7 hours in the car with the kids is pretty much a recipe for disaster, but with a little planning, and even more luck, you can turn it into a memory that will last a lifetime. I had just that opportunity last week and the ride turned out to be an absolute joy!

My grandmother turned 100 last Saturday, so I drove from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania with my 9 year old and 10 year old daughters. My wife wasn’t well enough to make the trip, so instead we drove down with my mother, which made me all the more anxious for things to go right.

A few suggestions to help make a trip with kid a success:

• Bring water and snacks – and remember to keep the sugar content low.
• Games – keep their heads out of books and off the game boy to avoid motion sickness.
  Try things like “Love Bug” where the kid gets points for every Volkswagen Bug they spot, or if faster action is needed, “Beep Jeep” which is on a similar idea, but uses the far more numerous Jeep as the action item.
• Keep a journal of roadside wildlife - There’s plenty to see, even if some of it is slightly flatter than God originally made it.
• Download a book – Grab a classic book or two from Audible.com for your iPod and play it over the radio. Discuss it as you go, stopping every chapter or two. You might want to try something like The Swiss Family Robinson which will give everyone in the family someone to identify with.
• Keep the Adult Discussion to a minimum – don’t talk about subjects you don’t want everyone else to hear about later. Little ears often have long memories.
• Play the State Capital Game – or any other learned game you can make fun. Spelling is a good game as well. Try to include math in a fun way, but don’t make it seem like you’re forcing the issue with them.
• Do talk with your children – it’s the perfect time to really discuss things with your kids. I find the more I treat them like the adults they will one day become when talking, the more adult I find they behave.
• Be Realistic – I set a firm rule against singing the “are we there yet” song.” The 9 year old asked when it would be acceptable, so I told her only after the “pretzel factory” which is about 20 minutes from our final destination. The kids had quite a bit of fun singing the last bit of the trip, and it kept them from being a bother the whole time.
• Set Expectations – the car ride is a good time to explain what you want them to do. Early in the trip, tell them what they’ll see and how to behave. Later in the trip you can explain what to expect on arrival and how to behave with the entire extended family. In the long run, it will help make things easier on everyone.
• Discuss Family – in our case, we were in the car with their grandmother, making it an excellent time to discuss our family, and our ancestors, so the kids have a better idea of who they are and where they come from.

I’m not big on the idea of dvd players in cars, but I can see where there might be benefits.  Remember to keep it fair for everyone and try to limit the time the kids spend watching meaningless shows while on the road.

A couple of things you might want to bring as well:

• A trash bucket in the backseat that can double as a car sick container.  Yeah, we don’t want it to happen, but better we’re prepared.
• Tons of wet wipes to clean grimy fingers and faces.
• The basics of the medicine cabinet: kid’s pain reliever, benedryl (both for allergies to strange animals and plants, as well as a sleep aid with doctor’s permission), and any other regularly used items.

I hope these tips help you to make a memory the next time you travel…