I remember as a mom and traveling with Suzanne when she was little, and later on when Charlie was little and even with the best planning in place, snacks and games and toys to keep the kids busy, something always would happen. More times than not, Suzanne would have to pee when she was here.
Then when David and I would take a road tip with Charlie he would just be hollering are we there yet. If we brought one of Charlie’s friends with us they would be saying, “I’m bored, I’m bored, are we there yet?” And it just, it would get to be so much that David and I would just pull over and have to reset.
Thank the Lord we always packed an extra bag of toys and things for Charlie for the first part of the trip, the second part of the last part of the trip, and then a new bag for the way back home. Because if not, we would have never made it to our destination.
Even with all of that, there were still moments where everything would just hit at once. Somebody would be upset, somebody would be whining, somebody would need something right now, and it would feel like the whole car was just overloaded all at the same time. And in those moments, I learned real quick that you can’t fix everything while it’s happening. You just have to bring everything back down first.
That’s what this really is. Not a perfect system. Not something fancy. Just a reset plan for when everything feels like it’s too much. When things start to rise inside the car, the first thing I had to learn was not to match it. Not to argue louder, not to over-explain, not to try to solve every single problem at once.
Because once everybody is already worked up, more talking doesn’t calm it down, it usually just adds to it. The goal in that moment is not fixing everything. The goal is just stopping it from climbing any higher. Have everyone sit quietly and breath for 5 minutes.
And one of the fastest ways I learned to do that was changing the sound. Turning the music down, switching it to something softer, or even just turning everything off for a minute. That little bit of quiet can break the cycle. It gives everybody a second to breathe without even realizing they’re resetting.
Then I would do a quick mental check of the simple stuff. Were they hungry, thirsty, too hot, or uncomfortable? Because so many times, what looked like attitude was really just a basic need that got missed. And once you meet that need, everything else usually starts to settle down too.
After that, I stopped trying to fix everything at once. I started just picking one thing. One snack. One stop coming up. One small change in seating or activity. Just one thing that everyone could feel shift. Because trying to do five things at once never helped anything. It just made the moment feel even more chaotic.
And there were times when even that wasn’t enough, and we just had to pull over and reset completely. Not as a punishment, not with lectures, just stopping the car safely, getting everybody out, and letting them move. Stretching, walking, breathing, just getting out of that tight space for a few minutes. Because sometimes the body just needs to reset before the behavior can. And once things calmed down, we’d get back in and keep going. Not perfectly, but better than where we were.
And what I learned over the years is that mid-trip chaos doesn’t mean something is wrong with you as a parent or that the trip is ruined. It just means everybody hit their limit at the same time in a small space. And instead of trying to force it through, sometimes the best thing you can do is reset everything so you can keep going without everything falling apart. Because most of the time, it isn’t about fixing every moment. It’s about giving everybody enough calm to find their way back down again.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
