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.
When child #3 got sick on every long trip we took, we made sure to pack baking soda with the other clean up supplies. Sprinkle it on the seat and floor to help with the odor after cleaning.
Thankfully, he’s outgrown this, and now he just needs some dramamine at the beginning of the trip.
Ha Ha! I have an almost identical kit in my car. My Little M knew how to throw up in a bag by the time she was 2. . .poor little thing!
I got horribly car sick as a child. Here are my tips:
Dramamine does wonders, if nothing else, because it knocks you out. When you’re that sick, sleep is a relief.
Make sure that your kids have fun things that are audio based, so they don’t have to be watching a movie or even playing licence plate bingo. Those visual things make car sickness worse.
Sitting in the front seat helps, or as close to the front of the car as possible, ideally looking out the windshield.
Allow me to suggest a ziplock bag to puke in. Easier target to hit and easier cleanup than a cup. Just seal and deliver to the nearest trash can.
We have one with Sensory Processing Disorder as well, who has thrown up on many a flight and car ride. We finally got Zofran (or there is a cheap generic eqivalent now) from our Pediatrician – it was been extremely helpful in preventing the unpleasantness. We also eat ginger chews (made by, of course The Ginger People) as we take off and land. They are helpful in settling things down a bit and a welcome distraction.
My 2yo DD randomly gets sick in the car – I assume it’s carsickness – but it can occur on a 5 minute trip or a 60 minute trip, on a straight road or a windy drive. I can’t find any rhyme or reason to it. All the things listed for the car sick kit sound great & I should have more of them on hand. My MIL got me some of these from the hospital she works at – Eme-Bags. They’re great, and are easy to keep on hand, use, contain the contents & them dispose of. I showed my DD how to hold it in front of her mouth & she did it just right from the start. Now she just tells me that she has to barf & I hand her the bag. 🙂
http://www.mpsmedicalsupply.com/Eme-Bag-Sic-Sac?gclid=CLzu89zCpKkCFYWK4AodymL0LQ
We have a kid who gets car sick, too. His first bout with it was when he was 5 months old and we were traveling in Italy with the kids. Worst sound ever to hear it without warning from a rear facing babe. Thankfully since we were still in diapers we had a change of clothes for him, and wipes, but getting the stink out of the car seat while traveling was not easy.
Fast forward 7 years and he still gets car sick every so often. He actually has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and he has overly sensitive vestibular senses which means he feels motion more than others and is less able to regulate. At least now we know why he gets car sick. We keep those kidney shaped plastic buckets from the hospital in our car (grabbed extra when we had some day surgery and then when #3 was born). Also keep a roll of paper towels and plastic bags. Most of the time he can tell us now and we pull over and he gets sick on the side of the road. He has Sea Bands that he wears on long trips and sometimes we give him Dramamine.
Thanks for this post! My 3 yr old has recently begun to car sick when we are on longer trips so we’ve also found the need to have supplies handy for cleanup and damage control! lol The box is a great idea, that way I can just keep it in the car instead of trying to remember what all I need each time. 🙂 Plastic bags are also nice for containing yucky clothes when the bucket doesn’t get there in time.
Ohhh, my daughter gets carsick ALOT too. Poor kid. We’ve learned to bring along empty ice cream buckets (with the lid!). That way if she needs to throw up and I can’t pull over fast enough, it’s contained. Plus we can put the lid on and just toss it at the next rest stop. Thank goodness she’s old enough now to be able to predict when she’s going to be sick. It was a nightmare when she was a toddler! lol
Don’t forget to give each child a bag (especially if they are known to get sick) so if they do get sick there won’t be much to clean up. I have given my oldest a small brown paper lunch sack with a small plastic produce bag inside so it wouldn’t go through the paper bag. It works.
We use ziploc bags or plastic grocery bags (my 6yo wouldn’t be able to contain it into a cup, either). I line grocery bags with a couple paper towels in case of any tiny holes that may drip through the car.
We also keep peppermints & ginger in the car. Altoids makes both kinds and I also find small tins of them at the HFS.