Surviving a long commute with a child

For five years, I commuted by car over an hour each way out of Philadelphia to my workplace in the suburbs. For four of those years, I commuted with my infant/toddler son so that he could attend the company's affiliated daycare. Here are tips that helped me manage and survive that long commute with a child.

Why we did this commute

The daycare affiliated with my workplace offered lots of perks that Philadelphia city daycares could not match, including:

• prepared foods
• space to run and play outside twice a day
• low staff turnover
• onsite nurse
• long operating hours
• closures that coincided with my holiday work schedule

Therefore, it made sense for me to do this long commute with a child.

Editorial note: Check out our list of childcare options and their pro's and con's

How long was my commute?

To take advantage of these perks, we commuted 45 min to 1 hour from home to daycare, and then I commuted an additional 10 to 15 minutes to my work site. This meant that my infant/toddler/preschooler was in the car with me 2 hours each day. 

A long commute on its own is already stressful. It is made exponentially more stressful when there is a young child in the car. Hopefully, my strategies and anecdotes can be helpful for others as well.

Here is how I managed the commute with a child

NAPPING:

When my son was an infant, the easiest way to commute with him was to time it with his naps.

In the morning, he would wake early, and I would change his diaper, feed him and then start the commute. At daycare, he often would not sleep or would only nap once (I think this is a common problem for infants at daycare).

In the afternoon, I would pick him up, feed him if necessary and then he would sleep in the car for the commute home. 

As an infant, I would go home from work much earlier because his bedtime was very early. Once he fell asleep at home, I would resume working online if necessary.

As my son got older, he took long naps at daycare that resulted in him not being tired at night. I would pick up my son from school later- often because he would tell me he was not finished playing when I got there! We shifted our day later so that he ate dinner later and went to bed later because he was not tired earlier anyway. 

PREP:

When my son was an infant, every night I would pack his bottles, my pump parts and everything we needed for the next day.

As he got older, those terrible 2s crept up! In the morning, I would offer him his favorite breakfast and milk before I could even talk to him (he is still not a morning person).  

Often, I would dress him for bedtime in clothes - t-shirt and sweatpants - that he would wear the next day to save time and avoid arguments in the morning. There were times when he would wear his cool Spiderman PJs to school. I mean, those Disney PJs were so cool looking - what kid wouldn’t want to wear them all day?! 

SNACKS:

Let’s face it - if you allow snacks in your car, your car becomes very dirty. That said, having snacks in your car will keep any child (particularly nonverbal children) content for awhile. I used cheerios when my son was 1-2 years old. When he was 3-4, I gave him fruit snacks or lucky charms as a rare and very special treat.

TOYS:

When my son was an infant, I would have a lot of toys on hand that I could hand to him. The light-up keyboard was a huge hit. As he got older, I let him choose the toys he wanted to bring in the car.

His school had rules about toys because they often became too much for the teachers, so he would either have to keep the toys in the car or in his backpack. Once or twice, though, he would sneak a little car in his pocket.

When we sat in traffic during the commute, my son had an electronic set of keys with a horn button. He would press the horn button at the cars and laugh as I would say, “Let’s go, cars, get out of the way!” 

VIDEOS:

When my son was a one-year old, I gave in to Elmo. I figured that watching Elmo for an hour was much better than screaming in the car for an hour. 

I also downloaded “baby soother” videos/apps, which basically showed a dancing penguin or another animal. Every now and then, in desperation, I pulled out the dancing penguin for my screaming infant. 

When my son turned 2 years old, we got an Amazon Fire tablet and downloaded videos for him to watch and apps for him to play. Elmos loves 123s is  entertaining and taught him numbers. He loved the Thomas and Friends game. Endless Alphabet is great for teaching letters and sounds. Toca Boca has a lot of cute fun games including a kitchen game and a veterinarian game. At 4 years old now, his favorite is a Lego Creator building game. 

There is an array of educational and entertaining TV shows. One of our favorites was Team Umizoomi, which encouraged my son to love math. When he was 2.5 or 3 years old, he told my husband that he had to solve a math problem before he could put water on his head in the bathtub.

I also recommend Super Why, which is another educational TV show that focuses on word learning and letters. Not every show I gave him to watch was educational, but I tried to have as many as possible.

GAMES: 

As my son grew older, we started playing games in the car. We would count the number of school buses or the number of trains we would pass. I Spy is always a huge hit. Other games included Simon Says, What Letter Does it Start With? (find words that start with certain letters), Rhyming, and doing simple math (2+2; 1+3). He tried to play Hide and Seek once, which he learned was not possible when you are both wearing seat belts!

MUSIC:

When my son was an infant, I downloaded rock lullaby music. I thought it was hilarious to hear Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” in lullaby tunes. There are also piano versions available for a lot of songs, and I found them to be soothing.

As my son got older, his taste in music got more eclectic. With me, he will ask for the Kidzbop “Fight song” or Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t stop the feeling.” With my husband, he listens for and requests 80s music or contemporary rap. 

During the infant stage, I would sing all of my favorite jazz music and Disney songs to him. Now, he adamantly refuses to let me sing - he noticed that I would sing “It had to be you” whenever he was being challenging. “Let it go” now must only be sung by him. One exception is that we will sing Rosemary Clooney’s version of “Mambo Italiano” together. 

SPECIAL TRIPS:

Once a week, I would take my son to Starbucks in the morning and let him get milk and a cake pop, while I got my cappuccino. All of the Starbucks workers knew my son, and he loved sitting there with me watching cars go by.

Sometimes, on the commute home, I would stop at Wawa, fill up my gas tank and get him some gummy worms and juice. 

The downside to these special trips were that often I would have to endure “Starbucks! Starbucks!” chants on my way to work or “Wawa! Wawa!” chants as we passed these establishments. I suffered through the subsequent tantrums when I said no.

I admit that the chants of “Starbucks! Starbucks!” in the morning were hard for me to pass up. Often, I would remind him that we went to Starbucks the day before so we would go again the following week. Other times, I just said, “Yeah, mommy needs a coffee.”

LANDMARKS:

Halfway on our commute, we would pass my husband’s workplace. We always said, “Hi Daddy!” as we drove by. Whenever I drove into our neighborhood, my son would yell “Yay, Fishtown!” Having landmarks is a good way to break up the commute.

CONVERSATION:

Sometimes, I would talk to my son about his day. He would tell me stories, some of them very vividly. I would also tell my son about my day and about my family. I would tell him stories about dragons and dinosaurs.  

He would talk to his cousin (aka, best friend) on the phone on her way to daycare or Facetime with his dad. 

Summing up the time I spent on my commute with a child

As you can see, there is not just one way of managing a long commute with a child. These were the strategies that I used to manage having a child in the car with me on that commute. 

I recently moved closer to my workplace. Now, I save two hours of my life each day from being confined to the car commuting. Looking back, I realized that’s 2 hours a day every day in the car - 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month, which sums up to 20 days a year!

But that was also a lot of good quality mother-and-son time spent together.