Most of our family travel now involves going in the car somewhere else in the state rather than flying to some exciting new country.\u00a0 While car travel has never been my favorite, I have learned a few things about travelling in the car with young children.\u00a0 We keep our car travel under 5 hours so I don\u2019t have much to say about multi-day cross-country trips.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t cool-modern-day-parents with a roomy minivan and DVD player.\u00a0 We are also unable to use any kind of portable entertainment device for shared viewing since Honeybun\u00a0is forward facing and Sugarplum is still rear-facing.\u00a0 I also do not bring noise making (generally marketed at \u201clearning\u201d) toys because one noise in addition to my children\u2019s constant questioning is more than enough, adding additional noises might just send me to the loony bin!\u00a0 I also avoid toys that have lots of parts.\u00a0 Airplanes are nice for multi-part toys because they have a tray they can play on and if they drop something on the floor I can unbuckle and get it.\u00a0 In the car pieces go everywhere, I can\u2019t reach them while moving and mass chaos ensues.<\/p>\n
For these reasons I\u2019ve had to come up with my own sanity saving tips:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I always try to plan our time in the car to coincide with their normal napping time.\u00a0 This does not always result in them sleeping peacefully during the drive, but it has never made the ride more difficult.<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Be sure to bring any and all comfort items.\u00a0 My girls each have a special loving thing (Honeybun\u00a0it\u2019s a receiving blanket and Sugarplum it\u2019s a small headed blanket thing) and I also bring a few stuffed animals as well as sunglasses (Sugarplum not stand the sun in her eyes!).<\/p>\n
3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I constantly peruse the cheap (under $1) toys when shopping at places like Target, Joann or Walmart and keep a stash which I can surprise them with once on the road (I do this for airplane rides too).<\/p>\n
4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Books.\u00a0 Lots of them.\u00a0 I have a library of holiday books that I rotate throughout the year and usually bring these on the road with us since they are usually less familiar than the ones we have out all the time.<\/p>\n
5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I also bring books on Tape.\u00a0 When the girls get tired of the radio, it gives them something to think about and they can\u2019t argue while listening.<\/p>\n
6)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Snacks are my savior.\u00a0 I hold off on snacks until we are all going to lose our minds but having something that requires a lot of chewing (fruit snacks, fresh snap peas, etc.) keeps them happier and quieter longer.\u00a0 We also have water available at all times within reach for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of our family travel now involves going in the car somewhere else in the state rather than flying to some exciting new country.\u00a0 While car travel has never been my favorite, I have learned a few things about travelling in the car with young children.\u00a0 We keep our car travel under 5 hours so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-life","category-tiny-travellers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2444,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/2444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}