For many parents, the idea of road tripping with children, let alone toddlers, is a scary thought.  The way you traveled pre-kids isn’t going to cut it anymore.  With careful preparation, patience, and realistic expectations, road tripping with toddlers can be an enjoyable experience for everyone.

What’s Your Reason?  First things first, why on Earth do you want to take a road trip with toddlers?  If this road trip is about YOU and things that YOU want to see and do, you need to seriously rethink this whole thing.  Get a babysitter and take the trip alone with your spouse.  A road trip with toddlers needs to be focused on toddlers.  Maybe your destination is a toddler centered destination and you’re road tripping because it’s cheaper than flying.  That’s totally fine.  Just keep the toddlers in mind.

Kids Are Sponges  They soak up anything and everything.  Train them to like the car.  Seriously.  If the longest amount of time they have spent on the road is one hour, there’s no way they’re going to survive the 20 hours of drive time it takes to get to Florida.  Start small.  Train them to tolerate one hour in the car and work your way up to three hours at one time.  You’ll thank me later.

Focus on Their Sleep Schedule  I don’t want to blend this in too much to the next step, but you need to keep them on their schedule as must as possible.  I can’t speak for every situation, but you just need to think about their schedule as much as you can.  If you’re going to drive three hours for a weekend getaway, don’t leave at 9am if your child goes down for a nap at noon.  Use your head!  If you do that, you’ll have a sleep-deprived child when you arrive.  When I do short road trips I try to leave one hour before their nap time.  When I do super long road trips, I leave at 3am to guarantee me that I’ll have sleeping children for the first few hours of my drive.  More on the specifics of my Chicago-Disney World road trip plan will follow in another post.

 

Have a [Flexible] Itinerary  You need to have a basic plan of attack.  This needs to include how far you need to drive each day.  For me, when I make a two day drive to Florida I make my hotel reservations in advance.  That way I won’t push myself to keep going too far.  Study your map!  Even if it’s not a paper map anymore, you need to study your route so that you know in advance where the stops with good amenities are.  Trust me, you don’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with hungry kids and no gas.  We have a tradition of stopping at a Sonic for lunch so I always take some time beforehand to get a general idea of where they’re located on our route.  That being said, you need to plan for the unexpected.  Maybe your kids need to stop more frequently than you originally thought or maybe the opposite is happening and they’re sleeping at a different time than you planned.  Go with the flow!

 

Set Realistic Expectations!  This is crucial.  If you go into this trip thinking that your kids are going to be perfect angels, then you’ll be in for a rude awakening when that doesn’t happen.  You know your kids more than anyone else.  Whatever ‘quirks’ they have at home will be magnified on a road trip.  Expect that.  Prepare for that.

 

On the Road Entertainment  I can’t tell you how often I get asked how I keep my kids entertained on the road.  I actually already gave my secret away.  By planning around sleeping I’m giving myself a few hours of quite time.  I will never forget the hour of drive time on our last trip (3yr, almost 2yr, and 9wk in tow) when ALL THREE OF THEM were sleeping at the same time.  It was glorious!  My other two tips really aren’t that special.  Unlimited movies and food.  We pretty much play movies the entire trip.  I come prepared with the number of drive time plus three hours worth of movies.  We also have a snack bag with individual snacks and a refrigerator with cold drink and snacks available at all time.  We never eat in a restaurant while road tripping.  Other than our one Sonic meal, we never eat at a restaurant.  Each meal in the car takes up about thirty minutes.  That really adds up.

 

Choose and Prep Your Vehicle  In the world of parenting there are mini van people and there are mini van haters.  If you happen to fall into the second group, I highly suggest that you consider getting your hands on a mini van for any road trip involving more than one child.  If you can find a way to borrow one from a friend, you’ll save yourself some money.  If not, it will be well worth spending the money to rent one for your trip.  Now that we have three kids we splurged on a hardtop luggage carrier to free up some space inside our van.  It’s also crucial to have your van prepped ahead of time.  There’s nothing worse than scrambling to get on the road only to realize that you have a quarter tank of gas.  The day before a trip, make sure to get an oil change, check coolant, vacuum, and get a full tank of gas.

Pack Your Patience and Have Realistic Expectations [again]  One last thing to keeping your sanity road tripping with toddlers is to make sure to bring patience.  When traveling with toddlers, you need to anticipate that there will be crying involved.  Kids might need to stop to go to the bathroom more than you’d like.  They might get crabby.  Quite frankly, I go into a road trip prepared for there to be cranky kids for the whole fourteen hours of driving for the day.  That way when there’s only maybe a half hour of actually crankiness, I don’t overreact.  Be patient with your kids and take breaks when they are needed.  There’s nothing worse than arriving at your destination stressed out from yelling at your kids all day.

 

Remember that your children are only little once.  Make magical memories and enjoy your road trip!