Why driving time can be family time

MANILA, Philippines – Every family has its own set of daily routines: morning rituals, evening get-togethers, and regular weekend dates. These, while fulfilling, can feel tiresome if you have been doing it repeatedly.

If you’ve been feeling like your family has been stuck doing the same things lately, just imagine how the kids feel.

What’s one of the best ways to shake things up? Pack your bags, buckle up, and hit the open road!

Taking a road trip is not always about where you end up; whom you do it with and what happens along the way are what truly matter.

During a long drive, your family can even pick up some wonderful values to take home. 

The virtue of patience

“Are we there yet?” or some version of it is a question that reached every parent’s ear thousands of times. Children are naturally restless and have short attention spans. The idea of sitting in a car for hours can be very unappealing to them. But there’s a good lesson waiting behind all that time spent sitting still.   

A road trip can teach your kids a lot about the value of patience or delayed gratification: to earn something worthwhile, one must be willing to wait or make a small sacrifice. During the drive, you can reward your kids’ patience with incentives like a stop for ice cream if they can stop asking “are we there yet?” or if they can stay focused on a game instead of throwing a tantrum. Learning this virtue will serve them well in school and later on when they’re all grown up. 

Make a game out of it

It’s true that road trips can go on for a very long time. But you can still use those long stretches of transit to have some bonding fun. One of the oldest and best ways to have fun in the car is to play road trip games with the family.

While stuck in traffic or during a long highway stretch, you can play a game of “I spy” with the kids, using whatever you see around you. With older kids, you can compete to see who can form the alphabet first using number plates on other cars. If you have a playlist handy, “name that tune” is always a hit and can keep the whole car guessing for a good while. 

These games are more than just means to pass the time – they can stimulate both yours and your children’s creativity and imagination.   

A team effort

Teaching children about giving and sharing can be challenging, especially when they’re still very young. Still, teamwork is one of the most important values necessary for a child’s proper development. Learning to work well with others can help improve your child’s social skills, maximize their ability to learn, and enable them to better reflect on their own actions. 

Next time you plan a trip, get your children involved. Give them some options on where to go and what to do and let them help you decide. You can also assign them tasks for the trip. For example, one child can be in charge of choosing where to eat while the other makes sure that the emergency kit is packed and ready to go. This system of working together and being considerate of others can also bring the family closer together.

A different look

Of course, every road trip has to end with a worthwhile destination, whether it’s a familiar place or somewhere completely new. A visit to faraway relatives can help your children reconnect with their roots. A summer workshop out of town can teach your children some new skills and allow them to make new friends. A museum stop can expand their knowledge beyond what school can teach them. 

At the end of the drive, what matters is that you’ve conquered a fulfilling experience together, and your family is all the better for it.  – Rappler.com