For kids travelling by car

Bracelets, pills, gypsy tears, anything work?

I’ve heard that the tears of Chuck Norris could cure anything; unfortunately, Chuck Norris has never cried.

🙂

I think there’s something to be said for the suggestion that feeling movement but not seeing it is often the cause. Get them playing some games that involve looking out of the windows so they can see the horizon might help. My dog used to travel better when he could see out. Now he’s just grown out of it.

Apparently ginger is good. (the root not the colour or hair).
Brandy?

Yeah some of the pills seem to help, if only placebo. Sitting in the front helps too, depends how old they are though.

Otherwise just let them be sick the once and then they are fine afterward ime.

Yeah some of the pills seem to help, if only placebo. Sitting in the front helps too, depends how old they are though.

Otherwise just let them be sick the once and then they are fine afterward ime.

Only don’t get lulled into a false sense of security following the initial boilk, then let them have beans on toast for breakfast, thinking you’re now safe, before driving around rural North Wales immediately afterwards.

*Opens car window. Again*

i still get it, and im 25! it does help to sit in the front as i think it is as Onzadog said, the difference in what you see compared to what you feel. the only real solution i have found is for me to drive as i’m in control of when i steer, how heavy i brake etc.. but i guess this isnt very helpful for your kids!

I’m in my 30s and have yet to find a cast-iron cure. I’ve even puked when I was in control of the vehicle (landing light aircraft is a bad time to vomit incidentally)

Sturgeron and Dramamine definitely help me. Way more than just placebo as I am often sure I am going to puke but don’t.

My mum used to drug us with benylin cough syrup – made us sleep.

Oh and being sick once doesn’t mean you won’t be again.. trust me…!

My eldest daughter has struggled for years, is often sick, often several times in a journey. She gets little or no warning,certainly no time for me to stop, its not that she feels ill, she just pukes, she has got very practised with tupperware and lid! The acupuncture bracelets are the only things that have helped, not a total cure, but she only puked once in a 2 week roadtrip to the alps last year, and she says she had got the bracelet in the wrong place.

Ours were ill when they were younger, seem to have grown out of it now.

We used to have a bowl to hand on longer journeys, so at least it didn’t go everywhere.

Acupressure bracelets worked really well for our 3 yr old on the Santander – Plymouth 24 hr crossing.

my daughter gets travel sickness. She uses sea-bands. They’re kind of elastic bracelet things with some sort of pulse device which you put against the main artery near your hands. They defo work for her.

I find the thing that makes me travel sick is the nasty metallic flavour in my mouth before i am; and monster much pickled onion flavour crisps worka treat

Weirdly, wearing earphones (not headphones) worked for one of our kids. Not necessarily listening to music, (although she did), but just wearing them in the car. After a while, she stopped wearing them and is fine now.

I really feel for her, I have been proper grown-up for many years and still suffer – it’s my Kryptonite, I can’t event watch the Onedin Line and have to look away when they put cameras on the front of the F1 cars.

What works:

Dramamine or Promethazine Theoclate, in double the recommended dosage. This has the added advantage of making you drowsy. Boots own brand tablets or Avomine are effective.

Combine this with a good view out the front of the car, and a cool blast of air to the face.

I would also politely suggest that you assess your driving style and keep it smooth. Hilly corners are the worst, travel sickness is also caused by acceleration/decceleration so if you are the kind of person that brakes into corners and speeds up out of them you are contributing to the problem.

Also, driving close to the car in front and stamping on the brakes guaranteed to make me puke.

Those wrist things are just the placebo effect. I SO wanted those to work. No good.

But the BEST thing for it is sleeping pills, again twice or more the suggested dose I have got through some very dodgy flights heavily medicated, though that possibly isn’t an option for a child !!

Stay at home?

Both our girls suffer, trips to the Alps were a nightmare, especially on the winding roads, two years ago we were told about ginger tablets, [got them from Holland and Baretts], one the night before and one every day of travel, seemed to work for them on the last two trips, forgot to give them on last years snowboard trip and both were sick on the transfer coach

Tracey

I have tried wrist bands – not sure if they work or not, joy rider tablets – seem to help bit don’t mean they will never be sick. My daughter is 5 now and has improved in the last 18 months. She is also fully trained at puking into a bag which she then hands to us in the front ! Lovely. (although does at least mean you don’t have to stop immediately)
Wouldn’t recommend giving them a motorway services giant choc muffin after being sick however convincing the argument ‘I feel much better now I’ve been sick’..you can guess the rest.

I always found listening to music on headphones to be very helpful.Made me feel a bit more balanced, less prone to the dizzy/spinning feeling that usually preceded a bout.

I would have a word with your doctor.

People who dont get travel sick just dont understand how truely awful it can be. You feel so ill at times you would rather be shot than continue on the journey, its really that bad for some of us. Car travel ruined most events as a child as going on holiday, day trips, visits to relatives were all utter hell and I stopped wanting to go. Being sick is bad enough, but the lead up to it actually happening is by far the worse. Its just plain cruel to ignore children and just say ‘you will grow out of it’.

On the brighter side, try different forms of transport. I have always loved going on boats as I was never ill on them no matter how rough the sea and it was huge fun to finally find transport I could use without misery and without feeling I was the person ruining everyones day (believe me, you are aware of it from the annoyed adult comments from people lucky enough not to feel so so ill. Trains were ok. Buses awful.

I am mostly fine now even over huge distances, but still get a day once or twice a year with no clear reason, when anything over a couple of miles gives me a problem.

Help your kids, its not just about not being sick, its about being able to join in, not being disapproved of, not being ‘the one who is always spoiling things’ or messing up the car ‘inconveniently’ and its about having parents who seem to care instead of being smugly/cruelly dismissive of how utterly ill you can feel.

Ginger has worked well for people I know, including fellow divers who’d get horribly sick on boats. You can get it in concentrated capsules from health food shops if you don’t like the taste.

I used to get it all the time as a kid, I’d be horrifically ill even from a trip to the supermarket. On long journeys I found that sleeping was the answer and while sitting up looking out the windows made me feel ill, lying down in a totally dangerous way across the back seat (while being strapped in by 3 lap belts) made the feeling go away and I went to sleep fairly fast! The only time I get it now is when I’m in our ski boat, digging around under the front end in big seas – 6ft swell with your head enclosed in a fibreglass case really turns your stomach. Nothing cures this once it starts, other than diving out of the boat and being in the sea strangely. If I go back to land I’ll be ill for the rest of the day, so I tend to keep any such periods of sick-inducing activity to a minimum. Fortunately my parents never moaned, but even so I found most times I could catch it in my mouth and swallow it back down instead of spraying the car.