12 Ways to have easier road trips with kids

Whether you’re hitting the road for a vacation, family reunion or something else, taking road trips with kids are always an adventure! Patience isn’t exactly easy for little ones, and vehicles are small spaces for your family to be so close in.

But, road trips with kids can be fun, too. Our oldest child is 11-1/2. In her lifetime, we’ve only traveled by plane once. Every other trip we’ve taken has involved a road trip that’s taken anywhere for two to 12 hours. We’ve not only survived them, but even had fun with them.

In a summer that may have more families thinking road trips to avoid flying, I figured this is a great time to share 12 tips for making road trips with kids a bit easier. If you have any to add, please leave them in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!

Affiliate links are used in this post, if you make a qualifying purchase via my link, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products and services I use and love. It helps support my blog, so thank you for your support! Read my full disclosure here.

1. Utilize some snack hacks for family road trips.

It has to be a given that road trips with kids are going to involve snacks. I mean, road trips are made for snacks. I literally have some foods I eat only on road trips! I’ve found a few ways to make the snack business easier for our family.

Bring along your own snacks.

One of the easiest things to do is bring along your own snacks. You can pack a cooler with drinks, string cheese, yogurt pouches — whatever your family likes. Pack a bag with non-perishable snacks as well. Go for things that aren’t so messy and are easy to share.

Use zip-top bags.

I’m a big fan of zip-top bags for a variety of reasons. Before leaving home, you can transfer snacks into large zip-top bags for easy sealing and storage. And you can bring along snack-sized zip-top bags to divide up snacks on the go. For example, if I open a box of cheesy crackers, I can fill a snack-sized bag for each of my two children and pass the bags back to them. Everybody gets an equal portion and the bags keep messes to a minimum.

Another plus of serving up food in snack-sized zip-top bags is kids can more easily open and close them than individual portion bags. It also saves you money because the individual bags of snacks cost more. And you can mix snacks. For example, I might include a few M&Ms in with the cheesy crackers as a road trip treat.

Serve beverages with lids.

My kids love their insulated Thermoses. The steel Thermos keeps cold beverages cold forever. I love the 12-ounce Funtainer for traveling because their lids close and it’s nearly impossible to spill them. They’re prefect for the car! (We also use them for lunchboxes, on picnics and pretty much everywhere. They last forever!)

Let older kids help pick snacks.

One of my kids’ all-time favorite things to do on a road trip is pick out their own snacks. While we bring along snacks and food to eat on our trip, we usually let them go into a gas station once on the trip to pick out something savory and something sweet. They love picking out gas station snacks, and I tend to agree to snacks (within reason) that I wouldn’t otherwise.

2. Find some easy family activities for the car.

One of our all-time favorite things to do in the car is Mad Libs. I’ve tried printing some out and downloading apps, but hands down buying the Mad Libs books are best. The books don’t usually cost more than $5 and are totally worth it. If you aren’t familiar with Mad Libs, they are stories with blanks in them. On a separate page, you fill in all the words for the blanks without knowing what the story says. It makes for some very silly stories! Our family takes turns going around and saying words. (And since it’s only saying a word, the driver also gets to participate, which is awesome!)

Mad Libs offer all sorts of fun options, including one about road trips! You can find a Mad Libs book to fit with your family’s interests including ninjas, Peanuts (as in Charlie Brown and the gang), Dungeons & Dragons, Disney’s Frozen, Star Wars, Pokémon, Marvel’s Avengers and so many more.

If words and word games aren’t as much your thing, consider other activities to do as a family. Pick up an automobile Bingo game, a scavenger hunt for the road card game or a “Would You Rather” book.

3. Read a book together on road trips with kids.

If your kids are older and want to read on their own, go for it. Even with kids who are readers, we still love reading books together as a family. (In fact, reading out loud is part of our bedtime routine.) You can use library books, books you own, ebooks or even audio books.

Here are some great books to read out loud:

• Harry Potter (The entire series is part of Kindle Unlimited and free for subscribers.)
• The Mapmaker Chronicles series
• Humphrey the Hamster series
• Judy Blume’s Fudge series (I remember my mom reading this series to us on family trips!)
• The Chronicles of Narnia series

4. Create a family playlist for your family vacation.

If your family likes music, you’ve got to create a playlist for your family for road trips. We have had a wide variety of musical choices throughout the last decade for our family road trips. We love Spotify, but whatever you usually use for listening to music works.

