At the gates of August, with the duffels ready for the summer exodus, many parents wonder how to manage to travel with the children by car and not die trying. We would all like to be able to give you the potion to drive from an early age and enjoy it.
Many are the parents who, before the disturbing image of their chicks crying and asking how much is left for endless hours, decide not to skimp on media. Anything to make the trip minimally enjoyable. Cars are piled up with iPads, interactive games, portable DVDs, toys, books and Manido Cantajuegos in all its versions. Nothing seems enough to calm the impatience of our children to reach their destination. We ask ourselves a thousand times how the children entertain themselves in the car? The answer, in my modest opinion, is simple: with just and necessary. That is, with almost nothing. Traveling by car is not something unpleasant that we should distract our children. On the contrary, traveling by car can be a fun and enriching experience for the whole family. I say this with knowledge of the cause after having thrown ourselves into a Munich-Malaga-Munich by car with the four girls without fainting.
The best technology at home
I will not deny that your children are axes of the iPad and have a great time playing with the most modern apps. Even so, I wouldn't take the iPad for the trip. First of all for a simple financial question, the chances of the iPad ending up stamped against the moon of the car or covered in children's vomit is high and, failing that, or are you willing to have one iPad per child or you will spend the trip between fights To see who's up now. It does not compensate.
A well-deserved rest for TV
That European children watch a huge amount of television is a proven fact. As it is also that everything your child can learn from TV brings him already known from home. Feed the car with plasma screens and the like so they can see The Little Mermaid for the umpteenth time is not necessary.
Let's be practical, a child who gets used to watching TV while in the car will not know how to drive without the movie on duty. What happens if the DVD breaks down or if we are forced to rent a car without a DVD? We do not create unnecessary dependencies. In addition, as children grow and the number of siblings increases the tastes diversify and we return to the fight of always: It is that Sleeping Beauty scares me, because I pass Mickey Mouse that is for babies, and so Until exhaustion.
Eyes wide open
The least I like to have the DVD or iPad plugged in at all hours is that we deprive them of the luxury of looking out the window and appreciating the landscapes, how houses and fields change as we add kilometers and all those common places that we learn to identify by looking with wide eyes.
Looking out the window, especially if in a bravery attack we decided to change the highways for the second roads, it is an opportunity to meet new places that children learn to enjoy if we give them the time and space needed.
Try to give a map to your children, especially those who are learning to read, and see how they can entertain themselves for hours trying to guess where they are going at each moment, what path they have already traveled and what is the best route to reach their destination .
Teach them to identify landforms, castles or symbols that make each place recognizable. Play to see who first sees this or that wall or the poster of the next town.
Tuning ears
The singing of children's songs in the car and drilling the eardrum with the patio of my house is a very personal choice, but it is not essential. Children like normal music almost as much as adults.
The car is an ideal place for children to listen to all kinds of music and begin to develop their tastes and preferences. They will be surprised in addition to how little it takes to learn songs in languages that do not speak, who needs Dora the Explorer?
Boredom is good and necessary
We live in the culture of over stimulation and raise our children in a whirlwind of activities, devices and distractions that leave them little time to be calm, get bored and give free rein to their imagination.
I am a strong advocate of the need and convenience for children to learn to get bored. The best ideas and the funniest games are born precisely from that slow tedium in which a child has enough peace to invent something new, have a hilarious conversation with his brothers or think calmly of something that interests him.
Let us give our children the opportunity to be calm in the car to think, invent games and chat quietly, they will not regret it. Children learn to respect and appreciate those hours without toys, movies and video games. They learn to be seated, calm and to be patient. You may not function on the first day but the habit makes the monk and, as in every way, the important thing is to take the first step.
Go with children by car from small Not only does it not have to be an ordeal but it can be the perfect setting to enjoy family and our children's imagination and conversation.
