When traveling with children, a lot of questions immediately arise:
- How do you interact with a child on the road?
- What if there are two or three children?
- Which food is the best for a trip — filling, tasty and safe?
- What do you do when a child feels nauseous?
All these problems can be solved if you think ahead about possible situations on the trip, you should plan your trip with a child or several children. Let’s try to help parents who are going on the road.
Safety — first
As a rule, very little babes are found in child seats, while older children are in special retention devices. But the main and mandatory condition is that the child should always be fastened, and adults throughout the journey are required to monitor compliance with this requirement. It is also necessary to check the functioning of the climate control or air conditioning — drafts or stuffiness, as well as open windows are unacceptable in a car with children. Regarding the age of the child, there is only one recommendation — the older the child, the more often there should be a stop. A half-year-old baby requires only its mother’s hands. The rest of the time the child usually sleeps.
Precautions for car traveling with children:
- All bulky, heavy, glass objects must be fixed; you should not clutter an interior;
- Car doors must always be closed, and the child in the rear seat without adults should be in the driver’s field of vision in a mirror;
- It is forbidden to leave the child in the cabin alone during the stops, even if he is sleeping.
The second is the change of activities
Even for an adult who is not a driver, it’s hard to be in the car all day, both physically and psychologically. The child, who is in one position for hours, quickly becomes tired and begins to feel discomfort. Therefore, frequent stops are necessary — children should move as much as possible. The best place to stop is at the playground or at the forest edge. Ball, skipping rope, badminton rackets may become good helpers for the prevention of hypodynamia when traveling by car.
Sometimes half an hour is more than enough to make the child hungry or tired after physical exertion, and then it becomes possible to continue the journey. Again, eating is also a change in activity. Then you can read a book to your child or offer for him to watch cartoons. It is advisable to take your baby’s favorite toys, and a magnetic screen with a pen for drawing. Most likely your child will fall asleep pretty suddenly. It is better to have a small neck pad to make the baby’s head comfortable, as well as a children’s blanket.
The third is hygiene
Washing hands and observing other hygienic procedures is easier to do at stops, but sometimes you need to keep clean while driving. You should take with you diapers, disposable wet wipes, sponges and cleansers. To keep car seats and covers clean, you can pre-arrange them with diapers. An older child, a junior or teenager, needs a simple reminder about washing his hands.
The fourth is food
Special baby food is required only for very small kids, being on artificial or mixed feeding. While traveling with children, fast food spots are better to avoid at all. Snacks with fruits can be done right during the ride, but all other meals are recommended to be organized exclusively at the stops. Baby food assumes only fresh products, milk porridge, with a minimum of roasted, smoked, and pickled food (it is better to exclude such food at all, same as sweet fizzy drinks and sodas).
Food can be kept in a thermos. It is better to have disposable dishes, drinking straws and non-spill cups. Try to remember that a child should rest for 10-15 minutes after a meal, otherwise there is a risk that he will feel sick in the car. If this happens often, you should purchase special pills for motion sickness in the pharmacy.
An important point is the background music in the car. Ideally, anyone who wants to listen to music should use headphones. But for the driver it is out of the question, therefore, passengers will listen to whatever the driver prefers while driving. This can cause anxiety in young children, bad sleep or a bad mood. Therefore, this moment should be thought through in advance, having agreed before the trip regarding musical preferences and related restrictions.
As a rule, after their first car trip with children parents understand the complexity of family travel, but the advantages of such trips are:
- The independence from the timetable of public transport;
- Absence of discontent of those around whom children usually bother;
- Cheapness of family travel by car in comparison with other modes of transport.
However, there is always a risk of getting into a car accident, a child’s illness, a car crash, etc., and therefore traveling with children is possible only if adults are sure that they will cope with all possible problems.
Thank you for reading, and don’t forget to obtain an international driving license before the trip abroad with your kids. We are fully responsible for our children. Driving your way across the globe confidently will be much appreciated by your family.
