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BY NOW YOU may have already been on or are preparing to go on a nice long road trip in the car with your smallies for a summer day out or some full-on Griswold Family Vacation style fun.
As juggly as the summer months can be for working parents, when you finally get some time off to head out and about, enjoy some fine weather and do something nice with your kids while they are still young, it feels priceless.
As lovely as it is though, the journey to get there can be a bit like your penance. At times, it can make you question your own sanity and why you thought cooping up your young children in a small space for a long time was really such a good idea?
My children are at an age where car journeys are much easier now. I’m not getting full of myself about that just yet, because we’re not properly out of the woods. Things can, and do still, go off a cliff at the drop of a hat. Be it one brother touching the other, one putting a foot on the other’s side of the car, or one of them doing something as innocent as looking at the other, things can get tetchy fast.
My advice is don’t be afraid to go hard on packing the back seat with amusements. Be it movies on the tablet, their Nintendo Switches, audiobook players, colouring books and markers, comic books, physical books, travel board games, or even the messy stuff like slime and kinetic sand.
If it buys you a quiet stretch of even 20 minutes on your journey, then do it. The other non-negotiable is to pack snacks to the max. Most of the kid car-related problems stem from hunger, so load up the back seats with food like there’s a zombie apocalypse coming, rescind any bans on treats and may the odds be ever in your favour.
For the newbies at this, let me reassure you, it will all be worth it when you get to where you are going; be it a day at the zoo or staying in a hotel. Even if the cynic in you knows that your young child will most likely be unimpressed by the endangered tigers and majestic giraffes walking right in front of their eyes, but wildly enthusiastic by the low-quality, high-cost ice cream and souvenirs on sale, plus the mediocre playground on site.
Similarly, you can expect them to stick to the old reliables, like plain pasta and nuggets, at the overpriced restaurant at your all-inclusive stay.
You’ve got to admire their swagger.
To lighten the mood and keep you sane, here’s a handy road-trip-with-kids’ bingo card list to keep you amused on your travels, because a sense of humour is key to survival. The higher the score, the bigger your favourite beverage or slice of cake should be on your arrival.
From packing up to running around the house looking for charger cables or someone’s sandals, the last-minute rush to get everything and everyone in the car before the off will likely lead to some tetchiness from the adults in the room.
Scowls conveying what the other person did or didn’t do to contribute to the trip planning will go back and forth like an invisible tennis match.
Once the parents actually get into the car for the off, they are likely to stare at the road for the first ten minutes or so, just to cool off. Award yourself an extra point if one of the kids says they forgot something crucial just as you hit the motorway.
You won’t have left the vicinity of your own street before one of the kids will say the immortal line “are we there yet?”
The first time they say it, it’s all a bit cute and funny. Everyone will laugh, and the parents will think, great, that question is out of the way.
Sadly, it’s not, though, and the humour decreases every tenth time it’s uttered. Give yourself a bonus point if they ask you what exact time you will arrive at your destination and whether that has changed, when you hit traffic or make a stop.
When you become a parent, gone are the days when you could blast through the kilometres on a road trip without considering another person’s bladder.
With small kids, all bets are off, and petrol station toilets will become your best friend.
The really eye-twitching part happens when one child insists they don’t need to pee while at the toilet stop, but ten minutes down the road they decide they really do need to go.
Get an extra point if you’ve got to help them do a side-of-the-road wee-wee. Double points if you have to make an in-the-car, side-of-the-motorway nappy change and triple points if you’ve got a toddler on board and you have to whisk out the potty in a car park, so they can do the business in full view of the road.
Keep them snacks rolling because if there’s one thing that makes young children go off a cliff, it’s feeling hungry. While most of the time as a parent you try to offer your children healthy snacks, like fruits, yoghurts or popcorn and keep the chocolates, crisps and sweets for treats, on a road trip those rules don’t apply.
Yes, hopping them up on sugar might be adding fuel to the fire, but sometimes you’ve got to walk on the wild side and roll the dice.
Try and ignore the absolute mess your backseat will become. Extra points if it looks like raccoons have gotten in when you arrive at your destination.
If the kids’ classic line is “are we there yet?”, the parental equivalent is “if you don’t stop that right now, we are turning the car around and going home.”
You will probably utter this around midway through your journey, when you’ve played a million games of eye spy, played all their favourite songs and ruined your Spotify algorithm in the process, sang all the nursery rhymes in the world, stopped twice for the bathroom and the kids have begun the irresistible pull to annoy the hell out of each other.
You know saying you’re going to turn around and go home is an empty threat. They know it’s an empty threat, but you’ll say it anyway. Bonus points if it elicits a few moments of stunned silence before they cop you’re bluffing.
There will come a point in the journey when the empty threats have been used up, the kids are fed and watered, they have empty bladders, and out of sheer boredom they start fighting.
The only thing left to do as a parent is to turn up the volume of your favourite power ballad (my go-to is Thunderstruck) or a 90s dance track (a bit of Prodigy, perhaps?) to drown out the chaos and bickering in the background. Extra points if the kids join in the bop.
Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance journalist and parenting columnist for TheJournal.ie.
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