Surviving Family Road Trip

How would you handle the situation traveling more or less 9 hours by car with a screaming toddler? What would you do to survive the long hours drive without losing your cool?
Every family who take road trips have different driving situations, kids, drivers and passengers, and the number of hours. Well, in our case we drove 9 hours with one two year old toddler who doesn't like car motion and hate car seat. The fact that she hates being strap in with her car seat, hate small space, and hate not moving around. She exactly different with her 3 year old brother who is willing to go along and find ways to enjoy himself.

We made three stops in that 9 hours drive. Those hours that my little Miss was sleeping, we never made a stop and tried to control the urge of going to the bathroom. Until it came to the point that the little man had to go pee and potty so we decided to stop then the sleeping beauty woke up.

When you make a stop, do not let the kids see any traveling store to avoid spending money on some useless toys they find at the store. If you can distract them when going to the bathroom then do it and make alibis that doesn't sound like a lie. Anyway, since the girl was already up, the fussing and excruciating scream begun. If you sit in the middle try to talk to her some nonsense so you can distract her from getting bored. I did try giving her tons of things to do but it did not stop her from doing what she want and that was taking her strap off of her and standing in her seat while the car is running. We could get a ticket if a cop saw us but fortunately there wasn't much cop in that high way. However, letting her stand that few hours of the road trip was a relief hearing her scream.

Coke is not good for kids. But in order for my little Miss to sit still while the car is running is by allowing her drink the coke. As I have said, she doesn't like car motion and that was one of the things that made he feel uncomfortable. The coke helped her stomach to feel better and at the same time pre-occupied. Giving her drawing book makes her feel dizzy again so after the coke, she needed to moved around again and cry a bit of course. So, I let her stand for a while and sat in my lap for few minutes while the car was running.

Make some few stops to give the kids time to stretch out but if they're sleeping take advantage of that opportunity to stay on the road. According to my MIL who was also in the car with us (we were using her car during the road trip), despite of the screaming and fussing, my kids still pass as the good traveler baby or toddler. Singing, talking, and giving them what they want was helpful in surviving a family road trip.