOT expect trips with kids (especially young kids) to be the same as the trips you took before kids. The trips are going to be a different pace and a different kind of fun. This doesn’t mean that trips with kids need to completely eliminate what you enjoyed pre-kids. Don’t worry, Ben loves historic sites and we still go experience the battle fields, monuments, and historic sites. It just takes a different kind of preparation than for us to go alone. You can’t expect to power through a long drive with minimal stops when you have kids who need potty breaks and stretch breaks. Set your expectations lower and try to set reasonable goals for your crew. As you road trip together, you will have a better feel for how far you can go at once and how much you can expect of the kids.
- Plan for activities: Can kids do activities strapped in a car seat? The answer is yes! We love to try and help the kids find non-screen time activities to do when possible. NOT because we are anti-screen time, BUT because the longevity on screen time for young kids and toddlers is less than you’d expect. For toddlers, try bringing and breaking out new toys throughout the ride. It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy stuff, just toys they haven’t had or played with before! Try these Sesame Street friends if your little one loves elmo! Also, Imagine Ink has some amazing coloring books that include only one marker that colors a whole range of colors and can keep even a very young child occupied! Plus, its mostly mess free! Matchbox cars or other similarly small and simple items can really work for a win on a road trip! Where can my little one play with these cars, books, and figurines? I am glad you ask! Get them a travel desk! Not only is it a great place to play, but it’s fantastic for eating in the car as well! Bigger kids can engage with games, and we love travel Bingo and kids talking cards! It really does work to keep you and the kids engaged (at least for a few minutes).
3. Stops: When you traveled pre-kids, you may have stopped infrequently, but with kids, that is sometimes not an option. With kids, sometimes stops are more frequent than without, and that is especially true with potty training kids! Whether you stop extra for snacks or potty breaks, or you just try to fit in a stretch break. We have added in an extra stop for a run-around at a rest area, or added in an extra road side attraction-type stop just to break up the trip.
4. Food: This could be an unpopular opinion, but a long car trip with littles is the PERFECT time to give up on all ideas of good vs bad snacks. Break out every amazing snack that the kids can’t have on a regular day and let them have it! Its survival time. Have one great snack after another at your disposal. We love to use solo cups to hand out items such as m&m’s, goldfish, and other small snacks. This helps control the amount of snack they have…just in case they decide to dump a snack out (which they might!)
5. Music: Curate a playlist with your little one in mind. What is worse? Screaming in the car or listening to “Let it go” on repeat…Although we wouldn’t usually choose a playlist of Disney and Sesame Street favorite songs, that playlist far outweighs a child who is so miserable they are screaming and crying.
6. Games: Do you find yourself thinking “when I was little we didn’t have an ipad…we just played I-spy and survived.” Guess what? Now is the time to break out those family classics and try them out on your little ones. It is a great way to pass the time and can even be fun.
7. Screen time: Hold off on that ipad as long as you can! Don’t get me wrong, when we drive a long way with our kids we definitely let them indulge in screen time. However, we try to hold out on screen time as long as possible for younger kids. Don’t worry, not because we are afraid its “too much” screen time. Its because a very young child has limited attention span for anything, so if you break out screen time too early, even the movie Frozen or their favorite Elmo episodes won’t keep their attention long. If you break out big guns too early and kids lose interest, you run the risk of running out of things to do!
8. Power through: My final tip is the most important one. Sometimes, when all else fails, you just need to power through. I’ll give an example. Once our daughter was probably 3 and we were about an hour from home on a 10 hour drive. She got upset and we stopped to make sure she was ok. Not wet, got her food, charged her ipad, etc. We even bought a new toy at the gas station. Guess what? Nothing soothed her. We had a choice to make. We could stop at this exit and stay at a hotel 1 hour from home, or we could power through and make it home even though little one was upset. We decided that we were gonna go home rather than chance it at a less than ideal hotel. She was MAAAAAD. It also sucked that she was crying and miserable. However, we made it home in the hour and we were all happier to be there than at a hotel we might not sleep well in.
9. To drive through the night or not: The “should we drive all night?” question comes up all the time in parenting circles. I get it…the theory is if you drive all night, the kids may sleep all night and arrive at the vacation destination soooo well rested and ready for a fun day. We DO NOT drive through the night, and here is why. If we drive all night and our precious angel babies sleep all night long, THEY are happy, but parents are exhausted. If we drive all night and the children don’t sleep AT ALL…then we have 4 VERY TIRED humans, and that entire vacation day is ruined. We think driving during the day is the hype. If the trip is very long, we break it up by staying at a hotel overnight. Also, our REAL hot tip is that if you stay somewhere luxurious and awesome, then that night is part of the vacation rather than just another painful part of the trip.
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