Read Your Way Through Road Trips

Friday May 23, 2008

Road trip! Maybe there once was a time when the idea of hitting the open road filled you with delight. Roll down the windows, crank up the stereo, and you were good for hours and miles. Road-tripping with kids is a whole 'nother matter, of course, and when your child has special needs that make sitting in one place and doing one boring thing for an extended period of time a trial, the road becomes more endless than you could ever have imagined.

Fortunately, technology is on your side. In-car DVD players are certainly an innovation many parents can give thanks for, and iPods that allow every traveler to listen to tunes of choice without inflicting them on the entire car. (And I'm not even thinking of loud teen rap music here. I'm thinking of the trip on which my kids wanted to hear Grover sing "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" until we wore that Sesame Street tape out.)

But another technological development you might want to apply to your trip planning is programs like Audacity that allow you to record your voice digitally and upload it to an iPod or burn it on a CD. That gives you the power to, say, read a bunch of stories for your child to listen to on a trip without your having to strain your eyes reading on the move. Start well before your departure date to create a bunch of tracks for your child to listen and turn pages too, if in-car book-looking's no problem for those young eyes.

Of special interest may be books about travel, or about the area you happen to be driving through. You'll know best if your child will want to have new stories to listen to, or be more comforted by hearing old favorites over and over and over again. You can augment your own reading with podcasts from favorite TV shows.

For more video fun, use that video iPod or in-car DVD player to add home videos to your trip entertainment programming. Film your child's fun times, story times, silly performances or playtime with pets, anything to delight and distract. Watching family members may be more fun for your child than watching actors, and you won't have to worry about whether all that movie viewing is really appropriate. It also helps your child maintain a comforting connection to home even when far from it.

Need more tips for peaceful trips? Check these articles:

And look for more ideas on road trips on the About.com Parenting Channel's Blog Carnival, coming June 1 to the Baby Products site.

_{Photo: Tim Boyle/Getty Images}