We live in Seattle; my husband's family lives in southern Oregon. Several times a year, we gear up and make the 400-mile journey to spend time together, and while it's always worth it once we get there, the drive itself is never easy.It's not as bad as it used to be, because at least I don't have to repeatedly crawl into the backseat to take care of a squalling infant, but toddlers aren't exactly known for the their patience and tolerance of discomfort either, you know?
No one likes to sit in a car for 7+ hours, no matter how many granola bars they have access to. Our older boy is pretty good about limiting himself to the occasional dramatic sigh and announcing that THIS SURE IS A LONG DRIVE, but the 2-year-old ... well. Around hour 4 or 5, he's had enough, and by god, you're going to hear about it.
We'll be heading down to Oregon this week for the 4th of July holiday, and I've been looking forward to the vacation but kind of dreading the journey. Dylan is in that stage of toddlerhood where his emotional controls are basically run by meth-tweaked Rhesus monkeys—up! Down! Angry! Happy! Hey a cow! I WILL BURN YOU WITH FIRE!—and short of dropping him with a Benadryl-loaded tranq dart as soon as we buckle him in, I'm going to need some distractions.
My go-to items include 40 million snacks, a decent selection of books, a bunch of crappy new toys from the plasticky-smelling dollar store, and a DVD player read to blat forth the one movie they can both watch over and over: Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. Which features a throaty never-ending soundtrack of Bryan Adams, but whatever, I don't care if I have to listen to eight hours of Justin freaking Bieber as long as it keeps the backseat audience happy.
So, smart people, what other kid-calmers have you successfully deployed during a road trip? You know, when you've exhausted your family repertoire of "The Wheels on the Bus" and you've played the I Spy game to death and all the cookies have been eaten and you've still, dear GOD, got two hours to go?
This Hot Dad Wants to Do Your Ironing
This Hot Dad Wants to Cook You Dinner
This Hot Dad Cooks AND Does the Dishes
Kanye West is Gay?! 
Comments 32
I find that rationing out the new exciting toys and snacks over time helps. Get a bunch of brown paper lunch bags and put a cheap toy, an exciting snack or piece of candy, and a couple stickers in each. Make enough that you can hand them out every 30 minutes, or 1 hour, or however long you think you can go between distractions. Then, even if it only lasts three minutes, you know you'll get peace and quiet for that long every half hour.
We often make an 8 and a half hour trip to North Carolina to visit my BIL. Our best find so far is the mini magna doodle. My daughter loves it and spends most of the trip doodling to her heart's content or having the one of us driving doodling random things she tells us to.
It's also a bit nicer for us because for the most part the car is a tranq for my DD, she can't go more than an hour with out passing out.
Tranquilizers? Just kidding. I feel your pain. I download iPhone apps for toddlers and that usually kills a good hour of the trip (just bring your charger because the TEARS when the screen goes blank!)
Colorforms, books that have the buttons to play music and model magic (like playdoh but not quite as messy -- you can decide if your upholstery is up to it). Probably not age appropriate yet for your little guy, but the leapfrog tag books are great, too. Bribing with the promise of candy at the next gas station fill up is also a winner. But, hands down, the DVD player on repeat still works best.
My kids have always been really good travelers. We don't do gimmacks. Just talking, CD/radio, and occasionally pointing out something interesting that we're driving past. No toys, but they can bring their lovey and a couple of books. We stop every 2-3 hours when the kids are awake, for a "bio-break." Kids enjoy listening to the adults having a grown-up conversation. It doesn't all have to be child-centered.
We don't do electronics or food in the car. I actually think that kind of thing sets the bar for stimulation too high, and you are teaching the kids to be intolerant of "down time."
I'll be going on a 20-hour road trip to Nova Scotia in August (each way!). My parents drove three of us there every summer without the aid of technology and I don't know how. I'm just a tad worried about the drive with my two-year-old ...
My tricks are ones already mentioned...rationing the toys and the travel magna doodle. The other thing that really seems to help is constantly talking to him. I ask him if he sees X and then he looks for it and if he can't find it, I'll point to it. Which that game consists mostly of finding cows since we are in the midwest but he does seem to quite down. Pure timing of the trip is the only other strategy I have, though it has failed me the last two trips. I don't mind driving in the evening so we leave after dinner and then I just drive the 5 hours and hope he falls asleep sooner rather than later. Best of luck...I think there is only so much you can do to help them deal with the sitting. Oh, one other thing. I try to wear him down before too. So we go to the park or pool first. Again, this only seems to work occasionally.
When I was a kid we would drive down to Florida (which takes a day and a half when you stop at night) and my Mom would pack colouring paper/books, crayons, I had a little art kit and you could use the case as a table of sorts, books (picture), a walkman with a BRAND NEW TAPE (YAY!) back in the day of walkmans...
For our twice yearly 16-hour road trip from Detroit to New Orleans, we have done the following for the first three years of my daughter's life.
- Leave at dinner time with a small snack in hand, and talk to her a lot about what she sees outside.
- Stop after an hour or two for a late dinner.
- Bring a few cheap new toys (these work better than favorite toys), revealing them as needed.
- Let her run and jump during gas fillup breaks.
- Hope she falls asleep early (she always does) and sleeps a good 12 hours (she always does).
- During the morning part of the drive, let her run and jump again during gas fillup breaks.
- Stop for a leisurely breakfast and more playing.
My normally 9.5-hour sleeper becomes a 12-hour sleeper on these road trips, thank goodness. Daddy and I have to drive through the night, but it's worth it to me. When I was breastfeeding, we had to make more stops to feed her. Now that she's potty trained, I also keep a small blue potty in the car - Ikea type with NO bells and whistles, just a simple, easy-to-clean potty.
We just finished an Ohio to Myrtle Beach trip with our 2.5 year old triplets and we found the color wonder books and markers were a big hit and not messy as well as some new plastic dinosaurs, slinky's, new matchbox cars and books and dvd's they haven't seen yet or old favorite dvds from home. We also ran them at every rest stop we stopped at. I went to the dollor store and stocked up.