10 tips when traveling by car with children

With the rising costs of airfares and the increasing time it takes to get through security at the airports; more and more families are deciding to travel by car for their vacation.

Family road trip to Malaysia…

Most of us with young children are returning to the days we grew up in where we traveled most places by car with our parents.

We started asking other friends for how they make the trip go easier and how they beat the“Are we there yets?”, here’s ten tips to help your car vacation go a lot easier:

1. Decide: do your kids do better in the early morning or evening hours for traveling? Which ever it is, plan your travel to match. For us, our kids don’t travel well in the morning; they do much better if we leave after 2:00pm and travel into the evening.

2. Stock your car with favorite pre-bagged snacks for everyone, even parents, a cooler with lots of water and favorite drinks, colored pencils, crayons, a fewcoloring books, sticker books, travel games, and a travel journal for older kids.

3. Take along Gameboys & games, personal CD/cassette players (even for little kids), and you can get books on tape from the library.

4. Do consider a portable DVD player, this makes 5 or 6 hour a day seem like 2 hours. It also cuts a lot of the unnecessary stops as the kids are involved in the movie playing.

5. To avoid the difficulty of hauling in a suitcase for every person into a hotel for the 1 night stops. Pack a 3 day bag into which each person contributes 3 days worth of clothes. This way you take one suitcase of clothes in every three days.

6. Do pack a lightweight table cloth for outdoor lunch stops along the way.

7. Be sure to take the digital camera. You’ll create lifetime memories.

8. Do get postcards from every major destination along the way.

9. All kids are different but in general don’t drive as far as the adults can go in one day. Try to keep car travel to a 6 to 8 hour range of time.

10. Don’t fill the inside of the car to the brim causing less space for the kids. Instead, consider a car topper for safe keeping of your belongings.

Have a great family vacation!

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Written by

Sandra Ong

traveling with kidsby car