Having reached that stage in life (Trailer, Islabike, etc) I now need advice on how to keep my little darling (2 year old boy) happy on car journeys.
He used to be great and fall asleep by the end of the drive, but no more, so what can I keep him amused with ?

He doesn’t watch TV, so a DVD is out.

Any suggestions ?

Crayons and paper.

Toys and lots of em! Get a tray thingy for his seat too, so he can do the crayons and paper stuff that Druidh suggests. Food helps too.

Can’t see the need for the paper – plenty of other surfaces available.

Thanks for those, we will look at the tray things with lots of crayons

Try talking to him and singing and story tapes and stuff?

Story tapes are great.

We used to have them when I was wee. I now can’t listen to the McDOnald’s ad with the whistling in it without thinking of Robin Hood.

We find music tapes work reasonably well, though yours may not like music quite so much (and what he likes can get wearing – though R2 often seems to work OK)

Ours are not really used to being in the car as pretty much all journeys are short so are done in pushchairs or walking.

If we do need to go on a longer trip, we set off really early in the morning. Going on holiday last year we set off at 4am – just lifted them out of bed and into the car. They still managed to take it in turns to sleep, so we ended up with their CDs on all the time and we’d only taken two. Night Garden and Charlie & Lola get a little old after the first couple of hours.

we were thinking of nursery rhyme and stuff but not sure we want to be driven mad !

Good point mike – had forgotten that we tend to time our trips, though normally at the opposite end of the day at bedtime. Also try to travel mid-afternoon during the day when he normally naps.

we were thinking of nursery rhyme and stuff but not sure we want to be driven mad

You just need to work on his musical taste. Ours does like those, but not sure if that’s just because it’s what he listens to most, as having played him other stuff (“classic” pop mostly) he does like that too.

We usually travel in the evenings, give him his bottle and dose of night garden and then into the car, unfortunately he is often still awake 3 hours later.

His musical taste is mainly rock (ac/dc, etc) which is not really conducive for sleep, I wonder if that is my fault …….

He doesn’t watch TV

dose of night garden

??

Drugs. My mum used to give us ‘travel sickness medicine’ which was actually drowsy cough syrup.

We just used to look out of the window, sing, talk, you know. Having said that, there were two of us. We couldn’t draw, read, play with toys etc cos we’d be sick.

nothing to see here

just out of interest how come he watches no TV?

Sorry, he will watch about 10 mins of night garden and then go back to playing with his train set or cars,
TV doesn’t seem to keep his interest for very long.

Drugs are a great idea, not sure his mother will approve though

Drugs are a great idea, not sure his mother will approve though

Drug her too 🙂

I know a guy who turns the heat right up whenever he goes on a long car journey with his wife as it always makes her nod off, so he gets to drive in peace.

ipod and a copy of singletrack… maybe.

Probably not a feasible solution but we have a camper van for long journeys – big views out the windows, room for Mrs to go back and play with him for a while with space for books and toy cars. He has a tray on his seat for feeding and playing with matchbox cars and the seat reclines almost flat for kippage. Mainly we break up drives into 3 hour sessions if it;s during his awake time so that he can go for a run around, some fresh air, a bite to eat. We just leave loads of time to get places these days rather than try and cover hundreds of miles in one go.

get a bag of crisps and crumple it in your hand until the crisps inside are utterly mashified into 240,000,000,000 micro crisps.

Open the packet and give it to your son…it’ll keep him quiet for 2 weeks while he eats them.

Ooh that is cruel, but I like the idea ……

And as for a camper van , hmmmm

I’ve got a freind who’s a gp who swore by medised for long distance travelling when his kids were younger;

1) children don’t get bored and stressed

thus

2) adults don’t get stressed (with children and each other)

thus

3) everyone’s ready to enjoy themselves when they get there.

There was a bloke on the radio talking about long journeys with his family;

“Here we are in berkshire and the wife’s still saying a sentence I’m sure she started when we were in Belgium”

Hell is other people.

We either travel at bedtime and they sleep pretty quickly or we have to endure charlie & lola singing and stories and many a game of looking for things difficult to spot like pink lorries, my son likes to hold onto cars but then they get dropped and this is a pain! A running commentary on what buses and lorries are around helps too.

DVDs in cars make my blood boil, can’t a kid live without TV for a moment of it’s life.

Anyway are’nt kids just meant to fight in the back seat, eat Wotsists, drink Pepsi and be sick. Generations grew up on that.

wwaswas – Member

I’ve got a freind who’s a gp who swore by medised for long distance travelling when his kids were younger;

Your friends GP is one of the McCanns???? 😯

We must have been really lucky. We never had any problems with my daughter when travelling. Generally, she’d just nap or do some colouring or we’d chat.

druidh – I said long distance travelling, not abandonment.