Traveling With Teens

AMANDA SMITH

Making the long and slightly mundane trip from Omaha to Denver in a car the size of a shoe box with two adults and three girls — ages 12, 13 and 14 — is anything but boring. After an eight-hour adventure like that you are bound to learn a few things.

Should you find yourself traveling with teens, I’ve come up with a few slightly unconventional ways to keep the madness at bay. 1. Have only healthy snacks on hand. This was a trick I realized all too late. Thanks to my over consumption of liquid products, we stopped far more often than I intended. As a result, we picked up a few more snacks than we should have. In the future, however, I will stick to packing only fruits and vegetables and stopping only when absolutely necessary. If your arsenal contains only healthy snacks, they have no choice but to eat them. Teenagers get hungry often, and if they really want something to eat, they’ll eat the good stuff.

2. Leave early enough so they sleep

most of the ride. It has been my experience that teenagers despise early mornings — and even more so in the summer. Unfortunately for us, this only worked on the way to Colorado. For some reason, the ride home turned into chat-thirty, but those

TIPS FOR SURVIVING A LONG ROAD TRIP WITH TEENS

first several hours we spent in silence were much appreciated. We knew it would get crazy sooner rather than later, so the early morning wake-up call helped us postpone the inevitable. 3. Turn on classic rock. Or some other radio station they aren’t particularly into. This may seem mean, but, while it didn’t start out as intentional, we did have to giggle at its effectiveness. When they weren’t fighting over who was singing what badly, they seemed to not argue as much. They each found something to entertain themselves with — whether it was sleeping, playing on an electronic device or reading a book. 4. Bring earplugs. Now, this isn’t a trick I tried, but it definitely would have proved useful on the ride home when they started getting wild. When you are riding with three teenage girls, things are bound to get loud. There isn’t much you can do to stop that — especially when you are in a small, confined space. Earplugs — or even headphones — would help mitigate the noise so you can still hear yourself think when you finally arrive at your destination.

Sadly, I can’t say these suggestions will always work. What I can say is that our trip was unforgettable. There were a lot of laughs and even some happy tears. The fact that we all survived is just a surprising bonus.