One of the most cherished and rewarding experience of a family is, traveling together. Activities like roller costar ride, road trips and adventure makes a trip with the family, worthwhile and memorable. Planning a trip with children seems to be difficult, but by doing some research and a little prior planning, road tripping with children can be made a memorable experience. Here are a few tips on how to go about planning your trip with kids.
1. Involve your children
In order to make the vacation and its preparation fun, you can involve your kids. This will ensure that children feel important and responsible while planning and executing the activities of the trip. You can show the journey route to the children on a map. This will make your children relate to certain en-route destinations and be excited about the trip. You can also let your children know a little about the places you intend to visit beforehand, so that they are prepared and anxious of visiting it.
2. Travel light and easy
Dress your children in clothes that are airy and light. If there is temperature variation, then opt for clothes that can be taken off or worn back conveniently. Keep wet wipes with you as however hard you try to pack snacks which does not mess, chances are that children will spill food or drinks on their clothes.
3. The breakfast
Give them breakfast a few hours before you start for the journey. This would help avoid the feeling of nausea. Avoid food which is greasy or fried. Instead of sweet varieties of snacks, keep plain cereals.
4. Opt for short journeys initially
It is advisable to opt for short journeys. Once your baby gets acquainted with short journeys, you can then opt to go for a long journey with the baby. There are baby feeding stations where they provide free baby food, spoons, bowls, nappies, sterile bottles, wipes and bibs. Changing amenities for babies are found at all service stations. Despite the facilities, don’t forget to carry with you extra cloths and nappies.
5. Stop at intervals and play with your children
Children enjoy when they are allowed to play and run around when you stop for rest. This will also reduce the chances of internal strife and restlessness among the kids during the trip. This will also prove helpful to children who feel queasy as they get a chance to breath fresh air. If your child has a cuddly, don’t forget to bring it along.
6. Snack
You need to be cautious while selecting and packing snacks for the journey, because snacks that have the tendency to melt like chocolate and ice cream will definitely melt and smear your cloths and the car. Also snacks like biscuits, crackers and muffins fall in pieces into several bits. Fruit are also not a good option as they stench and stink when they are kept for long time. The best options can be cheese sticks (but you will have to keep them in a cool bag to ensure that they do not get spongy), dry fruit and cereals bar that do not crumble. For thirst quenching, opt for water as it the apt choice. It is best to stay away from juice cartons which have straws. Your small kid might spill it all over the car.
7. Travel sickness
Your may feel helpless when your child says that he/she is sick, as it is difficult to stop in the middle of the journey with hardly any facility around. Vomiting and queasiness start when our sense organs send contradictory information to the brain. During traveling there is a lot of swift motion, and sound that reaches our ears but our eyes do not see it and this is what causes the nauseating feel.
Ask your child to look out side the car and not look at the things inside. He/she can look at some thing far off or the horizon. Keep handy over-the-counter, anti-nausea tablets. You can also opt for ‘sea bands’. Encourage your child to breath deep and slow, it is a good help. Open the windows of the car so that fresh air can come in. If the condition does not improve, stop along the road and let your child out of the car in order to drink water and stretch legs.
8. Children are restless
Children cannot sit quietly and patiently in an enclosed space like a car for hours. Due to this there is always irritation, complaining and fighting during the journey and the journey becomes an ordeal. To avoid this situation, persuade your children to carry with them games and toys that they can play in the car. This will keep the children busy and engaged and will spare you from all the fight and moaning. It is advisable that the kids pack the bag themselves. This will ensure that the games they carry are fun for them.
It might seem unsocial to plug in personal ear phones and listen to music, but this will at least reduce the fighting and impatience among the children. Along with this, motion sickness and nausea can be reduced by listening to music.
9. Night journey
Doing long drives at night is beneficial if you have kids who are very noisy and troubling. Driving at night might seem to be scary and frightening but there are several benefits too. There will be very less fighting and squabbling. You will have to stop for very few loo breaks. There will be less traffic. You can carry some blankets and pillows for the children and a flask of coffee or tea for the person who is driving.
10. Journey ends
When you arrive, you would seem to have learned from your experience. Utilize your experience to formulate new ideas about dealing with diverse situations which arise when children accompany you on a trip, for example tying a rubbish bag (at the back of the seat), instead of throwing rubbish in the car.
