How To Survive A Road Trip With A Toddler

A rectangle graphic with blue on all four sides with a cream rectangle right in the middle with the wording "How to Survive a Road Trip with a Toddler" written in black with the word "Toddler" written in green. The wording is centered at the top of the cream rectangle. Starting at the middle to the bottom of the cream rectangle is a gray road with black outline and black road marks with a Green car driving on it.

Taking a Road Tripping With A Toddler?

Planning a road trip with your toddler? It can be a highly daunting task. Thinking about being trapped in the car for hours with any child; especially a toddler can be rough. In this post, I will give you all the tips on how to survive a road trip with a toddler that we have learned. We have learned many tips and tricks from taking a lot of road trips with our son.

We have been going on long road trips with our son since he was only 2 weeks old. Through all the road trips we have gone on there are many tips and tricks we have learned. I want to share with you how to make your road trip with your toddler go so much smoother.

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Plan Ahead For Your Road Trip

If you want your road trip with your toddler to go well my number one tip is to make sure you plan!

Plan out how to organize your car, nap time, activities, snacks, road stops, your hotel stay, everything. You do not have to plan every little detail, but having an idea of your day will help you.

To go along with planning; remember every little thing will Not go as planned. The toy you thought would entertain him or her for a long time will only last minutes, your toddler might have a poop explosion, there might be road traffic or several many other random things. (all these things are me speaking from experience.)

Every product I list that has a link I can share with you I will link towards the end of the post to make it easiest for you to find.

Organize Your Car

Organize your car before you pull out of your driveway. Do not just throw everything in the car and hope you will be able to find the things you will need. Do yourself a favor and organize what you will need during the road trip before your hand and save your time and sanity.

Some road trip tips we have learned are:

Have a seat organizer caddy/bin that is within your child’s reach and has various activities for them to choose from.

Use bag hooks to hang the diaper bag to free up ground space and make it easy to find when you need it.

If staying in a hotel pack a separate hotel bag with the things you will need just for that night and make it easily accessible to get to. (Don’t pack the hotel bag behind all your other stuff like we did once.)

Make your stroller easily accessible you might want it while traveling.

Make a designated diaper changing station. We put diapers, wipes, diaper creams, disposable change pads, and stink bags in the back pocket of the passenger seat to make for fast and simple diaper changes.

Picture of the back row of my car. With a car seat installed in the seat behind the diver's seat. A mesh zipper bag and a bag of wipes in the pocket of the back pocket of the passenger seat. Two bag hooks on the back of the diver's seat and the passenger seat with a diaper bag hanging from a hook on the diver's seat. A black bin full of different activities for a toddler is seating in the middle of the floor in-between the diver and passenger.

Nap Time

Plan for a good nap time. Listen if my child does not take a nap, All of us suffer. Making sure my toddler naps is very important to us.

Make sure you have all the things your child is used to having during nap time, whatever that might be.

What that means for us for example is that we travel with a travel sound machine, his blankie, bear, put the car shades up, and turn down our radio (at least till he falls asleep).

That normally works for us, but make sure you remember all things do not go as planned. Sometimes it is okay to keep your expectations low and a road trip with a toddler is one of them.

Activities

One thing I strongly recommend you think about is activities for your child to do in the car. On a long road trip hoping your child just likes looking out the window is not going to work for you.

Only you know your child best and will know what your child might like to do while in the car, but here are some ideas for you.

(Are you in need of more activities for your toddler, not just for in the car, but also for inside activities? I have another blog post just for that. Find it here.)

Activity Bin

In your bin within reach for your toddler keep pop tubes, invisible ink markers (if old enough), toy cars, a sensory toy with rubber strings and pops it’s on it, books, and anything else that your child loves.

A black bin that can attach to car's seat with a seat belt with picture taken on a table. The bin is filled with two invisible pin coloring books, a green ball, a red book, two small books, a fabric book, a green and blue light up finger doodle board, a large bag of toys. With two cup holders lined in gray.

Bag Of Goodies

Keep a zipper mesh bag full of random toys with you. (I have toy cars, small dinosaurs, little people, Easter eggs with a small toy inside to open, and other random little things in mine.)

There will be a point in the trip when your child will get bored and not know what to do. This is where your bag of goodies will become your lifesaver. Pull out a random toy from your bag to hand to them and get a little more time from them.

A mesh zipper bag with blue zipper detailing and the bag unzipped. Spilling out of bag are a bunch of little small toys. A peach dinosaur, blue easter egg, brown and white dinosaur, and a red car you can see spilling out on the counter top it is sitting on.

At stops, I will try to clean up the toys and put them back in the bag to use again.

