During the ninth hour of a ten hour trip my three year old once asked, "How much longer?" I told her we'd be there in a few more minutes. My five year old (who could tell time and liked to be precise) began to argue that we were in fact still more than 30 minutes away. I explained to her that toddlers can't tell time, so an answer of 5 minutes is just as good as an answer of 30 minutes. I told her that we could say anything, and it wouldn't matter. My five year old then turned to her sister and said, "Don't worry, we'll be there in a circus." It seemed as good an answer as any, and it has been our traveling motto ever since. We'll be there in a circus! That about sums up most of our trips.
The hardest part of travel for little kids can be their inability to measure time. A trip seems like forever when you don't know how long it will take. And even if you've answered the, "How much longer?" question a million times, your answer will still be meaningless to a toddler who doesn't know the difference between a minute and an hour. Here are two techniques I use to help my toddlers gauge the length of our trip.
First is the Dora Method. We pick two major landmarks and repeat them all through the trip. "First we go through the tall forest, then we cross over the big dam, and then we get to Grandma's house!" Then when we pass through the tall forest, the toddler recognizes that you are making progress on your trip.
The next method is using your body as a map. When we leave our house we say we are at our toes, and the top our head is our destination. When the kids ask how much farther we have to go or where we are, we give answers like "We are at your knees" or "We are almost to your eyebrows!" Again this helps kids to see that we are progressing towards our destination and the trip won't last forever.
For more travel tips, check out our other post on traveling with kids.
Marcia
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