Family road trips used to be synonymous with recurring elements: sibling squabbles, the license plate game, and the phrase “Are we there yet?” repeated over and over again.
Built-in movie screens, tablets and other digital entertainment have helped make long car rides a little more bearable, but they're not always foolproof for keeping kids entertained. Now that road trip season is in full swing, we turned to the experts: parents who are crisscrossing the United States with their kids, spending hours on the highway in an RV.
Read on for their top tips on how to keep everyone happy in the car – and stop parents from vowing to turn around if you touch your brother again! (Just us?)
Limit screen time
The traveling entrepreneurs
“When our kids spend too much time in front of a screen in the car, they become cranky, unstimulated, constantly say they’re bored and are generally crankier,” he explains. Rachel Oldenburgerof @rv.family.reno.
Oldenburger has spent years renovating RVs for clients and now rents her own (when she and her family aren't using it to travel to lakes, beaches, and beautiful campgrounds across the country). Surprisingly, the mother of two says her kids are better behaved on long road trips when their screen time is limited.
Come in with a plan
Oldenburger suggests making a plan of action well before loading the car. On a recent 18-hour trip, she estimated they would stop for gas every three hours or so and created a schedule with three one-hour blocks that reset after each stop. “That way, the kids know what to expect,” she says. “There’s less arguing and it’s just something to look forward to on a car trip that seems to never end!”
For Jessica Roderick, who spent three adventurous years living in a camper van with her family and is the creator behind nomad familyShe said when her children were younger, they would take a break from driving every hour, “no matter what.”
“I would set a timer—that they could see—for an hour, and they knew that once the timer was up, I would start looking for a place to stop, even if it was just to stretch my legs and walk around for a few minutes,” she says. “The timer took the chorus of ‘are we there yet?’” and “if kids know what’s going on and what to expect, they usually do much better on long car trips.”
Bring the best activities
The first hour of Oldenburger's program is devoted to art and activities, including coloring books, pencilsAnd activity kits that come with dry erase markers. She also recommends a travel tray for each child, which can help keep their gear and snacks organized. Meanwhile, Lauren Grijalva, the mother of two who runs The traveling entrepreneurs She and her husband Aaron say their 11- and 13-year-old children love to read. “They often read an entire novel in one sitting when we travel, so we make sure they have a good book!” she says.
Enjoy the conviviality
Courtesy of Jessica McCorkle/@family.of.nomads
Daily life, filled with busy work and school schedules, can make it difficult to stop long enough to have a real conversation with your kids. Take advantage of time together in the car, when there are no outside distractions, to bond with your team.
For Jessica Roderick of @famille.de.nomadesRoad trips are the best way to get her three kids talking. “It’s uninterrupted time together, and not always, but most of the time, we end up having really good conversations that would be hard to have at home because someone is always busy or distracted,” she says.
For Oldenburger, the “two-hour” block of his schedule is dedicated to more engaging time together, chatting, listening to music and playing games, including I Spy and the timeless license plate game.
Okay, some screen time is good.
Inevitably, you'll need to break out the screens during an 18-hour trip, but you can be smart about how to distribute it in a way that keeps the kids entertained without turning them into complete zombies.
During the third hour of their schedule, Oldenburger’s kids typically choose to play a game on their Switch or watch a show on their tablet. “We purposely chose this hour as the last of the rotation so that when we stop to gas up, it’s a clear end time for the tablet and then we can go back to playing with the activity tables when we get back on the road,” she notes.
For Molly and Jaren Garcia and their three children, the full-time RVing family behind WePlusThreeLiving in a campervan makes it much easier to have fun.
“But for longer trips, my kids love taking their Nintendo Switch and playing together by sharing controllers,” says Molly Garcia. Right now, the kids are partial to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Human: Fall Flat, she notes.
But the screens remain in the vehicle: “When you arrive at a place, you explore the outside and electronics become a thing of the past.”
