What's a good way to keep kids occupied on long car or plane trips? All advice appreciated!
Calling all parents! How do you keep your kids from getting bored, cranky or otherwise making the miles miserable when you travel?
Get them a new book, game or toy and don't give it to them until you leave on the trip. Also explain the rules of travel (age appropriate) right before you start so they know what is expected of them, Then enforce them. (No, you can't kick the seat in front of you or be loud.)
It all depends upon the child in question. Only children for the most part are self-contained & no problem. They can keep themselves entertained w/books or other cerebral hobbies. Parents of only children have NO PROBLEM keeping their children occupied as their children know how to entertain themselves & DO SO WELL.
It is parents w/multiple children who have problems keeping their children occupied on long car or plane trips. Children w/siblings aren't masters of self-containment. They don't know how to keep themselves occupied w/books nor cerebral activities. They must always be out & about so to speak. These are the children who get bored easily because they aren't comfortable being alone. They must always have others at their side. Parents w/multiple children-bring toys & games to keep your multiple children occupied.
For long car trips I prepare good food and good music and for the little one (16 months) we have 2 sound books that she loves (they are constantly in the car). And I prepare myself The best is if we start the trip really early (4 am), so we put them in a car seat while they sleep
Then we sing, talk, they sleep again, ... I never give them phones or tablets. We make stops so we can stretch our legs. For the plane trip (we went only once altogether) I bought a new sticker book (my older - 4 - loves stickers) and I gave it to her when we sat on the plane. At the airport, all was fine because there were a lot of interesting things. We had a bit of trouble with the little one so mostly she was either eating food we brought or nursing. Well yes, most of the time she was on me
Marcy.....Oh how I adore kids. It's been many many years since my own darlings were little and traveled with Mom. Of course, since my "grandchildren"...all 13 of them, are flawless, perfect Angels who can do no wrong~~ever, I need to go way back & try to remember my solution to keeping my own boys occupied on long car trips.
As I recall Marcy, I used a good strong duct tape and some clothes line. Worked well. Except a few times I forgot to bring the tape and clothes line along, so I used Plan B, which was driving them out to the beautiful countryside with miles and miles of grape vineyards, fresh air & the beauty of nature.....letting them out of the car and encouraging them to go on a healthy 50 mile trek of adventure & experimentation in the great outdoors.
After the first couple of times, it took them only 2 days to get back home.
I was always creative like that.
I remember playing the alphabet game, starting from A looking for the letters on signs. A bit of a challenge is the word on the sigh had to start with the letter.
When my brother and I were little, my parents would have us play "Doodle's Game". Doodle was a nickname for one of my uncles. The rules are easy. Whoever can stay quiet the longest gets a quarter upon arrival to the destination. In the 1960s, a quarter was quite a lot to a little kid. It would work for a while anyway. :-)
When I was a kid we use to pick the colour of a car we liked and as cars drove past us on the road, we counted them.
My sister would pick orange and I would pick blue, whoever had the largest count by the time we got to our destination, received a few dollars from mum to go shopping with
It worked like a treat - good luck
by axxricht 14 years ago
Is it normal for children to get bored on long rode trips?My 8 yr daughter went on a long rode trip with her grandmother (a reitred educator) and she told her "once" that she was bored. Her grandmother is now bringing her back home stating that she has never dealt with any of her...
by Nira Perkins 12 years ago
When going through a divorce and the parents or a parent claims that they're doing what's best for their kids, are they really?I have to say that in some cases it might be true but not for the majority.
by Mary Grace 13 years ago
What's the single most important advice you can give to new parents?
by Janis Leslie Evans 11 years ago
What advice as a parent do you give your children about protecting themselves from strangers?What do you tell your children/teenagers about how to handle a stranger on the street? Should they run, scream, fight back?
by Princess Prisca 12 years ago
What's your take on parents leaving their children in the car?Just heard yet another story about a mother driving to work with her baby strapped in it's car seat. The mother went to work for 8 hours and forgot to drop her baby off at the day care. The law decided that it was a horrible...
by Charlu 12 years ago
What do you do to keep children occupied on a road trip, so your not hearing "Are we there yet?"
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |