How to keep your child busy on the road: 15 ideas from a psychologist

So, you are going to rest with your child. The place has been chosen, the tickets have been bought, the suitcases are packed. The most important task of the whole vacation is ahead - to get to the destination. No matter how old your child is, a road with a child is still a quest. Not only that, children in transport can be seasick. The main problem of a long journey is boredom and constant "brainwashing" on the topic of what to do. Many parents are saved by a tablet with games and cartoons, but this is a decision of one or two hours at the most. Psychologist Svetlana Royz advises on how to keep your child busy on a longer journey.

The first assistant that will definitely come in handy on the plane and in the car is lollipops. Yes, they are bad for teeth and digestion. But the road is a kind of emergency. In the car, sweet and sour lollipops will help relieve nausea and vomit during motion sickness. On the plane, we give the child candy during takeoff and landing: active resorption enhances salivation, and swallowing saliva helps to normalize pressure in the ears. In addition to lozenges, you can still use vasoconstrictor drops: pediatrician Evgeny Komarovsky advises on the plane

You should also stock up on games and toys for the trip in advance. Here you need to proceed from the age and hobbies of the child, however, there are universal recommendations that will help parents of children of almost all ages.

Markers and notepad. For those who like to draw on the road, it is better to take a notebook with detachable sheets: this is both a solid substrate for drawing, and a guarantee that the sheets will not crumble. Markers are also preferred over pencils. The pencil may fall and break (the rod will break off). There is one more life hack - you can take several "waffle" towels as a drawing field. Decks like to decorate "cells" and make a pattern or a full drawing out of them

Postcard from travel. If the child is already tired of just drawing, invite him to draw a postcard from the trip. Upon arrival, this postcard can be sent to relatives or even to yourself

Have a child draw a travel postcard and send it to himself / istockphoto.com

Toy airplane. If your child is afraid of flying on an airplane, make the space safe. To do this, make a paper airplane and invite him to decorate the craft in different colors. You can draw an airplane on paper together, mark the windows, show the child behind one of them.

Pop it. This modern toy hit is almost indispensable on the road. It takes up a minimum of space and can captivate a child's attention for a long time. Instead of just "bursting" colorful bumps, offer your child an exciting and educational game. Here you can see 25 ways to pop it with benefit.

Magnetic toys and games. A very convenient way to entertain your child on the road: it is not so easy to lose a toy with magnets in transport. Now there are many games of this kind that are suitable for all ages. Small children are interested in dressing a doll or building vehicles on a magnetic road, older children can buy a toy of the "build a house" type.

Reusable sticker books. A truly endless pastime that also caters to different age groups. There are simple books for little ones (where you need to place stickers in a certain graphic order) and more complex ones (where you need to solve some problem with the help of stickers).

Drawings by points. A very interesting and exciting experience. You can buy a whole book with such tasks (there are different levels of difficulty by age), can be found in the Internet and print it out on a printer in advance, or you can draw the dots yourself, and let the child connects. Older decks can be given the opposite task: have the child draw dots, and you connect them into a drawing.

"Dui-bol". A good game for an airplane or a train. Take a light object (a candy wrapper is great), put it on the table and "pass" it to each other with your breath. The main task is not to let the object fall off the table.

Board games. Table games also great for travel. Moreover, now there are a lot of variants of such games in "road" versions - a reduced field, small (often paper) cubes. Leaders for travel - card games such as "UNO" or "Who am I". There are many logic games: where the child is asked to place objects on the playing field in a certain order. You can even play simply with cubes - who will have a greater value (at the same time, repeat the verbal counting with the child)

Word games. The easiest game for all ages: name a word that starts with the last letter of the previous player's word (lamp-orange-sky-cloud). If you have already tried this option, you can play words to develop your imagination. For example, compose a short story of four (5-7 or more) words that are not related to each other. Older children can be asked to make up as many small ones as possible from one word. It is also very interesting to write random letters on paper and connect them with lines to form words.

Ira's words are great for car travel / istockphoto.com

A rhyme game. Develops not only vocabulary but also imagination. Invite your child to come up with a rhyme for a word, and then try with him to compose a small quatrain from these words

Association game. Endless game with unpredictable results. Come up with a word and ask the child to name the association to it (what comes to mind first). For example: ice cream-cold-north pole-penguins-birds-nest-egg-omelet.

Guess the word. There are two options for the game. In the first, the child thinks of a word and tries to describe it in different ways so that others can guess what exactly he was thinking. In the second option, you need to ask the child leading questions, to which he can only answer "yes" or "no".

"I look and find." An excellent variant of the mindfulness game while driving or on the bus. The facilitator gives a problem: I look and find something... yellow (any other color). The child must quickly find any object of the required color outside the window. If it works, he makes the next choice.

Chronicle of travel. Invite your child to write a book about their journey. To do this, you can draw all the stages of the road in a notebook or take pictures of all the interesting things that the child sees outside the window. You can take travel notes: it will then be very interesting to re-read them together.

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10 cool driving games for kids

Traveling with kids: 5 best life hacks for parents