Prevention Can Be Best Cure for Carsick-Prone Kids.
For some kids, traveling down the highway or going for an afternoon drive can bring on a wave of the “ickies” … feelings of nausea, headache, dizziness, and even vomiting. But before you dose your child with medicine, try these prevention tips first:

* Serve a light snack and drink before leaving. Yes, that may mean more stops for the bathroom, but when you have a carsick-prone tot, frequent stops and stretches aren’t a bad thing. Just be sure the snacks aren’t loaded with sugar and caffeine, or you’ll have a different sort of problem on your hands.

* Forget the games and books. Focusing on video play, reading a book, or watching a video on a small screen can heighten the feeling of carsickness. Instead, play car games with your child that encourage her to look out the window and keep her eyes on the horizon.

Interactive car-friendly activities also can help, such as giving your child a small tray to hold with modeling clay (if you dare) or building blocks or something to manipulate.

* Crack a window and keep fresh air on his face. The wind will often keep the feelings of nausea at bay. Just let your child determine the level of the “blast.”

*If you need to use medicine, be sure to use child-friendly ones, and check with your child’s pediatrician first, if possible, before administering. Medications that reduce nausea will typically cause significant drowsiness. On long car trips, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing (although it can throw off schedules). Be prepared for sleep by giving your child a comfy pillow and blanket or drape to make the car ride as positive of an experience as possible.

What price to entertain our children? How much entertainment do our children need? At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy duddy, how were children entertained a 100 years ago when there were no television or computer games? Very simply I would imagine.

Imagination – The key to all adventures. Babies and small children will play with simple things like empty boxes, clothes pegs, pots and pans. To them they are all sorts of things because they use their imagination. They don’t expect to be entertained with expensive toys or computer systems they just need to touch and feel things to have fun. Simple songs with actions will be remembered well beyond childhood years and hopefully be passed on to the next generation of children needing to be entertained. Dressing up, making things out of cardboard and paper, the possibilities are endless all that is needed is a little imagination.

Birthday parties used to be simple affairs, nowadays our children expect to have an entertainer or bouncy castle at their parties. Whatever happened to pass the parcel or blind mans buff? The more entertainment we provide for our children the more they seem to need.

Today’s society seems to dictate the trend, maybe we should all try and steer our children gently back to simple entertainment. Switch the ‘telly’ off, dig out the board games, if you can survive the moans and groans of your children then you might just be able to persuade them that entertainment needn’t be just by means of televisions and computers. You can have fun together. You can talk and communicate and entertain each other. Go out to the theatre, see a pantomime, all good fun ways of entertaining the whole family. Memories are precious, if you have a great family night out and have fun together, you will keep the memory for a long time.

Small children used to be given colouring books and pencils, now the trend is to plonk them down in front of the television and let it entertain them. Who knows what information they are subjected to. Children will learn to be inactive, not a healthy pastime.

How often have you heard the words “I am bored”. Does this mean the child needs to be entertained? Certainly not, if you were to suggest that you can find something for them to do you will find that your child miraculously finds something to entertain them.

Something as simple as playing with a ball can be healthy, amusing, fun, and the more people taking part in the game the merrier. Which one of us hasn’t been involved in a football game or game of cricket or rounders, which has grown into an incredible amount of people on both sides. Who cared who won? Playing and entertaining you was all that mattered and it was healthy!

Interaction with others will stand our children in good stead by teaching them social skills and encouraging them to lead a healthy active lifestyle. So encourage your children to go on out there, go with them, entertain, be entertained and have fun !!!