Car Travel Tips

Posted bycatielou0Posted inUncategorizedTags:, ,

We travel a lot by car. Since we live in North Carolina, we are within easy driving distance of both the mountains and beach. Therefore, we choose to drive a lot more often than any other modes of transportation. With that driving experience has come a lot of knowledge about how to plan (there’s that word again… plan).

When you’re traveling with small children, there are several factors to keep in mind: Does your child get car sick? Do they have to go to the bathroom often? Are they bothered by bright lights? Do they require a lot of snacks and activities? Our kids check ALL of these boxes. So you better believe we’ve got a military approved system in order to prepare for all the things!

  1. Car Sickness – this is a doozy. Nothing says vacation like a child projectile vomiting in the back of the car.. and two parents wondering “WHAT ALL DID WE FEED HIM AND WHY ISNT IT STOPPING?”. It’s the worst. The absolute worst. So here are our tried and true methods if you’ve got a child (on the spectrum or not) that struggles with car sickness:
    • Always travel with an emergency kit (preferably a small tupperware container). In it, you’ll need baby wipes, a change of clothes, trash bags, a wash cloth, cleaner, and a couple bottles of water. You might think the water is there for drinking. It’s not. It’s gonna be your lifeline in case you need to hose off any dirty clothes or car seats. We’ve been known to let Merritt travel in old clothes. That way, if anything bad goes down, we can toss them in the trash and move along. If we’re going somewhere we’re able to wash clothes, we’ll toss everything in a bag and then seal it up in the container.. and pray to god it keeps the smell in until we get to our destination.
    • Always have bags or a bucket on hand. My mom saves her old milk jugs and cuts off the top for us. We drape a grocery bag in the top and keep one in our cars at all times.
    • Take lots of breaks. We know pretty quickly if it’s going to be one of those trips. We start hearing a series of “I’m not feeling well” or my personal favorite- “its stuck”. If its a 2 hour trip, we can typically just push through. If its a 3-6 hour trip, we plan for several mid-trip stops at a park or rest stop so the kids can run for awhile. If it’s a longer trip (7 or more hours), we typically break the trip up with a hotel stay in the middle. We didn’t always do this.. and it does require a lot of packing and unpacking.. but it just works for us.
    • Before our latest Disney Trip, we read up a little more about car sickness. And one of the suggestions was to purchase an ipad holder that goes on the headrest. It encourages looking straight ahead.. instead of down into their lap. We bought one of these for both kids and it was a big success.
    • We also read info on not having “smelly” foods in the car. For a child on the spectrum, anything that interrupts/confuses the senses can lead to nausea. So we worked really hard to do this also.
    • Window Shades: we keep one available for both kids windows incase either are experiencing light sensitivity. Our son didn’t chose to use his this trip.. he felt that it blocked his view of everything outside of the window.. but our daughter prefers to use hers consistently.
    • Only offer bland snacks (crackers, pretzels, banana, apple sauce pouches, and minimal fluids)

2. Activities– some of the items that we keep on hand are short books (too long and the carsickness comes back into play), Water WOW coloring books, magnidoodle pads, and a few coveted toys. Nothing messy. We put allllll of these items into a container (which sits in the middle of their bucket seats) and they are able to access it the entire trip.

3. Travel Potty– This doesn’t really apply to Merritt, but having one on hand for our daughter is a LIFE SAVER. She is newly potty trained and has to go OFTEN. So being able to make quick stops (and not having to go in a nasty gas station bathroom) is ideal.

4. Snacks– I have two snack containers for the kids that hold 4-5 different snacks. I load them up with their favorites before we leave and just let them graze as needed. For drinks, we just stick with water or we purchase the “Good2Grow” Juice containers. They do not leak AT ALL and are a fun car treat!

5. iPads- We try not to go overboard on this.. but PRE-DOWNLOADING a couple favorite shows or movies before your trip is really beneficial. On our latest trip, we hit an AWFUL standstill traffic jam and those movies came in clutch!

It sounds like a lot of work.. and a lot of planning. And that’s because IT IS! I spend an entire week organizing items for our trips. Part of it is just my personality.. but it’s so much easier in the long run. In the end, you may not need 1/4 of what you packed.. but if you’ve been burned before, packing those extra items are worth it!

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