THE LONG DRIVE

My family and I recently had the occasion to drive most of the length of the North Island, returning home from visiting the relatives. It was a landmark journey - the first long haul car trip undertaken with James, whose toddlerish exuberance is still peaking.

Toddlers aren't meant to sit down for extended periods of time - it is hotwired into their developing brains to runjumpbouncecrawlswingplayshout, not sitsitsitsitsit. So the aim of the game was keeping the small person happy and by extension, us. This wasn’t just pure altruism at work either; we wanted to get to the end in one piece. Avoiding minor catastrophes in the back seat was going a long way towards avoiding a major catastrophe on the road. So we thought it out, took all those incremental lessons learnt from short trips and rolled them together into one big ball of diversionary tactics designed to get the most out of the journey for James and us. Here's what we learnt:

Food
Don't think you can stick to your normal routines and health-conscious food groups. Well you could, but you'd be poking a sleeping lion with a stick by insisting your child has his regular carrot sticks when he's been kicking the back of your seat for half an hour. Besides you’d be missing a prime opportunity to use food as a means of entertainment and more importantly, bribery. If there is ever an occasion to break out the lollies and chippies, its this. It never ceased to amaze us, the power a jelly dinosaur had to stop James from trying to open the door while we were driving down the desert road. The long drive is a rare enough event to avoid forming bad eating habits so don't worry that you're contributing to the obesity epidemic.

Toys
This might be stating the obvious. Toys are a fail safe right? In the first hour perhaps but the further down the road you get the less interesting the favourite matchbox car becomes. It pays to have a couple of surprise toys up your sleeve. Perhaps even a new one. In our experience something shiny and new holds the attention longer than the trusty digger that has been round the sandpit a few times. Dismantling packaging eats up precious minutes too.

PETS AND OTHER DISTRACTIONS
Wandering minds = wandering hands. The last thing we wanted to have to deal with was our family dog subjected to James' attention-seeking inventiveness. No dog likes their tail pulled/eyes gouged/lips stretched. Even less so when their customary back seat space is hemmed in by holiday paraphernalia. We cramped our dog's space with a sense of purpose, creating a handy barricade between child and pet.

Its also worthwhile keeping bag handles, zips, containers etc out of harms way. Its amazing what James can do within the boundaries of a car seat when time and desire permits. We have had tightly sealed suitcases liberated of their contents in the past and no way was it going to happen this time. Not with the aforementioned family pet already feeling severely short changed in the comfort stakes..

Music
Again, stating the obvious perhaps. But if you've been resisting stocking the car with The Wiggles, that long drive coming up this summer might be the occasion to make you reconsider. Listening to Hot Potato and Big Red Car on repeat might have edged my wife and I closer to the nut house but it kept James entertained from Taupo to Levin. Hallelujah.

Stopping
State the obvious part 3 but hey, its strategy and it works. New Zealand highways are peppered with rest stops. Many of them are just passable (a dusty patch of gravel and a rubbish bin overflowing with fast food wrappers and beer bottles), a few are great (views, waterways, toilets). We tried to stop in towns and near playgrounds. Failing that somewhere with a bit of grass to run round on and not too close to the road.

Not ever never
Portable DVD players. Sorry, but the decline of western civilisation will in all likelihood be traced back to the day we decided we could watch television while we drove. Not for a minute am I setting myself up as a strong-willed saint who doesn't resort to the odd screening of Toy Story to give father and son a chance to have a breather, but in the car? We're lucky that James is still young enough not to be picky about what grabs his attention and this is one habit that we definitely do not want to form. Besides, outside that window lies the New Zealand countryside. 100 Toy Storys can’t compete with that.

-Chris

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