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The car....

post #1 of 9
5/24/03 at 11:16pm
Thread Starter 
My DS is 8 months old now and has been crawling for a month and a half now and ever since he started crawling car rides have been pure hell!!!!!!!!! He screams forever!!!! I have to pull over two to three times for a half hour ride. I can't take it. One would think he would calm down after a few monutes but no!!! What am I going to do? DH and I don't like the CIO mentality but, how do we fix this for the car?? We have to go out places and do what we need to do. We are at a loss any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

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post #2 of 9
5/25/03 at 1:03am
sorry, i have no help for you. this is exactly how dd is. she HATES the car if she is back there by herself. i can only drive once she is sleeping. so i plan my tris around the time she naps and walk/nurse her to sleep and then put her in the seat.

i have been so frustrated by this, but i can't blame her for not wanting to be by herself, after all she never leaves my sling unless she is crawling aruond in the room i am in. so i just realize that this will pass and move my activiteis around or bring my nieghbor with me as entertainment or take the bus (much easier)
post #3 of 9
5/25/03 at 1:46am
just want to say i empathize with you. my dds, especially dd2, absolutely hated car rides. i kept thinking she would soon grow out of it, but she was two years old before it really let up much (dd1 was around a year began liking it). we had to seriously curtail our car rides being very strategic about when and where we went. very inconvenient, but what can you do? just letting her cry didn't feel right anymore than it would if we were in the house. we never found any real "tricks" to help...just had to work with each situation uniquely. no fun...good luck...and stay home as much as possible. hopefully it'll get better for you soon.
post #4 of 9
5/25/03 at 2:00am
same boat here too.

if you feel comfortable with it, my dd is pretty content if i give her something edible, like a teething biscuit. i worry a little about chocking when i'm not looking, but she doesn't seem to get any pieces off - it just turns to mush.

it really seems to help though.
post #5 of 9
5/25/03 at 2:10am
Well... this is going to sound bad but I continue to drive when Cole cries, unless he is *really* freaking out. If he's losing it then I pull over but only if he's *really* losing his sh*#. Otherwise, it's "too bad, Cole - it's not going to kill you!" It's unconditional - if the car is moving, he's in his car seat, and we drive until we reach our destination, that's it. Unless, like I said, he's really crying hard - then we pull over and take him out and comfort him. We try to avoid this, though. He has gone through phases where he cries in his car seat but he has gotten over them. It is hard and you do have to limit the car trips but they do get over them. This is one of the very few instances in which I will just let him cry. I do want to note, however, that I rarely take a car trip that is longer than 15 min. - if I did, and he cried, I would probably take him out for a few minutes halfway through.

I just read this post over again and I realize I am sending a mixed message - i.e. we just let him cry, that's it! and, sometimes we stop the car and take him out. LOL. Well, that's our parenting in a nutshell. We have hard-and-fast rules that are broken under certain circumstances.
post #6 of 9
5/25/03 at 6:06am
Thread Starter 
So glad I'm not the only one!!!!!!
post #7 of 9
5/26/03 at 6:19pm
Wow...and before I came to this board I thought I had the wierd kid who didn't "love his carseat/carrides!" I don't know if you have tried this, but I have found that keeping a hanging mobile for him to bat at, pull on & chew on is good. He also has a mirror to flirt with himself in -- that way I can also see him when I am in the front seat. And some people pull out the pacifier only for car-rides. We use ours more often than that, but try to not go crazy. We clip the paccie onto his shoulder strap thingy (technical term ) so we can find it by reaching back & following the cord to give it back to him.

What has worked by far the best, is me sitting back there playing with him & talking to him while the dh plays chauffer! Good luck!
post #8 of 9
5/26/03 at 11:16pm
Quote:
Originally posted by cinnamonamon

What has worked by far the best, is me sitting back there playing with him & talking to him while the dh plays chauffer! Good luck!
We do this too. When I have to drive him by myself I have a stash of toys in the front, some that he loves that I save for the car only, that I will pass back to him from the front seat. I also have that see-in-back mirror thing so we can make eye contact in the mirror.

DS still flips out sometimes but it's gotten a lot better since we switched from the baby bucket to the Britax Marathon, I think because he's more upright, can see out, and is more comfortable. Have you moved to a bigger car seat yet?

Sometimes nothing helps.....I laugh bitterly at all the parents who advised me to use the car to put ds to sleep.....as if.
post #9 of 9
5/27/03 at 11:32am
Yes, dd isn't too thrilled about riding in the car, either. No one in my family lives closer than 1 1/2 hours away, so it's a bummer. Yesterday my parents visited & we ended up driving around a while. Of course dd smiled & "talked" & just generally charmed the pants of them the whole time. Little goof.