Holiday Travel with the Urchins Along

It is time for the long drive to Grandma's for Christmas. It doesn't matter if it takes fifteen minutes or 2 hours, to the kids on Christmas. They are wound up and they are full of pep and sugar. To make the travel tolerable for you and your kids, they need to be occupied. Gone are the days when you could slip a little something alcoholic in their bottles and hope they would sleep. We can no longer dose them with laudanum either. In fact those days were gone when I was a kid, so I have no experience with doing anything like that, only memories of wishing that I could try some of the remedies I heard stories about.

It really doesn't do to threaten to beat the kids if they don't shut- up. No matter how bad your head is throbbing. Threatened beatings only work if the kids believe that you will follow through on the threat. So if the stick won't work, you are left with the carrot. I raised my child with bribes. More politically correct people call them rewards, but I knew the truth - they were bribes. The bribe has to be something the kid wants and the kid has to know that not getting it is an option. So that deals with the worst of the behavior. If you follow the bribe system, oops I mean reward system, you should have good behavior for the whole trip.

To make it easier for the kids to be good, it helps to amuse them. Singing Christmas songs works if everyone will sing. That includes your spouse. Also remember that you are not performing before an audience, this is for fun. Think about the kids and mom singing in the car on the way to get the Christmas tree in "The Christmas Story". Add some raspberries if you want and sing at the top of your voice. Make up some verses or change some words. If you can't sing at all play some Christmas CDs and sing along. Lighten up cause the fun time with family is just ahead. You know when Aunt so and so asks if you are still married to that no account, or if that sweet man who married you is still putting up with you....

At Christmas time you have the added option of looking at outdoor decorations. This works better after dark. Admire them laugh at them, or count them. Some are exceptional. Some are overdone. And some are just plain fun. My favorite was the grinch with the sleigh going down the hill. You know the picture. I don't know where it has gone. Hopefully the owner moved and it didn't get lifted. Make up your own game, assigning different decorations to each person. Then if someone else calls out that kind of decoration before the person who is supposed to call it, they don't get credit. This kind of game helps the kid to learn to look around, rather than to just play with their hand held games.

You can try to recite poetry. We had read "T'was the Night before Christmas" every night in December up to Christmas, and could say it from memory, almost. So that was fun to try. I still can almost do it and the kid is now 24. Of course if that doesn't work, you can tell any of the Christmas stories that you heard as a child. You can even tell the kids about what Christmas was like when you were a kid. I still remember that the only presents my Mom ever got for Christmas was an orange. Well, that was what she said. Somehow I think Grandma made her mittens or something else too.

You can always feed them snacks. If you do that, by the time you get where you are going, they will be really badly behaved and maybe sticky too. Then you can listen to those old women who say that your little darling is the spitting image of Uncle So and So and wait to see if the kid spits on them. Be careful of too many sweets since you don't want to have to clean up too much of a mess in the car. Throw up just makes the car smell awful.

There are ways to break up the sibling fight in the back seat. Of course my brother always got the better presents, except when I did. Not only did I not get a new Red Ryder, Compass in the Stock, BB gun, I wouldn't have wanted it, if I had gotten it. You can put the box with presents between the kids, or a pile of pillows as long as they don't open the presents, or start a pillow fight. Sometimes it is better to put a parent in the back and a child in the front. Eventually the kids will learn the consequences of misbehavior and they will stop it. But that means that the parents have to correct it every time in a consistent manner.

If all else fails, cut some eye holes in a paper bag and put it over their head. They might think it was fun. Let them color the bag if they want. Ask them what they expect to happen after they get where you are going, and make sure that their expectations have some basis in reality. Grandma is not going to give them new, nicer parents, and probably not their own space ship, or a pony. That way they won't be too disappointed when they find that they have to go home with the same old family they came with.

I hope my ideas have produced some smiles. Behind every idea played for laughs, there is a germ of a method of occupying a child on a holiday trip and helping the kid and you cope with the travel. Being serious is over rated.