Tips and Tricks For Driving With A Toddler

Aug 8, 2018

4 min read

This is Part Two in a series of How To Take A Road Trip With A Toddler, Part one is here.

When I wrote How To Take a Road Trip With a Toddler I was unprepared for the nerve it would strike with people. Apparently road trip struggles are real for EVERYONE, and the response I got to the post was overwhelming. I was given a plethora of tips, tricks, advice and anecdotes that I had to put all together for you in another post, aptly named Tips and Tricks For Driving With A Toddler.

The Pain Of Driving With Toddlers

If there is one thing I have learned after publishing our experience with Clara, it’s that toddlers are a force to be reckonned with. It seems every parent has a story of long car rides with their kid(s) that have gone horribly wrong. One mom exclaimed that doing a road trip with her three year old and six month old was the “worst trip of her life,” and that she would never do it again.

As all of these stories started filling up my comment sections and inbox, I started to feel an overwhelming sense of community. After all misery loves company. I started to feel like, having completed this first road trip, we had now gone down a right of passage as a parent and had been welcomed into the fraternity of parent’s that have HAD IT UP TO HEAR WITH YOUR CRAP! And parents that will TURN THIS CAR AROUND IF YOU DON’T BE QUIET!

That was until one dad regaled me with a story of how he had just driven 15 hours by himself with SIX KIDS!

SIX!

The man is a hero.

The following is bits of advice, and tips and tricks for driving with a toddler that have been passed on to me by various people. If you have any I haven’t mentioned here, please leave a comment and I’ll include it!

Before I was a Dad I stood in the middle of highways and took pictures.

Tips and Tricks For Driving With A Toddler

1. Turn on guided access mode

One mom referred to this as “the best parenting tip I ever received.” Being newbies to having our kid use an iPad I didn’t even know this was a thing (big thanks to Janine for letting me know!). If you have an iPad or iPhone that your child uses and you don’t want them turning anything off and then crying because it got turned off, this is a life saver. I’ve included the steps below, but if you want more detailed steps (like how to enable Touch ID) then go here.

Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Tap on General.
Tap on Accessibility.
Tap on Guided Access under the Learning section.
Tap the switch to turn on Guided Access.
Tap on Passcode Settings.
Tap Set Guided Access Passcode and set a passcode.
Toggle Accessibility Shortcut to On, which allows you to triple-click the Home button and enter Guided Access at any time.

2. Bungee chord your ipad/DVD player to the headrest

We figured this one out the hard way, but many parents mentioned to me that getting the iPad or portable DVD player out of their little hands and up on the headrest made it a) much more likely that they’d watch it for a long time and b) less easy to play with.

3. Drive at night

This advice seemed like it was either a “it will work for you or it won’t” sort of deal with no in between. Many parents sent me messages saying they had great success driving their kids at night. They would either set off right at bedtime, or wake them up in the middle of the night and start driving.

We thought about doing this but we weren’t particularly keen to drive in the mountains at night and are convinced Clara won’t sleep in the car once we wake her up, but instead will think it’s play time.

If your kid(s) are able to transfer well, or are really deep sleepers than this advice seems like a no brainer. I envied the stories from Dads that said they were able to just hit cruise control and enjoy the silence.

4. Don’t bring electronics

I’m not going to lie, this advice seems crazy to me, but a handful of parents swore that not having electronics in the car made the trip better for them. A few admitted that they don’t have them at home either, so likely their kids didn’t know what they were missing, but the others maintained that good old fashion fun kept their kids happy on long road trips.

It Gets Better?

The best thing I heard from all of the feedback that I got is that for a lot of parents, it got better the more they did that. This makes sense. Kids are adaptable and anything can become normal to them if you do it enough times. Unfortunately that means you have to do it in the first place and suffer through the tough times to get to the good ones. But hey, everything in life worth having involves some struggle, or something like that. Right?

A big thank you to everyone that offered up their advice and their stories. It feels good to know that if we’re suffering at least we’re all suffering together. If you have any further tips and tricks for driving with a toddler then please leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to update the post!

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