Top tips for long car journeys with kids?

[Babyroutes]

I've just been pondering this very issue for my most recent blog post and managed to come up with 10 tips for travel with tots that I found out the hard way (you can read it here). They are all baby related though and I'm pretty sure it;s only the tip of the iceberg.

What are your top tips to keep little ones happy when driving for more than an hour or two?

Kate
Baby Routes

Set off at their bedtime!

Set of at the bedtime, preferably, although my dc now are equally happy if we go very early in am with them in pyjamas.
Try not to travel around lunchtime, early afternoon.

DVD player in the car
Frequent stops

I would heartily agree with the suggestions in your blog, especially the keeping the other back seat spare. My DS is car sick and we've had to move his seat into the front. The front passenger then has to fold up into the space left by the car seat, with both footwells and the other seat filled with bags and bedding, and have a cramped journey.

I'd recommend having a bag of spare clothes, bottled water, bin bags and wipes in the front of the car, and to put bath towels etc spread out over the back seats / headrest ofthe front seat, if your DC is a bad traveller. We've had to strip DS off at the side of the road and have 2 bin bags, one for used wipes and one for soiled clothes to clean him up. Having the bag of stuff ready for when it happened made it all much quicker and less painful.

Wow - I hadn't even thought about car sickness. That must be pretty challenging. We dealt with bad reflux and the vomiting that went with it but babies do at least eventually grow out of that. Has your little one always suffered or did it kick in at a certain age?

Thanks for the advice so far - useful stuff. Do you use handheld DVD player with headphones btw or have those inbuilt ones?

Hi, that's some good tips, thank you! I'm going to have a look for an article about car journeys with slightly older children. I'll post if I find anything!

Dvd player.
I find that the trouble with going at bedtime is, if they wake up when you get there, they don't get back to sleep for hours.

Found one! It's about games to play in the car but worth a look I think: www.carhoots.com/blogs/top-10's/summer-road-trips-top-5-games-to-play-on-the-road/

Avidly watching this for tips.
We are travelling form Yorkshire to Hampshire(5 hours+) in later August with a just 2 year old an almost 4 year old and an autistic 13 year old. The 16 year old is travelling by train with grandma so we will have 2 spare seats in a humongous 7 seater. That should help with dp having to sit with the lo's if they are sick or bored or with ds if he gets stressed.

We have decided to set off before 6am, if we manage to get up that early then stop about 9am for breakfast and let them stretch their legs.
DS will have a ds to play with, providing he hasn't broken it by then
the 3 year old likes i-spy so can play that until me and dp die of boredom.
Will definitely have spare clothes for the lo's as they were both sick on a recent seaside trip of only a couple of hours. I think it was illness related as they have both had a chest infection since.
It will probably be the nappy stops which scupper our time plans as 2 year old and 13 year old still in nappies and the 3 year old needs regular potty breaks. Must remember to buy some huggies bed mats for any unfortunate accidents

Our favourite things to do are:

• community singing, even when there's only two of us in the car (DD being at Brownies has helped us broaden our repertoire!)
• listen to children's classic stories on CD
• listen to songs we like singing along to on CD (not always the obvious choices, best of Electric Light Orchestra is a favourite just now!)
• long, convoluted memory games such as "I went to the market and I bought..."
• buy time whenever they say "are we nearly there yet?" for the zillionth time by saying "yes" - usually keeps them quiet for a bit till they realise it's not true!
• teach or tell them something naughty
• eat things that take a long time such as popcorn or rainbow drops

I wrote a post that combined the last two when we were travelling in France last summer - Bubble Mum

Good luck and bon voyage