Tips for Car Trips with Young Kids
Every summer my family drives 6-10 hours to visit family for the holidays. We’ve learned a LOT along the way and adapted our approach as the kids have grown. I’m going to share all our best tips to make your trip WAY easier!
In the beginning, when my daughter was 4 months old, we only made it half an hour down the road before pulling over and considering aborting the whole trip.
As the kids turned to babies, to toddlers, to preschoolers, we had to change our approach and our tactics. Now we have a 7 and 5 year old, and we LOVE long drives.
Here are the tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way:
Make the drive part of the holiday. In other words, the drive doesn’t get you to your holiday, it begins the moment you leave your driveway. Approach it as an opportunity to have fun, connect with each other, experience some new things, maybe explore a bit etc.
Plan your stops. Know your kids’ limits. When we had babies, it was a 2 – 3 hourly stop for breastfeeding and nappy changes. When we had a 5 and 3 year old, we would stop about every 3-4 hours just to let the kids run around and have a toilet stop.
Plan your stops to be somewhere the kids can RUN and CRAWL and CARTWHEEL and PLAY. You want these kids to move as much as possible on stops. We look for parks or playgrounds or picnic areas, we’ve even stopped at national parks and done mini hikes to a lookout, and we’ve stopped at beach towns and let the kids have a swim. Again, these are part of the fun – the kids are exploring somewhere new, even if it’s a random town with a funny statue. The worst thing you can do with little kids is just go sit in a café for brekky (at least choose one with a play area).
Limit tablet and device use. This is about using the drive as part of the holiday. If your kids are on their tablets or game devices the whole time, they miss out on growing their resilience for trips. Playing games, having chats, singing together, doing little activities etc, there are heaps of ways to fill the time without tablets, and plenty of them are fun. I save tablets (movies in particular) for the very worst parts of the trip, or for when we’ve exhausted everything else. My poor kids have to endure quite a bit of ‘bored’ time before I’ll put on a movie – but now they can go for an 8hr drive without needing a tablet at all, so it’s worked! Don’t forget that people have endured long journeys for eons without devices.
Audio is entertaining. My kids aren’t totally deprived, remember not all entertainment is visual. Bring back the joy of music and audiobooks! We always hire out an audiobook and a couple CDs from the library before long drives. We also have a long Spotify playlist with everyone’s favourite songs (there was about a year where the kids would argue over music, but you just have to set the rules up front). CDs are good for when you’re out of signal/reception, or you need to use your phone. You can even get Disney movies as read-along storybooks, so the kids can follow the pages of the book. PLENTY of stories are on Spotify – just look up Disney Storytime.
Snacks are your best friend. Drinks are not. OK so the more they drink the more you have to stop for toilet breaks. Have more snacks than you think you’ll need. Keep in mind if you eat chips/lollies/etc then the kids will be desperate for a big drink, and you’ll need to stop more. We try to pack normal foods, healthy snacks, and a few special little things. Lollipops are great because they take a long time to eat (and keep the kids quiet). But a few special snacks will help make the trip something that kids look forward to. *Here’s our list of snack ideas for road trips
Have shades for windows to keep the kids from getting too hot.
We also took dark towels/pillow cases (so I didn’t have to buy anything!) for when the kids are sleeping and we’re in traffic. The lights from oncoming vehicles, roadworks and streetlights can be quite bright for little ones trying to sleep, so we put those thick dark towels up to block it and give them a good sleep.
Have blankets the kids can get if they’re a bit cool (you won’t want the heater on too much cos it’ll make the driver sleepy and the windows foggy).
Have emergency water and food somewhere in the car, just in case you break down or are delayed etc.
Have a change of clothes and a plastic bag. These are great for those stops where the kids get dirty or wet, or if they spill things on themselves in the car, or have a toileting accident, so you don’t have to worry about it!
Pack some fun car activities the kids haven’t seen before (or in a while). We usually get those magic-ink drawing pads so you don’t have to worry about the mess, maybe a cheap little toy, some sort of sensory thing (e.g. pop its, slinky).
Pick your leaving time well. We have left after school, which works well if you have a dinner stop planned where the kids can brush their teeth and get into PJs. We’ve left in the morning after breakfast so we could time the baby/toddler naps with ideal driving/stopping spots. We’ve left in the middle of the night. And now we usually leave at about 3am, so everyone’s had a sleep, but we still get a few hours of the road behind us before the kids are really awake for brekky.
Let the kids sleep as much as possible in the car. We have left at 1am, 2am and 3am pretty often. The logic behind it is that the kids sleep for a few hours, so to them the car trip seems WAY shorter. For us, it’s a few hours peace before we have to ‘parent’.
I used to keep lots of the kids toys and books in the front seat with me, so I could ration out the fun and keep the kids entertained longer. Now they’re older, the kids pack their own bags and keep them accessible so I don’t have to constantly turn around.
Pack a spare battery or car charger for your devices. You never know when you’ll need it.
Have a few plastic bags handy for rubbish or sick tummies. And always have a pack of wipes somewhere easy to access.
We’ve just got back from our big summer drive and it was a classic. We drove through storms, had detours, drove through the night, saw the sunrise, stopped for breakfast at the Gold Coast, listened to some awesome audiobooks from our library (the kids LOVE Roald Dahl’s Enormous Crocodile), played various versions of Spotto, got yummy treats from Zaraffas, and heaps more. The kids even watched a movie to get us through a traffic jam along the Gold Coast while parents had some good chats.
I love that now our kids enjoy drives as much as us, and I hope your family will be able to embrace the adventure of the long family drive too.
Related articles: