We’ve been doing a lot of traveling in the car with our 3 and 4 year old since the beginning of this year, mostly for family events. Not just a few hours, but day-long trips for multiple days. To be honest, we’ve actually been traveling by road their entire lives, since neither of us have family closer than 2.5 hours away. Taking trips with small people who hate the car have never been my favorite. But I have found a few things that make the extended stays away from home more pleasant for everyone.
If you are looking for a post that will tell you how to keep your kids engaged and creatively learning without electronics, quiet when they arrive, and basically “seen but not heard” so that you can arrive at your destination in record time, I’m afraid you’ve clicked on the wrong post. I am not here to tell you that you can arrive refreshed, on time, and with happy children. You can pick one of the last two, but not both, and that first one is just plain fictional. This post is specifically about just keeping everyone sane throughout the time that you’re gone from home.
#1 – Never commit to a specific arrival time. Whether you are flying or driving, you have no control over most of the circumstances. If you have someone holding dinner for you or planning an event around your arrival, it places undue stress on you, as the parent, which you are going to pass on to your children. You cannot control traffic, plane delays, whether someone has an accident, throws up, needs to stop to pee 5 times in an hour, or needs to have a time out for discipline (or sanity) purposes. Every time one of these “interruptions” occurs, you get more and more frustrated as your arrival time is affected. Just don’t even go there. Promise nothing.
#2 – Think about food before you leave. It is important to me that we all to eat as cleanly as possible while traveling, because nothing derails family time at our destination more quickly than a gluten and dairy intolerant child having nonstop diarrhea and feeling icky. That’s what happens if we veer off into junk food for any extended period of time. So we travel with this arsenal of substitutes for food his food intolerances. You might not have a food intolerant/allergic child, but a steady diet of fast food for more than about 2 days will yield some distinctly undesirable behavior from both your children and yourself, with sharp spikes in blood sugar and the resulting crashes every few hours. Think ahead about your various stops, use Yelp or other local searches to find healthy options, stop to explore a local farmer’s market at lunch time, or if all else fails — pack a lunch! You can even carry your own healthy lunch onto a plane to avoid having to rely on airport food or the plane packaged options.
#3 – Plan for rest. My kids still take 2 hour naps in the afternoon. Don’t be jealous, because they don’t sleep at night AT ALL. So when we travel, I literally plan our activities around getting back to our hotel or room for a few hours every day. Has this upset some family members? Yes, it has. It has caused us to have different plans than the rest of our traveling party. But you know what? The rest of the family doesn’t have to deal with the insanely sleep deprived child sobbing all night long because his or her body can’t settle. They don’t have to deal with the child who has an exhaustion breakdown on the trip home. I do. So I get to say when we leave the party/dinner/lunch/gathering for naps. Again, planning ahead is key — I ask about the schedule each day (we are rarely in charge of what is going on), and my husband and I will take separate vehicles if necessary so that I can come back with the kids for naps. I take them too! I highly recommend the adult midday nap, if possible — you know you aren’t sleeping well with your kids all piled into one room, so make up those zzzz’s when you can!
#4 – No activities the day after returning from a trip. No matter how well you plan food and rest, everyone is coming home exhausted. If we have wiggle room in my husband’s schedule, I try to return a day before he goes back to work. If not, I at least have a day at home planned for the kids and I where we can all decompress, unpack, and just run around in the backyard or in the house relaxing. Because we do rely on DVD’s when in the car, the first few days back usually mean no TV at all. It’s a little difficult to cut back so suddenly, but it’s important to reset. We eat lots of fresh, healthy food. I say “no” to birthday parties, play dates, even trips to the store unless absolutely necessary.
That’s it, but these 4 simple things have really helped our family have a more enjoyable time traveling. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either.
Happy & safe travels!
