3 Survival Tips for All Family Road Trips

No four words in the English language have the power to transform your good mood into one of sheer distress faster than a child screaming “Are we there yet?” for the hundredth time in the space of half an hour.

For twenty-something singletons, a road trip of a few hundred miles can be completed in a day with minimal stress. But when kids enter into the equation, the journey can no longer be planned out as a simple A to B; now it’s more like A to Z! Driving straight through to your destination, stopping only for one or two bathroom breaks is a thing of the past! So, continue reading to discover our top three survival tips to make sure that your next family road trip goes off without a hitch, and you can begin your holiday relaxed and refreshed.

1. Schedule plenty of stops

Taking children on a long road trip is a daunting prospect, but splitting the trip into several smaller journeys can make the task more manageable. Before leaving home, remember to include bathroom breaks, but also keep an eye out for interesting landmarks that would make for great leisure-stops along the way.

Stay flexible and schedule in time to visit the beach, lake, world’s biggest ball of yarn etc. This will help break up the journey and make it less likely that children will get bored and tetchy. It will also mean that the trip will be less of a typical, 'I can’t wait for it to be over' road trip and more of a fun, family road adventure—that both kids and adults won’t mind doing again in the future.

2. Entertainment

Forget to bring the gadgets at your peril! Whether your kids are five or 18, technological entertainment is a necessity for pretty much any kind of road trip. Although you can try to get by without the usual iPads, hand-held gaming devices and mobile phones- nobody wants to be playing I-Spy for six hours straight. Alternatives to technology, are travel board games which are often miniature-sized versions of classic board games. This will help keep kids busy and they're often educational as well.

A portable DVD player is also a good idea if you want to make sure that you get at least two hours of quiet time during the drive. It will also allow the adults to have a well-deserved nap, although the driver will still have to stay awake!

3. Monitor the water intake

Drinking on road trips needs to be perfectly timed. Too much water and your little ones will need to make unscheduled toilet-breaks every five minutes (even if they don’t really need to go) and too little water will result in dehydration. To avoid either of these issues, you need to make sure that regular, small amounts of water are being sipped throughout most of the journey, but larger quantities are being swigged up to 40 minutes before a scheduled bathroom break.

However, you need to remember not to pack the soda or fizzy drinks, unless you want to be stopping every half hour! Caffeinated beverages act as a diuretic, which means that they may cause the need to urinate, and there is also evidence that it can have a dehydrating effect. So stick to water, and you can't go far wrong.