To think that driving 10hrs overnight with toddler is a good idea?!

[MintGreenLife]

DS is 21 months and we are going away for 10 days in the UK. To drive it’s 10hrs and we were thinking of driving overnight. He doesn’t go to bed until 9pm, so we would probably leave around 8pm, keep him entertained for the first hour, then hopefully he will go to sleep. Imagine we would arrive around 7am with a couple loo/coffee stops, and this would be his usual wakeup time. We will share the driving and one of us will be in the back with him at all times.

Are we mad to do this? Has anyone got any experience of this? We are going on holiday with family, so they will be able to help with DS the next day while we catch up on a bit of sleep. Also can’t find any info, but the 2hr in the car seat rule must not apply once they are toddlers??

The alternative is leave the house at 6am, 2hr drive, bus to airport, 2hrs in the airport, 1.5hr flight, 2.5hr drive out the other side. I just feel like that’ll be so much more stressful, and DS isn’t a good sleeper, so all that sitting still will most likely result in a terrible night first night of our hols.

What would you do?!

@MintGreenLife you know your dc more than anyone. We travelled to Canada with a 5 year old and 20 month old twins. Sometimes you chill, go with it, accept it may be a disaster but know it’ll all be fine.

We used to do this too, though for 6 /7 hr journey. sometimes they would wake if a car had full beam on and headlights woke them up so they would cry a little then fall back to sleep. We learnt to put a sun screen up on window to act as a type of curtain !
much easier and calmer for all concerned to drive a long journey with sleeping children.

Or you could read the research.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23509866/

https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/road-safety/drivers/driving-at-night.pdf

This one explains the fatality rate is two to four times higher than day driving: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330310803NighttdrivingHowwlowilluminationnaffectsdrivinggandtheechallengesoffsimulation

Good plan that I’ve known other people do and have thought I would do had I not given up driving long before DS was born. One thing I’m not sure about is arriving 7am at hotel/bandb/holiday cottage as check in time is not going to be that early. I don’t know if campsites are different.

We do this often - 10 hour drive to family in Scotland.

• Pack and load the car the afternoon before.
• Dh goes to bed at 5pm (he can fall asleep whenever lol)
• I get dc to bed as normal, stay up, so last minute bits.
• Wake dh at midnight, by which time he's had about 7 hours sleep.
• Get kids out to car in Pj's, leave at 12.30am, kids go back to sleep.
• DH drives all night. I sleep in the car.
• Services about 8am to wash, dress dc, do teeth etc. Breakfast in the car on the way (croisants, bananas, squeezy yoghurts, cartons of juice)
• Arrive about 11am.

Always used to do this when my kids were small. So much easier than the dropped toys, I want a story, she’s got my doll/teddy/toy scrapping. Used to love night driving.

I don't know, because a disruption to routine often causes night wees and poos...?

I wrote quite a long, sympathetic and thoughtful comment and this is your brief and sarcastic response framed as a sarcastic question, I don't know why you've come on here for advice tbh. You know best so crack on, I regret bothering

Also flight option is fine also. Ours is always 2hr drive, 2hr airport wait, 2.5hr flight, 3hr drive other end when we visit family with our toddler and it’s been fine. Ds depending on flight time tends to stay awake the first drive, wears a bit of energy out at airport, eats loads snacks on flight then by the time we have arrived and hired car he’s tired and will nap majority of second drive

Not sure about disruption but this can definitely be a thing because a properly tight carseat harness means that the buckle can compress the nappy so it can’t expand properly. Not a problem during the day where you stop and change them every few hours but definitely something to think about at night. We did a 4 hour stretch once when DD was asleep, she would have been about 2, and the nappy was expanded all on one side and not the other, I think we were really lucky it didn’t leak, no way would it have lasted 10 hours even though 12 at night was never a problem at home.

@Mummy08m it wasn’t a sarcastic comment, it was a genuine question. Night wees would be no issue as he’s still in nappies, but appreciate a poo could happen with the vibrations of the car. Hadn’t considered this.

@FlounderingFruitcake @Mummy08m that’s a fair point, I hadn’t thought of that x

Lots of helpful responses and mixed opinions. Seems most people think this would be fine but raised some good points/ideas, obviously some highly against it. I’m still not sure tbh 😂 we gave a few weeks to decide thankfully

Please don’t
driving when tired is v dangerous, we had a friend die after attempting to drive overnight after a flight.
Also toddler probably won’t sleep well and may be very tired and grumpy the next day and may want only you.

We drove for 27 hours straight once ( with loo breaks) and a 4 hour middle of the night sleep in a petrol station in the car. 3 DC, youngest was 3. It was tiring but fine.

Many European families do this for winter and summer holidays - e.g. driving from Scandinavia or Holland on Friday evening and arriving in resort on Saturday morning. With two drivers this seems to work fine for them, even with journeys of 1,000km or more.

But DH does a job that involves driving at night so he did lots of that bit. Also the night bit was through France on straight, boring roads.

We have driven overnight from Sussex to Edinburgh many times with the babies/toddlers. It has always been the best option and the kids don't mind- they sleep most of the way. Bring a flask of coffee and take turns to drive. You'll be fine!

