Help! Baby hates being in the car

[MrsXyzAbc]

My 1 year old is extremely energetic, loves crawling, climbing etc, but hates sitting still. This makes walks in pram or any car journey a nightmare. At least with the walks I can distract her, give her a bottle etc, but if I'm driving the car she just gets more and more worked up because she's bored. Has anyone got any tips that worked for them? It puts me off going anywhere, would be great to just drive out to my friend who's 40 mins away, or to my parents which is about the same, but i hate seeing her so upset. I've tried ignoring it, singing, making animal noises etc.
Even as a small baby, a few weeks old, she wouldn't sleep in the car (or at all really), but that was down to bad colic/reflux.

Both my dc hate(d) the car. The oldest is two and he started coming around to it around 18 months. Youngest is 5 months and just screams blue murder for each trip.

For the oldest we got him a car seat with an impact shield rather than straps which seemed to relax him a bit. He's always hated being strapped in anything. We also got him a tablet and downloaded all his favourite songs, LBB and Cocomelon songs from YouTube.

Tbh we just limited car trips as much as possible and took public transport if we could, it wasn't worth the hysterics. I'm hoping ds2 will grow out of the hate too.

Thanks supercalifrag, some good suggestions there. Good to hear she might get better with age, and the tablet would be great as she loves those cartoons.
Very jealous of my friends who take babies on holidays all over the country

Tell me about it! We have a birthday party to attend at the weekend and it's 50 minutes away. I'm already dreading it with ds2. If it was 'just' crying I would be okay but he gets himself so worked up its terrible to witness.

Fortunately dh is driving so I can sit in the back between the children which seems to help. I can't wait for ds2 to grow out of it, it's exhausting planing trips. We've tried everything, going at nap time, going when just woken, going after a feed, going before a feed (incase the car was making him car sick and a full tummy in the seat was uncomfortable), early morning, late night, different toys, mirrors, games, radio...

The only thing that works is holding a dummy in and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star a gazillion times until he falls asleep.

We use Spotify and play it through the car radio. The kids like nursery rhymes and so we play those. Usually the wiggles nursery rhymes.

It sounds horrible but I ignored DS when he was doing this. We had no choice but to use the car and as a single Mum I had no one to sit in the back with him. He doesn’t do it anymore, I changed car seat which did help a bit and he just grew out of it reasonably quickly. Not much else you can do if you have to use the car. Life didn’t stop because DS didn’t like being in the car!

Mine was the same we just took the bus or walked

My boy (10 months) isn't quite as bad but does get bored quite quickly. His favourite nursery rhymes on my phone in a phone holder is the best way to distract him. And mixing his toys around regularly.

My DD aged 2 (26 months to be exact!) was (and still is occasionally) like this. She still never sleeps in the car!

I only posted the other day about how she still hates the pram!

In the car turning her forward facing helped massively. I was so reluctant to do this but I actually had 2 (minor, thankfully) car accidents due to being distracted by her constant screaming. She was much, much happier after we changed her to forward facing, and we have since taken some quite long journeys (to Cornwall from Essex!) with minimal crying.

Oh I might try the Spotify trick.. she loves her nursery rhymes . Although I'm sure she'll wise up to it soon enough

Try looking at tafftoys in either argos or amazon. My DS is only 6 months but he went from crying every journey to smiling at seeing the car toys! I'd also suggest the nursery rhymes.