Magnet Board

In the back pocket of the driver seat, I keep one more activity in a mesh zipper bag. This activity is my “just in case we lose our minds” and need an activity we do not normally get in the car. In this bag, I have a magnet board with fun magnets to play with. (I found these in the Target Bullet area so keep your eye there.) This activity will normally buy you a little bit more time in our experience.

Tablet

Lastly a tablet. My husband and I will download one new movie for each road trip we take.

We do not let him watch his tablet the whole time. We will limit him to one (at the most two if the day is not going well) movies a day. This will give you some time to have at least a little bit of quiet. (And will help you get a little farther down the road without a meltdown.)

Picture of the back seat of our car taken from the side with a car seat installed backwards facing. A tablet in a read protective case attached to seat his car seat is installed in.

Snacks

Pack snacks your child will get hungry.

We do not let our toddler eat in the car because of the choking risk, but every parent can make their own educated decisions.

We do make stops at appropriate times when we know our toddler will be starting to get hungry.

To help organize yourself pack all snacks in a large mesh zipper bag. Pack pouches that are full of vegetables (it will be the easiest way to get your toddler to eat their veggies while on the road), fruit snacks, granola bars, cereal bars, etc. To make life easier pack easy prepackaged foods that are easy to open and are single servings.

Road Stops

Plan out your road stops. You do not have to plan exactly where and when you will stop but at least plan a general timing of how long you plan to be in the car.

We will stop about every two hours (unless he is sleeping)on a road trip with a toddler. This way he can eat a snack and run off some energy to get a little farther.

Stopping every two hours may mean it can take us a little longer to get to our destination, but it also means we have a happier kid when we arrive at said destination. (Which is highly worth it to us.)

Favorite places to stop:

Rest stops – a place to go to the bathroom, green space for your toddler to run around, and some have a play area for children to play on. Just make sure you pay attention to your surroundings while there. (Always a good tip no matter where you are.)

Malls – malls right off the highways are always a go-to for road trips. It gives your toddler a chance to run off some energy at a play place, eat food at the food court, and a bathroom. Win, win, win.

Chick-fil-A – Chick-fil-A’s are the best fast food restaurants to stop at on a road trip. They are child-friendly, have clean bathrooms, and chicken nuggets. Do I need to say more?

Hotel Stay(?)

Is your road trip long enough that a hotel stay about in the middle of your trip a good idea?

Our rule of thumb is we stop if the drive is more than 7 hours. 7 hours is the max our toddler will be in a car in one day without many meltdowns. (Can we blame him, nobody wants to be stuck in a car for that long. Let alone someone who does not understand why.)

As mentioned earlier when talking about organizing your car; pack a hotel bag. Pack everything everybody will need for the hotel stay into one bag. Instead of having to bring in each bag you packed for each person for the whole trip, do yourself a favor and just pack one.

The next tip is to set up your child’s sleeping arrangements right away. You will thank yourself later when it is time to put your child to bed that everything is already to go.

The last tip for your hotel stay is a Slumber Pod. A Slumber Pod is a tent that goes over your child’s pack n’ play. This tent will make their sleeping environment dark and have your child not be able to see you while they try to fall asleep. This will allow you to share a room with your child, but not have to go to bed when they do. You can have the lights still on and even watch a show till you are ready for bed and your child will not even know. (We love ours!)

Road Tripping With Toddler Must Haves

A blue back ground with the wording "Road Trip With Toddler Must Haves" in the middle of the graphic. All around the wording are pictures of all the different must haves going from 1 to 13. #1 is a tablet holder. #2 a tablet with a red protective case. #3 indestructible books named Beach Baby and It's Bath Time. #4 a Sensory toy. #5 blue, pink, and purple play tubes. #6 a Elmo invisible ink activity coloring book. #7 black activity bin that attaches to a seat belt. #8 disposable change mat that is white with green leafs. #9 6 zipper mesh bags all different sizes laying on top of each other. #10 a black slumber pod (looks like a tent). #11 Black bag hook for your car. #12 a white square sound machine.

1 Tablet Holder / 2 Tablet / 3 Indestructible Books / 4 Sensory Toy / 5 Tubes / 6 Invisible Ink Markers / 7 Car Seat Organizer Caddy / 8 Disposable Change Pad / 9 Mesh Zipper Bags for Organizing / 10 Slumber Pod / 11 Bag Hooks / 12 Travel Sound Machine

Road Tripping With A Toddler

Road tripping with a toddler can be a rough task but it does not have to go terribly.

Follow all the tips and tricks above and your road trip should go much smoother.

Remember your road trip with your toddler will not go perfectly. There will always be hick-ups. But you will still be making memories with your child and hopefully, once you get back home from your trip you will have lots of wonderful memories made that dem the few bad moments in the car.

Have fun and make some memories! They are only little for so long!

If you have any other road trip tips or road trip must-haves that I did not mention, please mention them in the comments! I would love to hear them!