10 Tips for Travel Sickness With Children

Travelling with children can be challenging enough – throw travel sickness into the equation and you bring a whole new meaning to the concept of challenging travel!  Having been there more times than I care to remember with our son we have pulled together a handy list of tips and remedies you might find useful as well.

What causes travel sickness?
Travel sickness, or motion sickness, is essentially caused by the brain not being able to match up different bits of information it is receiving.  For example, if you are reading a book in a moving car then your body and eyes are telling you that you are stationary, but your balance receptor in your inner ear is telling you that you are on the move.  Some people can handle this fine, others can’t and will start to feel nauseous, tired and generally unwell.

How to avoid it & how to deal with it.

1. Avoid large meals before and during traveling, particularly dairy & acidic foods/drinks.  That bowl of weetabix your son had for breakfast just doesn’t look that great when decorating the inside of your car!
2. Try the off the shelf travel sickness tablets before you travel – find one that works well for your child.
3. If you don’t like the idea of taking any form of medication there are travel sickness wristbands and aromatherapy products that might help.
4. Don’t let your child read for long periods on moving vehicles – get them to sit still and look out of the window so that their eyes are in tune with what is actually happening.
5. Take their mind off it – if your child is worried about feeling sick, the worry is probably just going to contribute to feeling unwell.  Instead, try to keep their mind off things.  If they complain that looking out of the window is boring then you might want to try some of our car travel activities which will keep them looking outside and distract them at the same time.
6. If your child feels sick and you can stop, then stop.  This is obviously not always immediately possible.  If you are in the car, then open the window to let some fresh air in and encourage them to take some deep breaths.  Nausea tends to go in waves so try and ‘coach’ them through each bout.  Most children like counting so you could get them to breathe in slowly for a count of 3 and out for a count of 3.  Count along with them to help them through the poorly phase.  Try getting them to breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth.  This will help calm their bodies down and give them something positive they can focus on doing.
7. If you are on a mode of transport where you can’t stop then try to find the place with the least motion and sit, or preferably lie, there.  If you are on a ferry, wrap up, get onto the deck, use the breathing exercises above and get your child to look at a point on the horizon, and if you can see land, then to focus on that.
8. If you carry a cool bag with you, take along a clean, damp flannel in a plastic bag and keep it in there.  Place it on their brow if they start to feel unwell and again, as well as soothing them, the act of holding it in place will give them something to do.
9. Carry a receptacle incase you do reach the point of no return and your child is going to be sick.  We find an old tupperware box works best as it something firm to hold onto, rather than a bag, and you can put a lid on it afterwards!
10. Finally,  if you are going on a journey with a child that is prone to travel sickness here is a useful checklist of items you should pack before you go.  We just pack them in a carrier bag and have it somewhere handy with us if we need it.

Checklist – essential travel sickness kit:

• Old tupperware box for child to hold if feeling sick
• Old towel to lay on their lap
• Wipes to clean up your child
• Antibacterial wipes to clean up any mess made
• Cool, damp flannel to soothe brow
• Plastic bags for peeling off any messy clothes into, and one for any rubbish – that way you can tie it all up and bin it as soon as you reach somewhere convenient.
• Change of clothes – just an old t-shirt and leggings/tracksuit bottoms will do.  Also for you!  This is from bitter experience of a bout of travel sickness whilst taking the ferry to France.  Our son threw up all over us and we didn’t have any spare clothes to put on.

Happy traveling!  If you have any other tips to share then why not let us know using the comments link on this page?