@Whosaidthattt thanks ☺️ this is how I was feeling for the most part, until I got some mixed responses with some people very much against the idea. And now I’m doubting if it’s a good idea myself 🤦🏻‍♀️

Like several of the PP this is something I grew up doing - same journey with my own parents overnight was a child.

When we do our 1000km+ drive home from England, I wouldn’t do overnight. I like to actually make the drive part of the trip if you see what I mean, and we take a slightly different route each time so we can stop off at different castles/ towns/ zoos on route. Doesn’t feel such a ‘chore’

We tried late night travelling on the way back from Cornwall (8 hour journey for us) and it failed miserably every single time. Not one of the children would fall asleep and certainly didn't stay asleep if they did! even our 12 week old daughter wouldn't bloody sleep!

Would it be better getting up very early (4am) and travelling then? This always worked better for us as the kids just slept really well the first night after all the excitement. Set off at 4.15am, stop for picnic breakfast at 7 and change into day clothes, stop again for picnic 'lunch' and run around at 9, arrive at destination late morning. Another picnic around 1pm, afternoon full of fresh air and running around, dinner at 5pm then bed at normal time which was 7pm.

@blobby10 I’m definitely considering something like this! Because DS naps well in the car, I assumed he would probably sleep all night, but then again he doesn’t even sleep through in his bed. I guess I just assumed the movement of the car would keep him asleep and it would be an easy option but possibly not! I’ll look into all the different timing options and possible places to stop x

We do Aberdeen to the south coast and back at least once a year and have done since dc1 was very small. Always in day time with lots of stops. Sometimes we break the journey with a random premier inn or similar but basically we make the travel part of the trip.

Overnights are a great idea in theory but the risk of no one getting any sleep has always put me off based on my mum's description of attempting it with me who could apparently make it from the middle of Germany to Yorkshire via ferry without any sleep but much vomiting as a toddler (and back). My kids are hit and miss car sleepers though so a long day of doing many things and then falling into a new bed has always worked.

All the people going on about research etc have clearly never actually done it - talk to people who have, and remember some of the stats about driving in the early hours of the morning will be drunk people, and people who've got stranded so they are pushing on through when they're already tired. Motorway driving at that time is very safe, especially since there is hardly anybody else on the road. Most people I know who live here (EU country) and drive home do it this way. Some stop overnight. But for us that would add an extra day to the travel time as well as the expense - it just makes it impractical. For us leaving at about midnight is the optimal way to do it.

Definitely goes without saying that you must be aware of the tiredness risk and of course stop if you feel tired.

When we drive home from UK we tend to do it in the day instead, so 3h from our families' town to the ferry port, which we get up early and try to do in one go before rush hour.

Then cross, which adds an hour this way, so it's late morning by the time we get over. Try to do a couple of hours then stop for lunch, then another couple of hours then stop for a run around, another hour or so then stop for dinner, and then the last stretch of about 2 hours.

So this is early morning (4/5am) until about 9-10pm. It's OK. It's a stressful day because the DC get fed up. We've done this with various ages of kids (have DC 1.5 - 14yo) and between crawling and about 6yo is when they are the most difficult to travel with.

Doing the journey 100% during their awake time makes it harder because they get bored, so you have to stop off more often and for longer so the journey takes longer. A 10 hour drive takes us about 16h this way. Older children probably do best with this option, though, because they can understand the purpose of the journey. Toddlers just do not understand why they are being strapped into a seat again and they get really angry about it unless they are tired enough to not care or you build in more/longer stops.

Doing the journey during 100% of their usual sleep time (leaving at their bedtime) tends to mean they don't sleep well and then they are really grumpy all the next day. Plus, we found that the adults felt more tired this way, because we hadn't had any time to rest between (hyper, manic with excitement) child wrangling all day and then driving. So arguably you do that "dangerous stretch" of 2-6am when you've been awake for the longest. However it's probably the quickest way to do it. When we did this the whole trip took only 13 hours. There are no rush hours to avoid. We did find they woke up more disorientated in the first part of the journey and then they had long periods awake in the middle of the night, though not as moany as they were when we drove in the day.

Leaving in the middle of the night, so they have had a good 4-5 hours' sleep (and adults get to sleep for 3-4 hours too) means that they tend to sleep through a good portion while the roads are also clear so you can cover a lot of ground. And when you stop you only do minimal stops for a wee and then back in the car and they go to sleep again. This minimises the overall length of the journey. You still have to stop every hour or two in the second half, but that's not as bad. And you attack that "dangerous time" of driving with the energy and enthusiasm of the start of the trip. This usually takes us about 14 hours depending on traffic.

Whatever you do it seems to work to front-load, so do longer stretches in the first half of the journey when everyone has more tolerance and then more frequent stops towards the end of the journey, sometimes with a longer push for the last ~25%.

With positional asphyxiation the "clock resets" when you take them out of the seat, so it's not quite the same as leaving them in a car seat to sleep for the whole night in one go.

You will probably have to change nappies at every stop just because you want to keep DC as comfortable as possible but also because they wee more when they are awake than asleep, and they'll be awake for at least some of the journey.

You/partner will probably end up spending some time in the back with DC.

I'm honestly in awe of you doing a 1000km drive and fitting in a trip to a castle or a zoo! We find it totally exhausting so I can't imagine doing these things as well. How long would you usually spend at those places? Usually we just want to get back on the road as quickly as possible.