Long car rides with a toddler

[babyrn]

We are visiting the ILs this week and it is about a 6 hour drive without stopping. We haven't made this trip in almost a year and back then DD was young enough she slept the whole time. Any tips for making the long trip more tolerable? We are bringing books and snacks. I was thinking of downloading some apps to the kindle, what apps are good for a 20 month old? Any toys that are good for the car? We plan to leave super early so hopefully she will sleep a few hours.

[Deleted]

Movies on your tablet. THIS is the time for screen time under 2!

[Ashley&Scott]

Portable DVD player or tablet
Snacks
Books

Plan to sit next to her to entertain

[bunch]

my little loves the magnadoodle, books, snacks and the frozen soundtrack

[babyrn]

Oct 26, 2014 19:55:40 GMT -5 Ashley&Scott said:

Portable DVD player or tablet
Snacks
Books

Plan to sit next to her to entertain

Yes, I told DH we need to keep the seat clear next to her just in case!

[teatimefor2]

Books
Snacks
Movies

We make a five hour drive routinely with DS, 25 months. He travels best late at night or immediately upon waking up.

[lilac05]

I bring a box of toys, books, and snacks. Sometimes I pick up one or two things that are new. Unless she's getting restless, I'd just plan to stop once. Bonus if you can find a place where you can get gas, food, bathrooms, and exercise for a few minutes in one place!

My biggest tip for traveling with kids is to ration their toys. Don't show all of your cards! Start with a less preferred (but still loved) toy. Let her play with that until she gets bored, then take it back & give her something different. Rinse and repeat. Save the absolute favorite toys until you're feeling desperate. This has worked miracles for us! I drove with DS1 alone on a 5.5 hr trip when he was about 19 months old & he went through 2 things! (He usually has an extremely short attention span!) I've used it for trips up to 14 hours and have never had to pull out the iPad/kindle/smart toy! I'm absolutely not opposed to it, but we've never gone through my other "tricks" and needed it! (Granted we usually make at least one 5+ hour road trip every 6-8 weeks, so my kids are no strangers to road trips!)

I've forgotten to keep the toys with me a few times. Inevitably, about 30 minutes down the road, they've already gone through everything and get restless and start begging for snacks every 2 seconds!

ETA:  I have only sat back in the back twice in 4 years.  Once for the last 20 minutes of a 14 hour drive and once two weeks ago for 20 min for a "fun, special treat" (AKA we were eating dinner in the car & I needed to help DS2 & make sure he didn't choke)...both boys were so excited!  DH and I love road trips, so we enjoy the time together, too!

[Ashley&Scott]

Oh I forgot the most important trick. Plan stops where she can get out & run around, stores & malls are better than gas stations. Parks would be ideal but don't always work due to weather.

[jena]

I just plan to stop more. If there's not a playground where we stop for lunch, we'll go to a random park and burn half an hour there. Then we set then to with movies and drive as long as we can before they get cranky again.

[indifferentstars]

I agree with the ration your supplies advice. Let her fully exhaust her interest in activity A before you even let on that you have activity B available.

We drove 1,100 miles over 3 days with my then 17 month old. I had a whole bag of toys and books for him, some old favorites and some new stuff. The biggest hit was a wallet I made just for the trip- he loves playing with my wallet, but generally I try to distract him from that activity with my actual wallet so I took an old wallet and filled all the slots and pockets with old gift cards, business cards, little pics I cut from magazines, coupons, whatever. That occupied him for a ridiculously long time on our trip each day (I just reassembled it each time after he took all the papers out and then gave it back after he'd cycled through his other stuff) and he still wants to pull it out and play with it pretty often. If your DD has any sort of interest in some "forbidden" activity like the wallet, I'd try to replicate that somehow for the trip.

[mellymel]

Oct 26, 2014 19:53:03 GMT -5 @supergreen said:

Movies on your tablet. THIS is the time for screen time under 2!

This!!

[hermione]

A deck of playing cards killed an hour for us. Yes, we ended up cleaning up playing cards but so what. She loved messing around with them.

[mandapanda18]

Snacks/sippy
Plan stops along your route! Look up local parks, or mcdonalds with play areas or malls, whatever, a place for her to run!
We brought toys & books (C is not a tv watcher, so the tablet didn't work for him)
Mostly we talked and sang and pointed things out as we drove bye.

We left about 1/2 and hour before nap time for our tahoe trip this past weekend. I gave him his milk in the car once we got on the freeway. He didn't sleep until about an hour in since he was excited that we picked him up from daycare early. He slept the next 1.25 hours or so, then we had a planned stop at a park (gotta love Cali weather). We got out and played for about 1/2 an hour and let him run it out. We changed his diaper and he got back in the car. We only had 3.25 hours total on this trip (drove to AZ earlier this year 10.5 hours). He didn't get fussy until we were 8 miles from the condo!

The way home we planned the same way, right around nap time so he would sleep at least part of the trip.

[Deleted]

My kids are never all that fascinated by stuff in the car. :/
What does work is to leave early, make a breakfast/coffee run (or pack something) and let them eat in the car. Then stop for lunch, nap and then there.

[DarcyLongfellow]

Movies for sure! We just drove 8 hours yesterday, and Frozen kept both DD1 and DD2 entertained for hours :-) Elmo was good too.

I can't think of any apps. Maybe the drawing one on an iPad -- my DD2 might like that one, but I haven't tried.

I kept a huge bag of toys and just handed her one thing at a time. She'd play with it for a while then eventually she'd throw it or it would fall. Once she started complaining again, I'd hand her another toy. The Magnadoodle is very popular. Also anything that makes noise -- I have an Elmo camera and a Hooked on Phonics toy that sings. Years ago (before a car trip with DD1 at this age) I went to a consignment store and bought any toy that looked loud and obnoxious :-)

Also snacks. Lots of snacks! Applesauce pouches, bunny grahams, triscuits, soft fruits. I sit in the front and can't see her super well, but we have a mirror and my older DD is next to her and can keep an eye on her for us :-) So I feel comfortable letting her eat in the car as long as it's nothing she could easily choke on.

[Ashley&Scott]

Oct 27, 2014 12:12:33 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

My kids are never all that fascinated by stuff in the car. :/
What does work is to leave early, make a breakfast/coffee run (or pack something) and let them eat in the car. Then stop for lunch, nap and then there.

Good point, a blueberry scone from Panera keeps M occupied for 20 minutes.

[babyrn]

Thanks for all the advice everyone! We left at 4 am and luckily she slept until about 8:30! The rest of the trip took about 3 hours with a couple stops but it went really well. Hopefully the ride home is just as good, we won't be able to leave as early. We plan to stop in KC and go to the zoo on the trip home so that will break things up a bit.