Gearing up for Our First Road Trip with Kids Ages 6, 5, & 2-- Any Ideas/ Advice?

First of all, I love the Xanax comment! LOL!!! It's true, you need a sense of humor!!
We have done road trips with our kids at all ages. When my oldest three were babies/toddlers, we drove through the night..there was really no other way to do a 14 hour trip with kids that young. However, we did stop those when both my hubby and I reported hallucinating while driving! We now have a 14 month old to add to the mix and we are considering it again, but we are much older now, and our bodies don't bounce back like they used to. However, it's pretty stress-free if your kids are good sleepers. Anyway, on to the day driving.............

A TV. We would never have gotten anywhere without one. We rent as many dvd's as we can and also bring all the older ones that they haven't seen for awhile. My 9 yr. old has a Nintendo DS, or a leapfrog if you have one. My kids also love to draw, so lots of paper, pencils, etc. I would suggest a zipper bag for the crayons, markers because the cardboard package they come in or even an artbox can tip over and spill pretty easily. Pack a bag for each kid because they may not be sitting next ot each other the whole time. You may want to pick up some new inexpensive items - you can even wrap them, which is something I'd do when we flew, also. Head to a consignment shop, hit up garage sales, etc. where you can get books, small toys for dirt cheap.

We have a cooler that plugs into the lighter to keep cheese, fruit, etc in. It beats having to open a traditional cooler all the time. If you do go with a standard cooler, I would recommend the frozen ice blocks (they are plastic and you can find them at any Walmart, Target in the cooler aisle). This way, you aren't dealing with melting ice that you can spill or have to dump. Also, when you get to your destination, you can refreeze them for the trip back home. If you bring drinks, I'd forego the juice boxes that are pouches. Once squeeze and it's juice down the crack of the seats. Also, make sure you have plenty of napkins, wet wipes and plastic sacks for garbage.

Now this is going to sound disgusting......but we always make sure we have empty water bottles. Our two oldest are boys and it doesn't matter if we make them ALL use the restroom before we leave a reststop, etc. inevitably, one will have to pee within 50 miles. If we didn't utilize the pee bottles, we'd be stopping at least 5 times as much as we planned. If you are uncomfortable with them taking off their seatbelt to do the deed while driving (understandably), you can make a quick stop at any exit ramp. No need to even get to a gas station. There would be no way for us to have made it to a gas station many times!! Plus, so many times we'd get off the interstate to find a place for the kids to go and we'd end up driving 5 miles into some little town trying to find a place with public restrooms. Very frusterating! For my daughter, we had a blow-up potty we got from www.onestepahead.com (I think). We would set it up between the middle row of seats and she'd pee in that. We tied up the bag and disposed of it at the next stop. A friend of ours took two of the kids back to our home state one time (a 10+hr. trip). He had always thought we were crazy for our "bottle tip" UNTIL he drove with them. He called complaining how many times they needed to stop!! LOL!!

Anytime you do stop, any physical exercise is good. Jumping jacks, races, etc. to get the blood flowing is fun. If you know approximately where you'll stop, check out which hotels have pools - a great way to burn off pent up energy!

As far as the squabbling goes, good luck :) If it's getting out of control, have them sit apart and do different things. Or bring in the whole family on a "I Spy" game. You know, I spy with my little eye....something green. Make sure you bring their pillows/blankets so that they can curl up and nap if they are tired-especially if you'll be doing any of your driving at times they'd normally be sleeping. If you are staying in a hotel, make sure you have one larger bag, possibly, with the whole family's overnight items and change for the next day. It's kind of a pain to have to drag each member's whole suitcase into the hotel room-especailly if it's late at night and you and your hubby are trying to carry in sleeping kiddos, too. It's much easier to bring in maybe one or two bags that have essentials for the nighttime and the next day's clothing (kind of like a carryon for an airplane). You don't need much for one evening/morning when you're in a hotel.

Last of all, relax and go with the flow. It's sometimes hard when the kids are stick-a-fork-in-me-done with traveling. Just a couple quick, attention-getters can get you a few...more....miles, like opening the windows, kicking off your shoes, singing a song loud with clapping (like If You're Happy and You Know It), or dancing in your seat. Sometimes that's all you need isa few minutes of happiness to get you to the next stop. Good luck and have fun!!!

I have done a couple of road trips with my kiddos, although not a 20 hr one! A couple of things I have done in the past is:

Drove through the first night (we left at bedtime so the kids slept), stopped and had breakfast in the morning, switched drivers so the overnight driver could rest, and drove the rest of the way.

We have a drop down dvd player so we rent movies from RedBox along the way (you can return a movie at ANY RedBox).

Bring LOTS of snacks :) However, try to keep liquids at a minimum otherwise you will have a potty stop every hour.

Check out where you think you will be stopping along the way. For example, I knew we would be around a petting zoo around dinner time so we stopped near there for dinner and then took the kids over for an hour. Also, prearrange where you are going to spend the night - nothing worse then trying to find a hotel room in the middle of the night with crabby kids.

Pack your 5 and 6 yr old their own backpack with games, snacks, color books, etc. Buy a few new things before you leave and don't show them what they are so they have different stuff to look at through out the trip.

Good luck!

I highly recommend finding roadtrip games. One that we played when we were little and going on roadtrips (we took a TON of them as kids, and all 3 of us STILL love to do roadtrips!) was Car Bingo. They were cards with common road-side things (stop sign, motorcycle, etc.) and when you saw one of them, you got to mark it on your card!

