BY NOW YOU may have already been on or are preparing to go on a nice long road trip in the car with your smallies for a summer day out or some full-on Griswold Family Vacation style fun.

As juggly as the summer months can be for working parents, when you finally get some time off to head out and about, enjoy some fine weather and do something nice with your kids while they are still young, it feels priceless.

As lovely as it is though, the journey to get there can be a bit like your penance. At times, it can make you question your own sanity and why you thought cooping up your young children in a small space for a long time was really such a good idea?

Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

My children are at an age where car journeys are much easier now. I’m not getting full of myself about that just yet, because we’re not properly out of the woods. Things can, and do still, go off a cliff at the drop of a hat. Be it one brother touching the other, one putting a foot on the other’s side of the car, or one of them doing something as innocent as looking at the other, things can get tetchy fast.

My advice is don’t be afraid to go hard on packing the back seat with amusements. Be it movies on the tablet, their Nintendo Switches, audiobook players, colouring books and markers, comic books, physical books, travel board games, or even the messy stuff like slime and kinetic sand.

If it buys you a quiet stretch of even 20 minutes on your journey, then do it. The other non-negotiable is to pack snacks to the max. Most of the kid car-related problems stem from hunger, so load up the back seats with food like there’s a zombie apocalypse coming, rescind any........

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