3 and 5 year old, 45 minute drive to visit grandparents. They fight the entire way every single time. I've tried:
Nothing works for the full drive. What am I missing here? Other dads with 2+ kids close in age—how do you handle this?
wait, you mentioned the car seats are stuck where they are—are they directly next to each other? Because we had our 4yo literally kicking the back of the 2yo's seat constantly until we asked the grandparents if we could swap who goes where on the way back. Not always an option I guess but might be worth asking.
Have you tried the "whoever is quiet the longest wins a prize" game? Game changer for us. We literally just did a dollar store trip and let them each pick something beforehand, showed them the prizes, then played it on the drive. The competitive element hits different than just bribing with snacks.
The iPad thing—how long are you actually letting them use it? We were doing like 20 minutes max because we felt guilty, but I realized my wife and I just drive in silence listening to podcasts for 45 min all the time. I gave them a "device time is fine for car rides" permission slip and it's been way better. Different rules for road trips.
lol 45 minutes is nothing, wait til they're 7 and 9. But seriously—I started doing "license plate bingo" with mine and it actually works because they have to cooperate to spot the states. Keeps them looking out the window instead of at each other.
Have you considered they might just be bored out of their minds? At 3 and 5, audiobooks might be too slow-paced. My guy wants constant engagement. We switched to Bluey episodes on rotation instead of trying educational stuff and it cut the arguing in half. Sometimes you gotta just give them what works.
Sign in to join the conversation.
This might sound wild but we bought one of those car organizers that hangs on the back of the seat and filled it with "surprise toys" they'd never seen before—dollar store stuff mostly. Every 10-15 min we'd hand them a new thing. Kept them occupied AND they weren't interacting with each other enough to fight. Fair warning though: you'll be cleaning up plastic toys for weeks.