Five Tips for Preparing for a Road Trip with Little People

Perhaps one of the scariest, most dreadful aspects of traveling with children is the actual act of getting there. Whether flying, driving, walking, riding, or boating (who am I kidding; we’re not boating anywhere with a toddler–I’m not that crazy), nothing is as intimidating as being stuck in a small space with tiny people that are just beyond reach but well within your earshot. The only thing I’ve found to ease this buildup of butterflies is to brace myself and prepare. While this family tends to take quite a few of those two hour trips, these tips are those I’ve cultivated from the two- and three-day trips we’ve been making as of late…

• Pack Snacks: Let’s face it. This is a tactic most parents know. If your kids are anything like mine, you take snacks with you just to go to the store to pick up more snacks. Road trips for us are a bit different though. I pack everything in the portions I want my children to have, since reaching my child to take the container back is close to impossible. Especially the two year old. In fact, it’s one of his favorite games. He likes watching me flail around from the front seat, arms flapping like a fish out of water. But with food packed in properly portioned containers, he can just keep his container, so I win. Also, I have to take into account how much I want to clean off the floor and seats, since generally about 63% of the contents of any snack container will land there rather than in my children’s mouths. This affliction does not strike just one particular age. It seems all my children have it. Additionally, with a Kindergartener smooshed between an infant and a toddler in a single row, I make sure I pack two of everything. Even the snacks that only one child claims to like. I think it’s a rule that in cars, children’s tastes must change, and they must like everything that the other is eating. Now when the two year old decides he’d like to eat some seaweed, I have seaweed for him. Even though he would never touch it at home. Ever. Finally, I choose a variety. There are moments when I just need to distract my children with sugar (more on those later) and moments when I am overwhelmed with bad-food mom-guilt (baby carrots, anyone?).

• Creature Comforts: I dress my children in comfy clothes, even though sometimes I’d like to make a good first impression when we arrive at our final destination. I don’t want my mother or friends or randoms on the street thinking I manage an unruly ragtag bunch of little people. Imagine having to sit in a seat for six hours, though, with a stiff collar on or on a poofy, yet cute, skirt. This would be no fun for my littles, which means no fun for me. So for my comfort, they are dressed in the softest, smoothest clothes I can find, short of pajamas. They also bring a little back pack each with lovies, blankies, and a bed buddy. This helps lull them into a catatonic state. But this is when things get a bit dicey. I’d love the quiet of a nap, especially the rare, mythical three-kid nap, but the consequences of that nap are the same as shooting a unicorn. Absolute Tragedy. My husband and I use the nap (and planning the drive around the nap or night time) cautiously. My children don’t fall asleep in car seats in instagram-perfect positions. They have bent necks, seatbelt marks, dangling legs, drool. Imagine waking up after that. Now imagine not being able to move much out of your five-point harness. Now imagine being two. This is my toddler after waking from a road trip nap. It is not pleasant. It is filled with neck-vein popping shrills. This is when I curse those naps and slight bit of peace they soothed me into thinking could last until we rounded the corner to our destination. This is when I offer those special, sacred snacks: the sweets. This is when it is time to pull over and take a stretch break. And at night? Have you ever had a five year old irrationally sleep-scream at you in the parking lot of a small gas station in the middle of nowhere Virginia at 11 pm while you frantically try to calm her so she doesn’t wake your other children? No? Me neither then. Let’s just say we don’t push the kids through the night if we can help it. Not any more at least.

• Plan Stops: In addition to making those unplanned stops to comfort an inconsolable toddler or let a 10 month old change positions, we purposely plan frequent stops. We recently broke up our “18 hour” drive into three days. I use quotes because the time given by any map is an ideal. It doesn’t account for the traffic we will inevitably hit, the number of times the Kindergartener will need to use the bathroom, the two year old’s decision to need to use the potty at all rest stops even though he is still in diapers at home, the hugs I will have to remove everyone from the car to give. It does not include costume changes when the toddler squirts ketchup on himself and the smell of it makes the Kindergartener sick. Eighteen hours is not 18 hours. It is far more than that. And to a child, 18 hours may as well be three weeks. To a mother of three children under five, it might as well be three years. Generally, we use the two-year-old’s nap time as our frame of reference. I think my description above explains why. My toddler never recovers from his naps. He tends to be emotional the rest of the day. I don’t want to be in a car with that swirling around him and exploding on all of us. Neither does he. That whole “Life’s a journey not a destination” yadda yadda yadda actually applies here. We strive to make the drive part of the vacation. Sure, we stop at all the goofy places. Check out the largest rubber band ball in the Eastern USA. See the world’s biggest cowboy boots. Get ice cream at 2 pm. Then we get to the hotel we’re going to stay at. We aim to get there so we can set up camp well before the sun goes down. Let the kids jump on the bed (does that make me a bad parent?). Spend time swimming in the pool or exploring the yard. Let’s face it; the ideal doesn’t happen. We try not to expect it to, that way it doesn’t seem everything is going “wrong;” it just goes a different, albeit sometimes exhausting, way.

• Don’t Over Pack the Back Seat: The kids need things to entertain them, but it doesn’t need to be a playroom in our back seat. If there are too many options to choose from, they’ll burn through them all, expecting there to always be something else, and the passenger (me) will spend most of his or her time twisting in circles to pull out those magic items and give them to the correct child. Then he or she will spend the rest of the time trying to gather them off the floor to put them back where they belong, be it back in a bag or on the lap of a child who will promptly throw them off again. And eventually they will fall to the sides of the car seats only to reappear as the van slides open and a heaping pile of cars, stuffed animals, food, and puzzle pieces slide out. This no longer happens. I keep it simple and pick the basics (and seriously, iPads).

• Give Them a Lap: There’s just no where to put all the stuff when kids are in a car seat. How can they hold their crayons and their paper and their lovies and their drink and their snacks when they have such a tiny lap? I’ve tried the lap desk, but it just slides off, and it’s not deep enough to hold onto all those things that tiny hands can’t hold. I’ve used little handled art bins for food (thank you to a million places on pinterest), but they are still too complicated to hold and eat out of. Now I use one large, unsectioned art bin and one deep basket for each little. The art bin is large enough that all my 2 year old’s crumbs and misplaced food generally ends up within its borders rather than in the folds of his seat. It also gives him a race track to zoom his cars on rather than zooming them off his seat and onto the floor. My 5 year old’s dolls have a place to dance and sleep. And when she spills her water (which she will do) it doesn’t go onto her car seat. It goes within the confines of her art bin. The food itself goes in the baskets, and they can both reach it easily and then rest what’s half eaten in a retrievable place. (Pipe dream. That doesn’t happen because of, well, snacks.)

There’s always a few harried minutes (or hours) to any trip, but in the end, we all just want to look a little less crazy than we are when we finally show up. For me, preparing helps. It’s about anticipating what could go wrong before it does. (Actually, the two year old is totally fine with looking crazy.)