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Flying with kids is one thing, but going on a road trip with kids requires a slightly different set of tools. Whereas for a flight you need to time your boarding, pack smart snacks to help with ear pressure, and gauge how much crap you can shove under the stroller, a road trip requires different toys and other considerations. Here are some of the things I’ve learned to bring along on a road trip, both for ease of travel and for a peaceful, multi-hour stretch on the road… I’d love to hear yours.
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While the American Academy of Pediatrics say children should be limited to two hours of screentime a day (although apparently it’s more complicated than it used to be!), I’m quite sure they don’t mean on travel days. (If you stick to those guidelines on travel days, my hat’s off to you!) Occasionally different family members want to listen to different things, so headphones are just as important on a road trip as they are in a plane trip. You can get splitters for using two headphones with one device, on the unlikely possibility that everyone in the backseat wants to watch the same thing, but there you go.
Papers, Crayons, and Markers
We bought a lap desk for my older son when we took our first road trip, and I’m pleased to report that he’s used it every time — it breaks the monotony of the road and videos and gives him something to do. Note that this is not the time for crafts involving glitter, glue, paint, or even water — you just want the kids to be able to entertain themselves.
A Sheathed Knife
I can’t tell you how many times we’ve happily arrived at a destination 2–6 hours from our house, and ordered pizza or something else, only to realize that we desperately need a knife. Buying a sheathed knife to keep in your road travel supplies (like this one) is a great idea, and because you’re road tripping — no TSA involved! — you can do it. Just don’t forget to wash the knife ASAP when you get home.
Car Shades
Particularly with babies, these stick-on window shades are a great help — though in a pinch, a hat will also work to keep the sun out of your baby’s eyes.
Time it Right (aka, Pray for Sleep)
To be totally honest, we didn’t take a lot of long road trips when the kids were very, very small — they were always at an age where they could appreciate their iPad games or favorite movies or whatnot. But even now, when one of my children still has an early-ish bedtime of 7:30–8:30, we plan trips knowing that if we have to drive until midnight or 1:00 a.m., it isn’t quite so bad and it gives us 3–4 hours of a quiet backseat while the kids sleep.
Presents
Ah, yes. Presents. Buy the gifts, wrap them up, and surprise the kids with something new and never before seen. This is the advice I always see, and it’s solid — the dollar bin at Target is great for this, as are small coloring books, stationary games and more (think Water Wow, magnetic blocks, and even some of these retro arcade game minis for the older kids). Obviously bouncy balls and slime are less than ideal, but a good squeezable toy, a pack of Pokémon cards, or (if you’ve got a kid who’s really young and still teething), something chewable and safe enough for the backseat are all greatest hits.
Readers, are you fans of road trips with your kids? What are your best tips for surviving a road trip with kids? How do you entertain your kids on road trips?Stock photo via Deposit Photos / golyak.
How timely. I’m having mild panic attacks at work that our 15 hour 2-day drive (a 6 hour drive one day and 9 the next) this weekend is going to be an unmitigated disaster with my two year old. I’m sure it will go better than I have anticipated (only because the baseline is set so low) but the longest trip we’ve ever taken with her around this age is 4 hours one day and 4 1/2 hours the next.
shortperson
Aug 22, 2019 12:55 pm
podcasts. we like circle round.
Anon
Aug 22, 2019 2:38 pm
I’m so envious of people whose kids sleep in cars or at least remain relatively content in cars. My 18 month old is a fantastic sleeper at home but absolutely will not sleep in the car and hates being confined to her car seat. We can sometimes get a short snooze on an airplane (I think the engine noise puts her to sleep) but nothing resembling a full night of sleep even on a redeye flight. But even with her awake, flying is so much easier, because she isn’t confined and can run around the airport and airplane. Forcing her to sit in her carseat for more than about an hour at a time is a recipe for a meltdown. We took her on a 4 hour drive once and she literally screamed the entire time, so yeah, not doing that again any time soon. We live over an hour from the airport and that’s the extent of the driving we’ll do with her for the forseeable future.
anon
Aug 22, 2019 2:38 pm
I just spit out my coffee when I got to the suggestion for a sheathed knife as a need for a roadtrip with kids. Lol.
Anonymous
Aug 22, 2019 3:03 pm
We just let kiddo watch movies. We don’t do super long car trips enough for it to seem detrimental to her brain development. At our last ped appointment, ped asked about screen time. We said it was less than two hours unless we were traveling. And she goes “Oh yeah, that doesn’t count!” We all laughed.
mascot
Aug 22, 2019 3:10 pm
When my guy was little, we’d try to make meal stops at places where there was a playground/play place. It added a little bit of time to the trip, but 30 minutes of letting the kid run and get his zoomies out helped everyone. If you are super organized, you can pack a picnic and find a park along the way or at least have a snack at a rest stop with green space.
SC
Aug 22, 2019 3:33 pm
We took 3 road trips this spring/summer–10 hours, 8 hours, 4.5 hours of driving time–with our 4 year old. The April road trips was basically unplanned and took place from 2 pm to 2 am after our flight was canceled.
