No screen use during car journeys, am I being old fashioned?

[midnightvelvetPart2]

I do not let our DC's (9 & 6) play on screens during car journeys but I'm wondering whether I'm being a little outdated? :) they have regular screen time at home & if we are stationary in traffic jams then they can use them, but if we are just driving along then they are not allowed. I'm talking tablets/DS/handheld gaming things.

I used to get carsick to the point of vomiting if I ever tried to read a book in a car, so I wasn't allowed & this may be influencing it. DS1 used to get carsick but he hasn't been in 4 years.

I'm doubting myself now as we drove back from holiday yesterday & it was a journey of 4 hours. My dad phoned, the kids complained about the journey & that they were bored & he said well they can play on their tablets etc but when I said they weren't allowed to he was a bit taken aback. We play I Spy & Sausage etc & have music & audiobooks on so its not a silent car, DS2 usually sleeps at some point.

What does everyone do?

I do for a little bit of a long journey but not all of it.

Being mindful is a skill we're losing. We no longer know how to just be.

Think about it, I know I reach for my phone as soon as I'm alone with a bit of time to pass, on the bus, waiting in the doctors, in a cafe. We miss so much of what's around us in that moment. I'm working to develop my own mindfulness, I'd like to see if I could pass some of that on to the people around me.

I limit screen time, because I want DS to do something else with his time, not in the car on a long journey though, as he is stuck with sitting still, so I figure he may as well be entertained.

Mine have hudls, kindles and a portable did player. Absolutly invaluable on the long drive to SWFrance every summer.

Yabu.

We drove to south Western France in June with 4yo ds and relied heavily on technology. As he can't yet read we downloaded age appropriate educational games onto his innotab and episodes of his favourite cbeebies programmes onto our tablet. He also has his own Spotify play list and headphones. I don't understand why you'd make your child sit through a 12+ hour journey with nothing to do - apart from anything else it's distracting, frustrating and irritating for parents to constantly hear "I'm bored - are we nearly there yet?!" It's mind numbingly boring for adults, let alone children. When he's old enough we'll encourage him to read a book, but we'd take anything that will help keep him entertained tbh.

When I was little we used to drive to the south of France every year. I had a little bag stuffed with books, hand held computer games and a Walkman. The journey didn't seem nearly as long as it does now!

I have screens banned in the car. As a driver I find it incredibly distracting, especially as ds likes to commentate on the game. Even with head phones which tbh aren't great for hearing it is still a distraction.

Radio is on, and ds will read endlessly but absolutely NO screens. This is not a ban I am prepared to lift as a trial run resulted in me nearly hitting a tree due to being startled but sudden loud noise followed by a scream from ds. It was an empty tiny country road so tbh if you sneeze you could hit the tree but I would not be happy being startled like that when driving so it has to be banned.

I tend to go with what I'd do if I was on a long journey and I wasn't the one driving or sitting in the front.

So on that basis DS can have his tablet for the journey. Inevitably he puts it down and we chat, then he goes back to it. In other words exactly like I would.

I shudder at the memory of holidays to Cornwall as a child. Endless hours of utter tedium. Eye spy my arse for 8 sodding hours.

I think break it up a bit, i.e. have the first hour or so no screen time, then an hour on the tablet and then back to no screen time.

When DD was that age tablets, iPads etc weren't invented and she couldn't read / colour due to severe car sickness. So we put on CDs, I use to have to listen to the likes of Crazy Frog, Hannah Montana. Drove me up the wall

Then we would have breaks of eye spy or chatter and I might have let her have a little go on my phone playing a game for 10 minuets (there were only 3 basic one to choose from and you had to use the key board back then!)

Some staring out the windows is a good thing though. It is different from playing a game. You see new things, you think, your mind wanders, you have ideas. Agree with the idea of mindfullness.
Of course use devices for long journeys-why suffer for hours, but it seems a shame if children, and adults,can't go anywhere without screens.
I was with a load of 7 year olds on a coach going thru some of the most magnificent landscape in the uk, some really spectacular views and very different to what the kids were used to, and hardly any of the were interested in even looking out of window. Maybe something just outside a coach window doesn't seem real to them, it's just a boring image.

darkevil I think your post is more about your poor driving skills and lack of concentration than what is good for the kids!

The think I've found with children and young people is that they 'don't get' scenery and beauty generally. Not all of course use but in my expierence as a youth worker, an inclusion worker amongst over things over the last 20 years and taking children away on residentials is that they don't appreciate beauty until they are older.

Mine is now nearly 19 and had years 'out' of coming to nice places and going to places that are AOUB but now he is older he is beginning to appreciate it more.

I limit screen time at home but in the car the ipad, the DS, audiobooks, real books and the kindle are a godsend for long journeys. Fortunately DC isn't inclined to be sick. We also play I spy, 20 questions, Ghost, spotting things out of the window, sing songs (if she'll let me!) and have conversations. As a result, DC actually looks forward to spending hours and hours in the car which I certainly didn't as a child.

We used to do long car journeys in the evening, which meant sitting in the dark for four hours plus. I would have sold my granny for a kindle or tablet. There are only so many times you can play the Fucking alphabet game without wanting to throw yourself out of the car.

Surely the first rule of a long journey is keep the children quiet?

Oh, and you can get headphones for children which limit the volume before anyone mentions the risk to hearing of standard headphones.

