When Your Kid Gets Car Sick
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If your kid regularly gets car sick or it runs in the family, a road trip can seem like a scary adventure. You never know when your child might feel queasy on the road, so pack a box of supplies for cleaning up so you’re prepared for car sickness.
Whether you’re just running errands or going on a Road Trip, it’s important to have a Car Sickness Kit on hand. Here’s how to put one together, including motion sickness remedies for kids, throw up bags, and cleaning supplies.
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Family road trips can be great fun and create fantastic memories for parents and children alike. While Road Trip Snacks and Travel Essentials for Family Trips are important things to plan for, so is the inevitable bout of car sickness.
Yes, you hate to think about it. But, when your child hollers, “Mom, I feel sick!” from the backseat as you tool along the Five with no place to stop, you’re going to have to think about it. So, plan ahead.
Why It Matters
Both my girls tend toward car sickness. Experience — like when both of them threw up in the car two days in a row — has taught me to be prepared for car sickness.
Trying to clean up the Rapunzel doll’s hair in the aftermath is no fun. Trust me.
You never know when your child might feel queasy on the road, so pack a Car Sickness Kit and keep it in the car. You’ll feel so thankful you’re ready to face the challenge.
FAQs
The following health information is not to replace the medical advice of a doctor.
The Mayo Clinic explains that car sickness, a type of motion sickness occurs when your child’s brain gets confusing information from the eyes, inner ear, and nervous system, such as when they feel the movement of the car, but because their vision is blocked by a large seat, the movement and their view don’t match up. The same can happen on amusement park rides.
Normally healthy people can experience motion sickness symptoms which typically go away about 4 hours after the motion has ceased. Should these persist, be sure to seek medical care.
For persistent nausea and vomiting, contact your family physicians’ office and ask the doctor or nurse for their advice.
Things to help you prevent car sickness or treat motion sickness symptoms:
They say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” If you can prevent your child from getting car sickness to begin with, so much the better.
We’ve used trial and error over the last few years, and now have a complete arsenal of preventive methods.
To avoid car sickness, consider packing these items:
- child-size sea bands
- peppermint or ginger candies
- Children’s Dramamine
- peppermint or lavender essential oils – either diluted in a rollerball or drops placed on the sea bands
We use these in combination on long road trips, particularly since our daughter gets anxious about the idea of traffic and getting sick.
Some of them may have a placebo affect, but my motto is “whatever works when puke’s involved.”
Things to help you in the event of car sickness:
All the prevention methods in the world won’t clean up the mess, so it’s important to keep these items on hand for when the worst really does happen.
I keep these things on hand:
- paper towels – for wiping up
- disinfecting wipes – for sanitizing
- large plastic cups or ziptop freezer bags – these can stand in for vomit bags.
- mini can of Lysol – for fumigating and sanitizing
- squirt bottle or bottled water – for wiping off car seats, seat belts, and Rapunzel’s tangled doll hair (don’t ask)
- plastic trash bags – to contain all the trash and mucked up clothes
- hand sanitizing spray – to clean up the parents and helpers
It is now standard operating procedure to hand the boys puke bags so that they can hand them to their sisters should they get sick en route. And if they miss the vomit bag, well, we’re prepared for clean up duty, too.
More Family Travel Tips
What works for you?
Leave a comment below and let us know what works for you.
This post was originally published June 7, 2011. It has been updated for content and clarity.
Sea bands and chewing gum help me deal with car sickness, so I try to have them on hand for the kiddos as well.
We do gallon sized ziploc bags. A much bigger opening to get sick into, and seals to make disposal easier. I always take them with us 🙂
Oh, this was me. First day of a 3-week car trip, I threw up half an hour from home. I remember a lot of throwing up that trip… and I was 5. On the other hand, I now have AWESOME aim when it comes to hitting whatever happens to be the target – the giant trash can on the train (yep, been that commuter), the barf bucket (the old school tupperware rock), the plastic bag in the trash can (I feel sorry for the kid who had to take that trash out), the airplane bag.
Tips: always always always teach your children to check for something to throw up in when they get in the car. Not when they already feel sick, but before the car (or train or plane) is even going. I’ve also been that person who’s bothered the flight attendant for a barf bag when I sit down, everybody not even boarded. If you can, take a nap. If you can’t, don’t read, don’t look sideways out the window. Look straight ahead, sit in front or middle of backseat if possible. Clear soda helps a lot. Don’t eat before traveling, or if you do, make it something dry and easy – crackers, pretzels, rice chex. Benadryl and dramamine are also drug options if you aren’t opposed to that.
Oh, good luck. Poor girls. It gets better when you’re old enough to drive.
@Molly, I agree with everything you’ve said, Molly. I was the carsick one as a child. So far, thankfully, none of my kids take after me in that regard. As soon as I could sit in the front, it helped immensely. Driving is even better, but passenger seat isn’t bad. I still can’t read in the car.
My kids would miss a plastic cup every time. We take a bathroom garbage can with a plastic bag liner in it–zero mess when they throw up in the bucket and we throw away the garbage bag at the next rest stop!
I used to get car sick as kid once in awhile. I definitely found that I cannot look down and do anything. It is much better in the front seat too, although that is not going to work for little kids. The other thing I found when I was a kid was that munching on pretzels really helped. I’m not sure why, but I learned to always have pretzels in the car with me.
I have 2 kids who tend to car sickness so I am careful what they drink/eat prior to the trip (NO oj, etc) and then I make sure to have wipes and a change of clothes very very handy (not packed in suitcase) and plastic bags to seal the dirty clothes. Since room in the car is at a premium, I usually pack their toys and stuff near their feet in the car – every trip now I then take extra towels and our waterproof crib sheets from back in the day and spread them on top of anything on the floor – if someone gets sick, I can just whip off that layer and bag it – the stuff underneath is protected. I carry extra towels (old hand towels etc) near the back seat so the older kids can hand them to whomever is not feeling well. Definitely being prepared helps!! I never want to relive one trip where we had to dig through our luggage for clean clothes, which mean emptying a ton of stuff from the trunk to get to the kids clothes!!! We also tell the kids to look up from whatever they are doing every 15 mins or so and crack a window if someone is feeling icky.
My son gets really carsick- we found that they know have wristband for carsickness that do work wonderful – we have tried them on a couple trips and they did the trick – we got ours at Rite-aid for about $8 – so worth it – and yes lego’s are not fun to clean up either 🙂
The last time we went on a plane trip, I made it a point to pick up a few extra air sick bags (although the are kind of tough to come by on airlines these days). I have them stored in my glove box….just in case!
Whenever we visit an Urgent Care Clinic or Emergency Room we grab a couple extra barf bags there. They work even better than the airline sick bags!
ohhh….ohhhh. hehe. Thanks for the real life tips yet again 🙂 I’m so lucky that none of us ever got car sick … that would just sooo ruin a pleasant trip 🙂 You keep crackers somewhere too?
For carsickness, I also keep a bottle of crystallized ginger that I get from the spice aisle in the grocery store. When the kids (or I) start to feel queasy, I give them a small handful to munch on. Ginger works well as a motion sickness remedy, surprisingly enough. (Mythbusters confirmed!)