We’re lucky because our kid generally does OK in the car–he likes looking out the window for a while, he likes listening to music and audiobooks with us, and he falls asleep in the car. When people ask me how Kiddo is on road trips, I laugh and joke that Kiddo is better than husband–which is funny because it’s true :-)
We stop every 2 hours, minimum. During the day, we take advantage of rest areas, especially the ones at state lines, which tend to have interesting things to see and space to run around. We have one meal at a fast food restaurant with a play place so Kiddo can run, and we have one sit-down meal at a real (usually independent, local) restaurant for the parents’ sake.
We bring a large bag of activities for Kiddo–we’ve had markers and paper, magnets on baking trays, water wow, scratch art, squigz, pipe cleaners, lacing toys, etc. We have story podcasts (Circle Round is my favorite) and audiobooks for all of us to listen to. We also listen to a lot of music–in April, we found the end of a 90s top-500 countdown, and it was the BEST! Of course, Kiddo also watches the iPad, especially on the return trip, but we don’t start with it (a) he won’t wear headphones, and neither he nor I does well with competing sounds, and (b) once he’s bored with the iPad, it’s hard to find something else he wants to do.
Anonymous
Aug 22, 2019 5:10 pm
We drive the same trip all the time because my in-laws are eight hours away. We always leave a little bit after bedtime (both so everyone is real tired but also to always takes longer to get on the road than planned) and then drive 4-5 hours. The kids will wake up at 6am no matter what so we don’t want to drive too long.
In the morning, we do something fun for the kids like a playground, library, or hotel pool. Then after lunch, we drive the rest of it. Usually, they sleep most of the rest of the way. Then, it’s screens and apologies and fast food with playplaces for the last bit.
Once we arrive, we do outside time or serious indoor playtime for a long time before getting in there car again (if needed). We definitely don’t eat out for dinner that night :)
How timely. I’m having mild panic attacks at work that our 15 hour 2-day drive (a 6 hour drive one day and 9 the next) this weekend is going to be an unmitigated disaster with my two year old. I’m sure it will go better than I have anticipated (only because the baseline is set so low) but the longest trip we’ve ever taken with her around this age is 4 hours one day and 4 1/2 hours the next.
podcasts. we like circle round.
I’m so envious of people whose kids sleep in cars or at least remain relatively content in cars. My 18 month old is a fantastic sleeper at home but absolutely will not sleep in the car and hates being confined to her car seat. We can sometimes get a short snooze on an airplane (I think the engine noise puts her to sleep) but nothing resembling a full night of sleep even on a redeye flight. But even with her awake, flying is so much easier, because she isn’t confined and can run around the airport and airplane. Forcing her to sit in her carseat for more than about an hour at a time is a recipe for a meltdown. We took her on a 4 hour drive once and she literally screamed the entire time, so yeah, not doing that again any time soon. We live over an hour from the airport and that’s the extent of the driving we’ll do with her for the forseeable future.
I just spit out my coffee when I got to the suggestion for a sheathed knife as a need for a roadtrip with kids. Lol.
We just let kiddo watch movies. We don’t do super long car trips enough for it to seem detrimental to her brain development. At our last ped appointment, ped asked about screen time. We said it was less than two hours unless we were traveling. And she goes “Oh yeah, that doesn’t count!” We all laughed.
When my guy was little, we’d try to make meal stops at places where there was a playground/play place. It added a little bit of time to the trip, but 30 minutes of letting the kid run and get his zoomies out helped everyone. If you are super organized, you can pack a picnic and find a park along the way or at least have a snack at a rest stop with green space.
We took 3 road trips this spring/summer–10 hours, 8 hours, 4.5 hours of driving time–with our 4 year old. The April road trips was basically unplanned and took place from 2 pm to 2 am after our flight was canceled.
We’re lucky because our kid generally does OK in the car–he likes looking out the window for a while, he likes listening to music and audiobooks with us, and he falls asleep in the car. When people ask me how Kiddo is on road trips, I laugh and joke that Kiddo is better than husband–which is funny because it’s true :-)
We stop every 2 hours, minimum. During the day, we take advantage of rest areas, especially the ones at state lines, which tend to have interesting things to see and space to run around. We have one meal at a fast food restaurant with a play place so Kiddo can run, and we have one sit-down meal at a real (usually independent, local) restaurant for the parents’ sake.
We bring a large bag of activities for Kiddo–we’ve had markers and paper, magnets on baking trays, water wow, scratch art, squigz, pipe cleaners, lacing toys, etc. We have story podcasts (Circle Round is my favorite) and audiobooks for all of us to listen to. We also listen to a lot of music–in April, we found the end of a 90s top-500 countdown, and it was the BEST! Of course, Kiddo also watches the iPad, especially on the return trip, but we don’t start with it (a) he won’t wear headphones, and neither he nor I does well with competing sounds, and (b) once he’s bored with the iPad, it’s hard to find something else he wants to do.
We drive the same trip all the time because my in-laws are eight hours away. We always leave a little bit after bedtime (both so everyone is real tired but also to always takes longer to get on the road than planned) and then drive 4-5 hours. The kids will wake up at 6am no matter what so we don’t want to drive too long.
In the morning, we do something fun for the kids like a playground, library, or hotel pool. Then after lunch, we drive the rest of it. Usually, they sleep most of the rest of the way. Then, it’s screens and apologies and fast food with playplaces for the last bit.
Once we arrive, we do outside time or serious indoor playtime for a long time before getting in there car again (if needed). We definitely don’t eat out for dinner that night :)