Top 5 Road Trip Tips with Kids!

     If your like many Americans you will find yourself on the road this summer with children. These trips can be wonderful or a disaster. Here are some tips that can help make your road trip a smooth one!

  1.       Plan to Play!    Don’t expect your children to occupy themselves, it is not natural for them to stuck in one place so long without something to do. If you do not pre-plan things for them to do what they come up with might well annoy or distract you on the drive! On our car trip yesterday we had books, coloring books and crayons, childrens music, songs to sing, interest articles to read together and talk about, along with the 3DS’s and Ipad loaded with movies and games for them. We tied the DS’s to the car seats so they could not be dropped and leave a small child upset and demanding we pull over to get it for them and us being left telling them it was not an option and they would have to wait.

2.      Save Money on Gas   If your taking a long trip like most of ours it can be wise to try and save some money by looking up where the most costly and cheapest gas prices are on your trip. For us, we know that N.Y.C. and Connecticut gas priced along our route would be highest leaving up to stop in the N.J. Turn Pike before hand. We know this from many trips up north and from research on Gas Sites. You can look up the national gas prices too!

3.      Know where your staying!    Knowing when you going to stop to rest and sleep is obvious of course, good planning though can make a difference. Be sure to find reviews of the hotels in the area you are going to be staying, don’t just pick the cheapest! For us we wanted an out door pool for the kids, it to be pet friendly, and let us stay all in one room. Given there are 6 of us that means a suite else they will make us get two rooms and DH and I will be split up, thats no way to go on vacation right? I have been using sixsuitcasetravel.com to find hotels for larger families. Very helpful! Lastly, have a back up plan in case you can’t manage to get to the hotel for some reason, know what kind of hotel should be able to accommodate your situation!

4.      Bring food and drinks!     Humans tend to be hungry when board and goodness knows it is not hard to get board on a road trip with kids. Best to have snacks around just in case. Organic juice boxes and fruit and veggies, bring small containers of dip if you can trust your children with them, baggies of cereal are good. Gold fish crackers and sandwiches are easy to bring and fill the tummy.

5.      Have a safety kit!     This is common sense but something many of us forget. For the summer months I like to keep cool packs in ours just in case we get stuck on the side of the road. It is all too easy for heat exhaustion to set in so lots of water and anything to help keep the kids and pets cool is helpful! I want to add the little fan spray bottles to ours as well because one of my readers let me know it is a good idea as well. Snacks of course are a must, road triangles are helpful along with flashlights, medications, and the standard first aid items. I like to also add a few games to the bin for the kids and even candy. I also like to let the children know ahead of time some of the things they can plan for in case of a break down or emergency. Telling them about the waiting games and candy can help them worry less and also keep their attention in case it actually happens they will be ready and hopefully not panic in the situation or worry too much. One last safety tip to add to Safety: Know that traveling on the weekends has a higher chance of accident and that Wednesdays have the lowest chances. Of course night time has a greater chance of accident than day time as well. Make good choices! This blog defdriving.wordpress.com is wonderful you can learn a lot more about safety there.