Whenever my family travels, we travel with small children. As a father of three girls aged nine and under, I’ve witnessed a technological revolution aimed towards helping children stay entertained during extended travel times. It’s not the same as when I was a kid forced to endure protracted road trips by counting license plates.
Modern automobiles are designed towards entertaining the kiddies. The ultimate entertainment for children is the mobile DVD player. Many current car models come with them pre-installed; the rest of us can purchase them and install them ourselves. Installation is really simple and consists of wrapping the unit around the headrest and plugging it in to the cigarette lighter. I cannot stress how wonderful this in-car entertainment enhancement is. The limits to its potential for keeping children quiet are only limited by the limits to your kids’ DVD collection. Make sure you have enough headphones for your children. If you have more than one child, purchase a system with two screens and put one on each headrest to avoid the perception arguments. Give them shows to watch and they will be quiet. It’s miraculous, I promise.
Another option for the DVD players is purchasing one that comes with video games. Some of the newest ones do, complete with controllers. Some portable DVD players are also compatible with handheld game systems. Handheld gaming systems, like those available from Nintendo and Sony, are a must for in between movie watching times. Make sure each of your older children has one so they don’t argue over whose turn it is to play. Nintendo and Sony systems, with their separate game purchases, can be expensive but there are other hand held gaming options that are much cheaper. There are whole sections in the toy store or Supercenter that are dedicated to these. Some of these are geared towards card games like poker and can keep the difficult adult traveler entertained also.
Younger children not digitally proficient enough to play the handheld games will have to stick to the old standbys that the older generation knew as traveling entertainment. Keep an ample supply of coloring books for the younger kids to utilize when not watching movies. I know my four-year-old loves to express her artistic talent and can stay at this for hours as long as she is supplied with new material and crayons (no markers).
Older kids and teens can be kept happy with a well-stocked iPod. These were known as Walkmans when I was a child and I can remember being kept happy for hours as long as I had my huge box of cassettes. Ample portable media storage is no longer an issue with the iPods’ ability to hold thousands of songs internally. The video iPods can also keep the teens entertained with their own videos watched separately from the younger kids. I do not recommend allowing teen use of cell phones while traveling. It might keep them happy, but the rest of the travelers will be miserable.
The failsafe method in keeping kids quiet while traveling is a concoction available at pharmacies. Pharmacists will prepare a batch of phenegrin which is an anti-nausea/anti-traveling sickness agent. It is also a mild sedative. Phenegrin is probably most helpful with the smallest travelers who are inconsolable by the other previously mentioned techniques. By rubbing small amounts of this gel-like substance on their little wrists, these novice passengers will “sleep like a baby” throughout the trip. This can be especially useful on plane trips as babies are less able to cope with the atmospheric changes and are more prone to traveling sickness.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 11th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I find this article Shut the Kids up While Traveling very disturbing. What is the world coming to when children cannot even be trained to sit quietly when they need to. What children need is firm dicipline. It worked for me and I’m one of the most patient people I know.