We just took a roadtrip with our almost3-year-old and our 7 month-old. A magnadoodle worked really well for the older one.

I highly suggest NOT bringing entertainment stuff (DVDs, videogames) because that will create a dependence on those things, rather than finding joy in being in the car itself.

If you're interested in stopping along the way, AAA has books you can get for each state that have restaurants (and often coupons!) as well as touristy things to see.

For our last roadtrip, we had to stop about every 2-4 hours to feed our youngest. The trick is to make sure everyone goes potty (or at least tries!) anytime you stop, to prevent those repeated "Mommy, I've gotta go!"s

I second what Christina S. said about having novel treats and "new" toys, and brought out when the boredom starts to set in.

If your older girls like to read (and don't get car sick) we would stock up on books and see how many books we could read on a longer trip!

And lastly, make sure you don't have a quiet car. Find new (or favorite) music to play. My mom would go to the library before roadtrips and find new tapes to listen to. If you can find either funny kid's music, or music you can all agree on, it can be a good distraction as well :)

Best of luck on your roadtrip, and I hope it goes well and is more fun than you're expecting :)

1. video player
2. special treats - food that they don't normally get. Bring a cooler with food and drink
3. go shopping for crafts, etc, that they can do in the car. ie a sewing project that can occupy them for a while.
4. make sure your hotel/motel has a pool so the kids can blow off steam

Our family would go on a 2 week summer vacation every year and that's how we did it.

Make each child a travel box. I did this last summer when we went from Oregon to New Mexico. We had a small RV, so it wasn't too bad.

The travel kits were a hit. My kids were 4 and 2. I put in colored pencils, a writing pencil for my oldest, a roll of tape, paper or stationary (depending on age), tape measure, magnifying glass, stencils, my son had a figure 8 track drawn on the top and I put in a couple of small cars (2yr old). Small activity books for coloring or dot to dot, etc. I jput in some index cards and wrote my dd's friends names and words like camping, and relatives we were visiting (words related to our trip), we used these like flash cards. I punched them and put some string through to hold them together. During the trip we added some words of her choice.

The kids even wanted to play with their kits when they got home. I put them away until our next road trip this summer. I will update the items for my dd -5yr and ds- 3 yr.

Think about what your kids are interested in and include some items that are related. Also, for night time, take a small game or cards that all kids can be involved with. A matching game is always a good choice. A couple of books or young magazines to read in their seats or at bedtime.

Have a great time. It was fun for us and we had a couple of long days. We broke up the driving by having picnics and finding parks for the kids to climb and run. Try to see some of the sites. The National Parks have Junior Ranger programs and my kids, esp. dd, loved this. Not all of the Ntl. Prks will let the littlest one participate, but some do.

I didn't have time to read your other responses but I will give this little tid-bit. Get some cheap "new" toys, coloring books, ect and some "new/different snacks" but the key is timing. Keep your bag of new stuff up front with you and hand out the "new" and exiting treats when bordom really hits but only a little so that you save some for the next time bordom hits. As far as the squabbling- that is a tough one- I'd have to say good old fashsion bribes and threats :)

Honestly, we're night drivers. We'll be making our 4th trek from PA to FL in August with our 3 girls ages 9 and 5 yr old twins. Total drive time is 18 hrs +/-. We leave around 7 p.m. and then drive straight through to FL with only minimal 'potty breaks', with hubby & I switching off the driving responsibility in between rest areas. Once we hit the FL border, then we stop and eat a decent breakfast, then to continue on the rest of our journey.

Last year was our first year with our van which came equipped with a tv. I think that was the best decision we'd made. Perhaps getting a portable DVD player if your vehicle isn't equipped?

Have a great & safe trip!

Last year we had to make a trip from Oregon to southern Utah and back and do it in only 3 days. That's a lot of car time. We did start very, very early in the morning so the kids would sleep for several hours. I also picked up cheap backpacks and filled them with small new toys, mini chalk boards, all inclusive game type things, and coloring books... mostly dollar store type stuff. (Oh, and DON'T give crayons for car trips... they can melt in the summer heat in the car... I use colored pencils.) When they were good for an extended time, they got to reach in to their backpack and pull out something to do.

I also looked online and found coloring pages to print out in each of the kids' favorite characters and found mazes, games, and puzzles to print out. I put that in those in the cheap cardboard-type 3 "ring" binders in each of the kids' favorite colors so they could easily tell them apart. Make sure to put in some blank paper so they can draw too.

We did bring the laptop so they could watch movies, but it wasn't on the entire time. I think they watched only 2 movies the whole time.

We also put in treats that they don't get very often and I baked up brownies and cookies to pass out. (Oh and bring a couple of gallon sized ziplock type bags for garbage. One for each kid might be nice - lol)

We would make an annoucement when we saw a rest area sign, and after everyone tried to go, I'd have them get out some wiggles by running to the far tree and giving it a quick hug and running back, or running to the statue, spin around 3 times and running back to me. Ways to make them get the blood pumping.

With kids, there's no "straight shot". Plan for frequent stops, it really will help with the sanity. Use the rest areas to your advantage. Your 20 hour drive will probably take 22 or 23, at least. But it will be worth it if you don't have to put up with a lot of whining.

Good luck and have fun! There are some great memories to be made on your trip.

~S.

Here are some tips to keep them busy in the car.
http://www.bigbluetrunk.com/ourcorner/689
Here are some things for kids to do in Denver in case it comes in handy.
http://www.bigbluetrunk.com/ourcorner/703