Car Sick Kids? Best Tips for dealing with Car Sickness!

Sorry I “Brought it up!”

Car sickness has plagued parents since cars were invented! Luckily moms and dads have all kinds of tricks for coping with it.

Mom’s Minivan readers were asked to submit their Best Car Sickness Tips and their Worst Barf Stories! These car sickness treatment tips worked for the parents who submitted them, but you may find that only certain ones or a combination of some of the techniques will work for you.

Best Tips for Prevention or Treatment:

Peppermints…lots of LifeSaver Peppermints, or peppermint candies. Keep a supply in the car
Ginger snap cookies. Eat a couple before you start the trip and then periodically during the trip. This tip was recommended by several readers!
Avoid reading in the car, particularly on winding bumpy roads. Be sure to keep eye focus mainly to front. This helps the brain process sensory data and avert the vertigo.
Use Seabands, which are wrist bands with a small round metal button that presses into the inside of each wrist. They are tight & work by acupressure. Some people swear by them! Also called, “No Queeze Wrist Bands”
Place the child in the middle of the backseat so they can see out the front, rather than the sides, which can appear as a blur.
Pick a spot as far away as you can see and just focus on that for a few minutes not the road whizzing by
Breath deep through your mouth, not your nose.
Stick your hand out the window, just a little bit; whether it is 100 degrees or 10 degrees.
Fresh water and saltine crackers
Keep empty 3-pound butter tubs in the van with their covers, so that in case of an accident, you can re-cover the tub until you reach a place you can empty and rinse it out.
Keep plenty of lollipops on hand. You can even get special motion sickness ones called Queasy Pops.
A cool face cloth. The minute someone feels that urge come on, hand them a peppermint and have them place the cool face cloth on their forehead.
Ginger root capsules, ginger ale and plain cake donuts!!
An ice pack applied to the back of the neck — ten minutes on, ten minutes off — works wonders.
Wear wrap around sun glasses
Take Benadryl or Drammamine about 1-1/2 hour prior to drive. Don’t wait until you are already on the road or it will be too late. Consult a doctor if necessary before using!
Keep a bottle of Fabreeze to get rid of accident odors
Never travel without a big tub of wet wipes!
Keep an extra change of clothing easily available for all travelers

Be prepared for the Worst!

Have a Bio Pack cleanup kit to clean up the mess! I like to call it a yack pakc! It’s a spill kit for travel. Also, be sure to keep barf bags on hand in the car if you have a frequent barfer!

Barf clean up kit — **Get a yak pack!**
Best barf cleaner ever!

Sadly, I am a minor expert when it comes to kids blowing chow in my minivan.

Readers’ Carsick Stories:

These will make you laugh until you … uh… hurl.
At the very least they will make you feel like you are not the only one who has ever had a child who should have been named “Ralph”. Read on only if you do not have a weak stomach!

A child who got sick? Yes that would have been me and the one I remember the most is the ride back from Girl Scout camp after being feed a “breakfast” of donuts and Koolaid I was taken home in the back of a station wagon facing backward and needless to say it only took me about 10 minutes to get sick, and the kicker is I can still to this day remember the little brother of the driver yelling “Mom, Mom Look what Sherry did!” To make it worse we still had 40 minutes worth of drive time. Not fun LOL Sherry

We were headed to Bend for a basketball tournament (all weekend long), it is 3 hours away over a large mountain pass. At the top of the pass, my son Robby puked on his sister and her friend, on their uniforms and in their bags. It was 18 degree’s out and we couldn’t roll down the windows. When we finally found a restaraunt, I had to buy something to use their restroom. Christine

My 11 yr. old son always get car sick if we have to travel far. The worst time was when he was just 2 yrs old. We were on our way to a camping trip and he was strapped in his car seat and we were driving around this road that just kept going and going around a mountain. Next thing I knew he barfed all over me (who was sitting next to him) so we pulled on the side of the road and we both got cleaned up. well…this was not the end of it..after we got back in the car he barfed a total of 5 more times. By the time we got to our campsite him and I BOTH were cover head to toe in barf!! I must’ve looked horrible stepping out of that car!! everyone was laughing except me of course! My son was just happy to get out of the car! Our car smelled so bad for days! ewwwww 🙂 Christina

My now 11 year old daughter started getting car sick when she was 4 years old. A friend told me to buy Seabands, which are wrist bands with a small round metal thing that presses into the inside of each wrist. They are tight & work by accupressure. THEY REALLY DO WORK!! A few summers ago, we drove from central Indiana to Memphis, TN & she didn’t get sick at all. She forgot to wear them once on the way back from the dentist office & got car sick. She had corn for lunch at school that day. It wasn’t pretty to clean up! Also, I keep a roll of paper towels, a couple of plastic grocery bags, wipes, and Lysol spray in my van, just in case. We have 3 or 4 sets of sea bands. They can be found in the pharmacy section with the over the counter motion sickness medication. I sometimes get headaches while riding & wear the sea bands when the headache starts. The headache goes away! Nisha (Editor’s note: Also called, “No Queeze Wrist Bands”.

My husband bought a old beat up 1977 Winnebago for us to take on vacation last summer. My six year old daughter, the black toy poodle, my hubby, and piled on in for an adventurous trip from NC to Montana. Everything was fine until we got to about Alabama. Both poodle and little girl got sick. Projectile vomiting – no kidding. Of course, I am panicking as my hubby drives us down this bumpy road and vomit gets flung everywhere! We had to take an extra day to clean it up, but we did finally make it to Montana and had a wonderful time hiking and camping. Sara

The only time I got carsick was driving through the mountains of the Carolinas when I was a kid. I can almost get sick again thinking about the experience. I live in a very flat place, Florida, and it was so different than what I was used to, is what did it for me. I think it would help whoever is driving would slow down a bit when going up and down and around those mountainous roads. Taking breaks would help too. So would giving passengers more of a sense of control. Also try not to take the windingest roads in the area. Yuck! Can I barf now? Daphne

About 20 yrs ago we were traveling with 5 small children across southeastern Mo. We stopped for breakfast in a small town as we had gotten up early to travel as we had no air conditioning …… we stopped in a small town for breakfast and everyone that lived in the town had to be in there… I think it was the only place to eat… Well the kids all had french toast and syrup for breakfast… we paid out bill and got on the road. About an hour later Lisa started to throw up and i passed back a swim towel to her, (couldn’t stop along the road as there were no shoulders to get off on) it wasn’t long until we had all of the children throwing up and I was running out of towel… so I turned around and said hold out your shirts and catch it we will stop as quick as possible…. Finally we found a filling station with only an out house… Much to my pleasure, the station attendant felt sorry for me and got me a bucket of hot soapy water to start cleaning the kids and the car with….I gave it a lot of thought for a few yrs afterwards about traveling with my children… I have often wondered if that entire town got sick after they ate at that restaurant…. (anonymous)

When I was a kid… we had a 5th wheel which we towed (of course) behind a big ol’ ford pickup… well if we were getting sick in the 5th while in transit the signal was to turn on the light over the door of the 5th wheel… while no one driving saw it and my brother enjoyed watching older sister projectile vomit across canada hahahahaha. I think it is against the law now to let your children ride in the 5th wheel? Charlene