295: 3 Road Trip Hacks for Traveling with Kids // Brittney Hanks

May 22, 2023

Posted in Elementary School, Focus on Fun, Surviving (Thriving?) in Summer, Toddlers and Preschoolers

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We are headed into summer, my friends! And with summer often comes a good-old fashioned family road trip. If you have a few of these on your calendar for the coming months, I know today’s episode with Brittney Hanks is going to be helpful for you.

Brittney is the founder of Home & Kind, a company that is dedicated to creating practical solutions to help busy moms better manage their home and family life. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and is a mom of four children ranging in age from 8-15. Brittney shares brilliant mom hacks via her wildly popular Instagram account that I love to follow for all of the practical tips. She and I have struck up an online friendship over the past few years, and I am honored to bring her here to share some of her wisdom with all of us.

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Takeaways on Traveling with Kids:

Be prepared with fuss-free foods. Bring plenty of individually portioned snacks that are ready for you to hand out in resealable baggies, or create a snack bag for each child to keep by their seat and monitor on their own. And as your kids get older, you can have them create their own snack back, fill their own water bottle, and put whatever activities they are going to want in the car. Consider bringing along some fun treats that are out of the ordinary to make things novel, or making pitstops for foods that they don’t get in their daily life.
Plan ahead to keep the kids entertained for hours. Create “entertainment stations” that the kids can rotate through, such as a media station with an Ipad or device, a Paint by Sticker station, or a coloring station with some favorite markers or coloring books–and these can be adult coloring books too for your older kids too. Play “Name that Tune” with Disney song playlists from Spotify, or download some new audiobooks or podcasts that the whole family will enjoy listening to. And I included Brittney’s favorite’s in the show notes.
Countdown the time and distance with visual reminders and fun pit stops. Especially for young kids, time is a really nebulous concept, so when you tell them “We have three more hours” they really have no idea what that means, which can lead to whining. Instead you could make a sticky-note countdown where every 100 miles or every hour you take down one of the sticky notes and hand out a special treat or a new activity. And I love Brittney’s idea of setting up an impromptu obstacle course out in the field at a truck stop, and having the entire family participate and get some wiggles out, including Mom and Dad!

>>>Are these tips from Brittney helpful? What hacks do you use when traveling with kids? Tell us in the comments below.

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