Moms: How Do you Deal with Summertime Car Trips?

Hamilton-Wenham Patch invites you and your circle of friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families right here in Hamilton and Wenham.

Each week in , local mothers take your questions, give advice and share solutions.

Grab a cup of coffee and settle in to read this week's question. Below is how local mothers answered, but we want to hear from you. Leave a comment in the comment box below and share your thoughts.

Question: We are in the heart of vacation season. While some families travel to Alaska and other distant destinations (which present their own issues), we know car trips in the northeast are much more common summer vacation trips for local families.

What are some proven techniques to keep kids entertained and occupied while traveling? How often do you stop? For what reasons (bathroom? meals? just to stretch?) Do you plan out your stops or play it by ear? What time of the day is best to travel? Do you plan travel times around naps and bedtime?

: The road trips seem to really vary with the age of the kids. When my kids were little we tried the drive all-night trip. It was a huge failure with no one sleeping, one kid puking and us all ending up in a hotel at 5 a.m.

Then we changed to travel all day. It is the strangest thing but I gave all the kids clipboards and paper one year and it was a huge success. They made up games, wrote notes and drew pictures. Another huge hit was Car Bingo. We still play it even on shorter trips.

Finally, my family knows we do not stop under 1.5 hours with our goal making it three hours before we stop. I am pretty strict about this so we have to plan food and bathroom stops accordingly!

: When my kids were much younger…we would drive to my family in West Virginia for the holidays. I would sometimes buy inexpensive small gifts for them to open along the way, something that would keep them entertained in the car.     We would plan to eat our meals along the way, for it gave us another reason to stop to include a stretch and bathroom breaks.  When the portable DVD players and game boys came out, we found we didn’t have to stop as often. We would plan a trip to Blockbuster the day before our trip so we could stock up on movies and games.