No. Anything including kids can be a distraction!!! If kids are screaming and less noise option is the screens then the screens are probably safer. Ds travels well without screens, and will silently read a book or hold a conversation. So to have random sudden shouts/noise change from a film or sudden screams of pain/fear because something went wrong in the game is very distracting and if happened in a house you would go to investigate. And the types of screams he does would have you running as you would think he had cut off a finger or something.

Constant noise and stream of noise from ds' commentating is exhausting as any parent with a child that does not shut up or utter a word that makes sense will tell you. Ds beat boxes in the car, sings etc that is no issue.

I vaguely remember that they did a study and that distractions caused by children hugely impaired driving and that it was essentially safer to never put a child in a car. At which point the researchers were rightly handed a grip and told that this was unrealistic and impractical.

Ours are 9 and 11, in the pre handheld device days we had a car DVD player and used it on 2 hour plus journeys. Yes, you can look for yellow cars, foreign number plates, whatever, but if I'm driving I prefer to concentrate on the driving, it's easier when DH is there too. Also our longer journeys really don't have much to look at (entire length of the M6 for example). Then there's traffic jams. We don't use the DVD so much now, they have Ipods and play music/audio books but we discourage too many games and haven't switched to films/TV on those or Ipads. We've found the DCs self regulate really well, we still have conversations, talk about places we travel through, best of both worlds really.

Oh and I never get car sickness unless I try and read. OK on motorways but instant strong nausea on other roads, I thought it was really common too.

yy, Norbert (apt name for a thread about long car journeys!). Regarding my earlier post, we do have some in-car entertainment - we listen to audio books, which have magical child-soothing properties. We've done the entire How To Train Your Dragon series that way, which I would heartily recommend (read very well by David Tennant). When we're bored of that we listen to music or just talk. We do 6 - 7 hour journeys quite regularly and I think of us all as being seasoned travellers now.

bruffin, interesting though that you find games not so bad for travel sickness. I wonder why that is? I know reading was a killer for me in the car when I was a nipper, which is why I assumed games would work the same way.

Actually I think a big issue in this discussion is are the children used to the long journeys. In an average week ds spend around 15hrs in the car, on a bad week depending on contact with his dad and where his competitions are he can spent closer to 30hrs. For him being in the car is just part of life, time to sleep/read/eat/do homework and a long distance journey is just another long distance journey, ie no big deal. A lot of children rarely make long distance journeys and it is a huge annoying thing. Needless to say my opinion will be tainted by my experiences and ds is actually a treat to have in the car, though we are always glad for the end of season break before the pre season training ramps up and we can avoid being in the car for a bit

I tend to have three with music on their ipods all reading a book. Dd2 takes her ds as well and sometimes plays that. Dh drives and I read, he sometimes moans that there is no conversation but he'd moan even more if there were distractions whilst he drives. It's part of the preparing for a day out that all ipods and kindles and phones are fully charged before we set off. I've always read in the car even as a child, but then I've always been someone who permanently has a book attached to them anyway.

DS1 used to get carsick but he hasn't been in 4 years

This is probably because you do not allow use of screens in the car. You sensibly allow what their inner ear match what they are seeing by looking out of the window, thus preventing travel sickness. I say this as a book worm who had the torture of not being allowed to read when travelling. It worked!

"I was with a load of 7 year olds on a coach going thru some of the most magnificent landscape in the uk, some really spectacular views and very different to what the kids were used to, and hardly any of the were interested in even looking out of window. Maybe something just outside a coach window doesn't seem real to them, it's just a boring image."

Yes exactly! That's what worries me most about the ubiquity of handheld games, with their gorgeous graphics and easy rewards - they can make real life seem kind of drab by comparison.

My DC are 11,11 and 10 and have done some mega journies( South of France) from babies.Reg do Devon to London. Never had screens and never will.

I want them bored,I want them looking out the window,I want them using their brains to amuse themselves and I want them to just be.Kids these days rarely have the chance to do any and they need scope to just think.Sure I read a study re the benefits of long journey boredom and looking out the window.

My 3 have plenty of screen time at home.

It was hell during the toddler years but we battled through and I'm glad. Mine talk,think,eat sweets and there is masses on line/Pinterest re boredom busting,looking out the window games.

Mine like listening to the radio too( stereo is broken so can't even listen to CDs).

The younger two aged three and four don't have screens to use. Ten year old feels sick if he goes on his in the car, fifteen year old listens to music if DH has five live on the radio. Both the older ones enjoy listening to the radio with us and the ten year old is happy to watch the map on the sat nav for ages.
We did get stuck in traffic on the way back from Tenby for nearly three hours which was pretty bad. DD found online quizzes for us to do on her phone so I was grateful for that then.
I used to enjoy long car journeys as a child, which was a good job as we went on so many.
My sister and I used to have a right laugh and we would all have family singalongs.

YANBU. I have had the most fascinating conversations with my DC when in the car, and hate to think of what we'd lose if he were glued to a screen. I too worry about people losing the art of daydreaming, as well as observing what they see. We also do singing, which the kids love, and lots of talking about the scenery learning by stealth

We did an 8-hour journey with my DS who was 3 at the time, and he was still talking about some of the things he saw out the window during that journey for some time afterward. I might renege as the kids get older, but for now really hate the idea of screens in the car.

I wouldn't mine but I am proud to say that my 7 and 4 year old are happy without it. I would be also little worried getting sick in the car. I never ever use screen in the car myself - I don't see any need and my children seem the same too.