Do Your Children Get Car-sick?

If family road trips are becoming a nightmare for you and the kids and cleaning them and the car of vomit has become a usual occurrence, if cranky kids and ill tempers take away the fun of road trips, here are the reasons for their motion sickness and what you could do about it to help your family:

It’s in the genes! Motion sickness is genetic. If you or your partner had it as a child, there are more chances of your children having it.

The age factor. The problem is more common among children between the ages of 2 and 12, but it can happen at any age. Some children are more prone to motion sickness than others.

Kids can’t snap out of it. It’s not emotional. Scolding the kids and asking them to snap out of it or to behave themselves etc doesn’t work. Be patient with the child.

What happens:

Your child may complain of queasiness in the stomach, break into cold sweat, lose appetite, and feel fatigued and drowsy. Young children will get cranky, turn pale and start crying. This could lead to vomiting.

What you can do:

• Prevention is always better. Keep an eye on the symptoms that the child may complain of. Typically, they may lose appetite and break out in a cold sweat as they start feeling nauseous before they start vomiting.
• Take a short break. Pull your car off the road and take a break for a few minutes. Let the child stabilise, walk around after a few minutes and breathe fresh air. If possible try to place a cool cloth on their forehead. This should be effective and you can be back on the road in less than 20 minutes.
• With some children the nausea gets worse on an empty stomach; others have a problem when the stomach is full. See how it works with the individual child. Keep some ginger candy with you or they could even nibble on salted bits of fresh ginger.
• Avoid dehydration. Give them cold water infused with fresh lemon and ginger, salt and sugar to sip on.
• Try distracting. Singing songs or listening to their favourite music might help.
• If motion sickness remains a chronic problem, check with your doctor before undertaking a journey with your children. There are medicines your child can take before a long trip to prevent motion sickness.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that if there’s also headache, difficulty seeing, walking or talking, talk to your paediatrician immediately.