What can I do for my baby who hates riding in the car?
My 12 month old baby HATES riding in the car. He started in an infant-carrier style seat. We then switched him to a more comfortable rear-facing seat. Recently, we turned that same seat around to be forward facing. We’ve tried giving him toys, a sipee cup, putting a mirror on the seat he faces. It doesn’t matter if the trip is for 5 minutes or 45 minutes. He starts screaming the second he realizes that we are putting him in his car seat. He gets so upset that he gets red splotches all over his face and he throws up. Sometimes, we can entertain him by playing peekaboo or giving him Cheerios, but this only keeps him calm for a few minutes. My mother-in-law suggested that he may have motion sickness.
Is there anything that we can do to make riding in the car less of a nightmare?
I think that Nimo2 is right. The other answers were good, but I’ve tried those things or variations of them and nothing seems to work. I was afraid that it was a stage that we would have to suffer through.
What I think that I’ll try though is getting him to sit or play around the car seat outside of the car as was suggested (THANK YOU). Just looking at the seat makes him cry. Maybe getting him used to the seat in a happy non-car environment will help.
Tagged with: car environment • car seat • cheerios • few minutes • google • infant carrier • mirror • month old baby • mother in law • motion sickness • nightmare • peekaboo • red splotches • riding in the car • script type • style seat • text javascript • variations
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Have you tried changing carseats. Maybe he is not comfy anymore. Take the car seat in the house and let him play with it. Let him use it to watch tv and to play on. Let him play in while you are in the car, not driving down the road. If you are working outside let him play in the car , without the keys in it. Once he knows it is not something bad he will calm down. Do you have a portable DVD player? Take a movie that he has started to watch at home and move it to the car.
always bring a pacifeyer
Give him toy cars to play with before getting into the car and explain to him the purpose of a car ride and tell him that u want to take him to see the animals in a park…elephants, turtles, etc…make the noise of a car so he understands that this is what a car does…he may feel alone or abandoned in the back seat if no one is there…Try to make sure someone can sit in the back seat with him so he can be distracted with his favorite toys…tell him that his stuffed animal rabbit ( for example) wants to go for a fun ride and go bye bye with him…and in the car , put relaxing music on …Try some new age music or classical.
It’s probably just a stage he is going through. My daughter did that, my friend’s son did that. I can remember that every single car trip we took in the car, whether it be just to the store or to the next town, would be miserable. My daughter would cry the entire time and nothing we would do help. Then one day she just stopped doing that and would either nap or happily play and babble. I bet at 12 months he just doesn’t like being confined to his car seat. Be patient and he’ll outgrow it like my daughter did.