Road trips are timeless, and so is "Are we there yet?"
Apparently the newest trend in parenting is to encourage kids to sit in the back seat and shut up.
How else to explain the recent series in the Globe and Mail’s Drive section about keeping your children entertained during long drives?
Endless games of I-Spy irritating you? Save your sanity by encouraging your kids to tune out from the world around them by watching endless DVDs and playing video games that they would already be playing at home.
Never mind that children’s programming unleashes its own brand of severe irritation, especially in a small enclosed vehicle.
But why attempt to engage your kids in what is supposed to be a family event when you can take the easy way out?
Sure, sibling fights are hardly a better alternative to whining and high-pitched singing, but actual interaction is the stuff that family trip memories are made of. Both the bad and the good.
Why not suggest something that the entire family can engage in, beyond I-Spy or the license plate game? Maybe an audiobook the entire family could enjoy, or an actual physical book that could keep the kids quiet for a bit but then provide a point of discussion? Perhaps something related to the trip itself or the geography you’re traveling through.
Or is that too low-tech?
Not every problem needs to be solved by the newest gadget, and none of those suggestions are even new or interesting.
Is a little creative thinking too much to ask from Canada’s oldest national paper?
I dunno about an actual book. I mean, I’m all for reading but you have to take into account that quite a few people (including me!) get motion sickness while reading in moving vehicles.
Or just cars. I can read on anything else, but cars make me nauseated.
I keep forgetting about people like you! But, how would playing on a DS be any better in that case? Then there would be two sources of motion. Perhaps we should run an experiment on you to find out?