Four incidents in three years. Two of them Rowan, one of them Bramble, and one — the worst — both of them within about ninety seconds of each other, on the A1, in the rain.
I am writing this partly as a record and partly because the thing that fixed it was so simple that I resent the two years I spent not doing it.
Eyes up
He was looking down.
Every time. Down at a book, down at the tablet, down at a small plastic thing he was turning over in his hands. And the mechanism is not mysterious once somebody says it out loud: your inner ear knows the car is moving and your eyes, fixed on something eight inches from your face, insist it isn’t, and your brain makes a decision about that disagreement that nobody enjoys.
We moved him to the middle of the back seat, which has the clearest view forward, and the difference was immediate and slightly annoying. It is not the comfiest seat. It is the seat he sits in.
On the motorway a screen is fine — long straight lines, not much to disagree about. On the last four miles to my mum’s, which is a back road with a series of bends I could draw from memory, a screen is a guarantee. So the rule is that screens go away at the turning, and they go away before anybody feels anything.
The timing mistake
For two years I fed him when he said he felt sick, because I had somewhere picked up the idea that an empty stomach was worse.
I don’t know whether that’s true in general. In this car it was disastrous, twice.
What works is a small proper meal about an hour before we leave — actual food, at a table — and then nothing much in the seat except water. Not no snacks ever; we’re not monsters, and there’s a stop at Wetherby. But not a rolling supply of things in a pot, which is what we used to do, and which meant he was permanently in the middle of digesting something on a bend.
Stop at the first mention
There is a window, and it is about four minutes long, and it closes.
The first mention is usually not “I feel sick”. It’s going quiet, or asking how long is left in a particular flat voice, and Tom is better at spotting it than I am. When we pull over inside the window it costs us five minutes at the side of a road and then everyone’s fine. When we say “we’re nearly there, can you hang on”, it costs the seat cover.
We are nearly there is, in this specific context, a lie we tell ourselves rather than the child.
The kit
Door pocket, front left, checked before we set off:
Two carrier bags, wipes, a spare top in a bag, water, and a flannel sealed in a sandwich bag, which sounds odd and is the single most useful item. Cold flannel on the back of the neck, immediately, does something that I cannot explain and would not be without.
We tried the acupressure bands. I want to be fair here: several people I trust say they work, they cost about ten pounds, and nobody has paid us anything to say anything about them. For Rowan they did nothing I could detect over about eight journeys. That’s one child, which is not a study.
Anything you swallow, ask a pharmacist. There are age limits and timings and this is a notebook about our family, not advice about yours.
Bramble
The dog goes in the boot with the seats up, on an old towel, and does not eat for three hours before. She is fourteen and has been sick in every car we have ever owned, and I have made my peace with it.
Things people email to ask
- What helps a child who gets car sick?
- Getting their eyes on the horizon is the biggest single thing, and it costs nothing — car sickness is largely a mismatch between what the inner ear feels and what the eyes see, so looking down at a book or a screen makes it much worse. Cool air on the face, a cracked window, and stopping at the very first mention of feeling odd are the next three.
- Should a child eat before a long car journey?
- Yes, but before rather than during. A small proper meal about an hour before we set off works far better here than snacks in the seat, and the worst results we have had came from feeding a child who had already said they felt sick. Dry, plain things are fine; anything rich or fizzy is asking for it.
- Where is the best seat for a child who gets travel sick?
- Wherever they can see out of the front. In our car that means the middle of the back seat, which is not the most comfortable spot but has the clearest forward view, and it has made a noticeable difference. Facing forward, high enough to see over the front seats, and not directly behind a headrest is the shape you are aiming for.
- Do travel sickness bands and medicines work?
- The bands did nothing detectable for ours, though plenty of people I trust say otherwise, so they may be worth ten pounds of your own experiment. For anything you swallow, ask a pharmacist rather than the internet — there are age limits and timing that matter, and this is a family notebook, not medical advice. Nobody has paid us to mention anything here.
Where we checked
We are not experts in any of this. Where an entry touches something that has a proper answer, here is where the proper answer is.
Anna
Mid-thirties, former magazine copy editor, now works part-time from the kitchen table. Started this as a private record and only made it public because friends kept asking for the recipes.
If this was any use
Two hours forty, with everybody
The drive to my parents’ takes two hours forty without children. With two children and a fourteen-year-old dog it takes three and a half, and the extra fifty minutes are entirely under our control, which is the annoying part.
The camping trip that went sideways
One night. We booked one night, forty minutes from home, specifically so that it could fail — and it did fail, comprehensively, and we are going again in August.
Staying at my mum’s, and the travel cot years
Three nights in a house that is not childproofed, with a three-year-old who sleeps badly anywhere new, and a grandmother who would like to help and mostly cannot be told how.
Comments
They’re open, but they go through me first — every one is read and approved by hand, which is slow and occasionally very slow. Email is the fastest route, and I answer most of them.
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