7 ways to keep your children from driving you crazy on a road trip
With the school holiday upon us for the next few weeks there will be an increase in road trips to spend time with family, friends or just for some quality time together. The age-old question ‘are we there yet’ multiple times an hour can drive anyone insane and children can be an exhausting distraction while driving, especially when they are quite young.
This isn’t just about saving your sanity. Distracted drivers are unsafe drivers; the more time you’re spending solving fights, bargaining with your kids to wait a little longer for lunch or looking in the rear-view mirror, the less time you’re devoting to monitoring traffic. Nearly 25 percent of crashes occur when drivers are dealing with kids in the back seat.
Here are our top 7 tips to keep the kids busy while on the road:
1. Bring along plenty of toys, reading material and cds to keep them busy. Handheld games are a great way to keep kids occupied while you’re driving, but a Frisbee or soccer ball works wonders during wayside stops, plus gives the kids a fun activity to anticipate. Magazines or novels can make the minutes fly by, as can watching DVDs or listening to audio books.
2. Get some instant cameras and let the kids create a road-trip scrap book as you go. Everyone likes to reminisce about past trips, but few parents have time to create photo albums and scrapbooks. So enlist the kids to help.
3. It’s important to set expectations. It’s good to set boundaries, so telling your children ahead of time how you expect them to behave is very important. You might say you’ll be driving from 9-3, stopping for a picnic lunch around noon. The kids will each get to bring two of their favorite toys. Each person can choose music for an hour and can’t complain about someone else’s choice. Everyone must use the restroom during stops, and you’ll take away the toys of any child who misbehaves.
4. Use the power of the bribe and instead of yelling at the kids when they did something wrong, rather set a reward system for good behaviour. No complaining for the next hour rewards you a stop at the ice-cream parlour. Remember though, that kids have short attention spans.
5. If you have to drive for long stretches, it’s critical to schedule in some fun. If you’re motoring through a small town, stop and stretch your legs and let the kids play a little.
6. Kids especially get cranky when they haven’t had food for a while, so it’s important to eat well. If you hit the road early, don’t wait until noon before you stop for a bite. A good idea is to pack healthy snacks for the road.
7. Include the children in the decisions of where to stop and make them aware of the scenery as well. Tell them about the areas that you are driving in, children are very inquisitive little people and this will keep them entertained.