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Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
amydave
member
Hates the car now
amydave
member
Used to love being in the car but now hates it. I have tried food, toys, toddler tunes. It works for a while but then he gets angry again. We recently turned his car seat around so wonder if that is the problem.
Curious if anyone else has gone through this. DS is 18 months.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Hates the car now
DD is 18months and I deal with this a lot. Basically, what I have determined is she totally gets it. And by that I mean she completely understands what is going on and has her own thoughts and feelings on the subject.
She will happily grab her little toy backpack and excitedly walk to the car and calmly let us buckle her in if we are leaving the house and she WANTS to go, but if she doesn't want to go she is going to scream and kick and fight tooth and nail. Toys, snacks and books can help in these cases, but not always.
Most of the time she is happy to leave the house and very unhappy to leave/get back in her seat unless we have been there for a number of hours. I have started to try and prepare her so that getting back in the car isn't a surprise. So if we are only going to be somewhere a short time I will tell her that, and will tell her as we approach the time we are going to be getting back in the car so she knows. She may not always understand everything yet, but she will soon, and hopefully it will help ease the transitions.
Yes!!! absolutely. I even went against the FDA request to keep him rear facing until 2. He still goes crazy. He jumps up and down in his seat, he screams and arches his back.
Once he is forced LOL to be strapped in.. and the car starts moving, he is absolutely fine. I've not found anything at all that I can do, other than force him in the seat. It's horrible.. but I guess I'm lucky he's ok once we start moving LOL
Meh, I don't know if the direction of the seat is the issue here. She already decided to do it, so arguing about it on here probably won't change that. It's easy to point to that as the problem, but if she already turned the seat FF, wouldn't switching it back make the transition even harder? Sounds like most kids this age start fighting the car seat to express their frustrations, no matter which way their seat is facing. Installing the seat differently won't change his developmental stage of wanting to be independent.
I agree with working on preparing him for transitions, so he feels more in control of what's happening. Talk to him about where you're going, what will happen when you get there, how long you plan to stay. Give him some simple choices like "Do you want to hold your bear or your book?" "Should we listen to this song or that song while we drive?" Of course, you're ultimately in charge but it's good to start including him in the process so he gets the "illusion of control".
Yeah, but won't she just have the same problem again when he turns 2 in a few months? I just thought it made more sense to address the core issue of him adjusting to the change rather than revert back to RF. You're right, being FF might be the problem. I mentioned his developmental stage because that's also a possible reason for him getting upset. Sure, she can flip it back to RF and hope it gets better. Or she can help him cope with the change and hope it gets better. I voted for helping him adjust to the change, because she will have to do that eventually anyway.Exactly my point! That's why I thought she should focus more on helping him not be so upset, because that could actually resolve the problem. If you turn the seat back to RF, and he's still cranky, then what? How his car seat is installed won't help him cope with feeling upset.
"My favorite color is fluorescent beige."
I'm going through this as well and have not found a solution. I even flipped him FF to see if it helped since he was working himself up to vomiting every time we were in the car. It helped a little but not enough for me to keep him FF. So now I just try to keep him occupied.
Baby #2!