If your road trip happens to take you through some remote locations, consider downloading the songs from the playlist in case you lose your signal or go through an area with a spotty signal.

5. Give the kiddos paper-based activities to use in the car.

Paper-based activities are great for the car because they don’t weigh much and usually don’t take up too much room. If your kids are going to be writing or drawing, a clipboard comes in handy. We have tried lap desks, but they are bulky. The last thing we need is something taking up more space! Clipboards work best.

You can get any clipboard, including cheap ones from the dollar store, which I’ve done. But, our favorite are these Crayola Color Wonder clip boards with storage in them. First of all, the Color Wonder markers and paper are awesome because you don’t end up with marker on anything except the paper. And having the built-in storage keeps it all together, in one place. We have used these for a few years now and even switched out what’s inside of them a time or two.

One caveat for paper-based activities is to take along writing utensils that won’t melt if you’re traveling during summertime. Mostly that means avoid crayons! Opt for colored pencils, washable markers or pencils instead.

Aside from coloring and drawing, other lap and paper-based activities are great for car rides as well.

• Paint-by-sticker books
• Reusable create-a-scene books (like Disney princesses, a construction site or Noah’s ark)
• Sudoku for kids
• Word searches (for kids 6 to 8 or for kids 9 to 12)
• Mazes (for kids 4 to 8 or for kids 8 to 12)
• A variety puzzle book

Utilize activity books and travel journals.

Activity books and travel journals are another great way to keep kids entertained. For kids 8 to 12, don’t miss the “Ultimate Kids’ Road Trip Activity Book and Journal.” For tweens and teens, you’ll want to grab the “Ultimate Teen Travel Activity Book and Journal.”

6. Make sure your kids have road trip toys.

Whenever we are going on a road trip with kids, we have them pick out a few car toys, a.k.a. toys to play with in the car. My daughter is getting away from this now and instead picks out her own books to read and such. I usually pack what I call a “car bag” that holds our car activities like the Mad Libs, clipboards and car toys. The bag stayed up front with me when the kids were younger, but now I put it in the backseat with them. Car toys usually have to be approved by us. We have found toys that are smaller (but not too small) and don’t make their own noises are usually best.

Another toy option for road trips is getting a few new toys for the kiddos. My kids have kept themselves occupied for an hour with a small toy from a vending machine at a restaurant. (Seriously!) It doesn’t have to be anything big or expensive. Think about hitting up your local dollar store to find some things. I would suggest not letting them play with (or really even see the toy) ahead of time. New toys hold kids’ attention longer, which is great for road trips!

7. Use electronics for kids wisely when traveling.

For shorter trips, we don’t use electronics for the kids at all. But if the road trip is going to last for 8 hours or more, then we talk about electronics to help pass the time. When my son was a toddler and my daughter a preschooler, we took a long trip to the beach. In order to help keep them entertained for 13 hours in the car, we made a DIY tablet holder with a gallon-sized zip-top bag and string that hung between our two headrests. The kids watched some episodes of the old Batman television show. If you have a minivan with screens, then watching a movie or show is even easier for longer trips.

Keep in mind that since you’re in a small space, you’re probably going to hear whatever electronic your kids are watching or playing (unless they’re wearing headphones). So consider that as you’re deciding what to allow and what to say no to.

One other thought is that we have found having time together that we are chatting, playing games or even just resting is far more fun than being on electronics. Kiddos don’t have to be constantly entertained.

8. Plan extra time for stops on road trips with kids.

While you can make good travel time with kids along, you also have to be prepared for extra stops and give them a chance to go to the bathroom and move around. We were a bit prepared for this because I have a bladder issue that means I need to make plenty of stops myself!

Plan some breaks from being in the car. You’ll want to stop for the bathroom, but also just allow kiddos a chance to move around and get out some energy. Being in car seats, especially, keeps them from being able to move around too much, so they need a chance to be out and stretch. In the baby and toddler years, we would even just let the kids have time in the car at stops to move around.

You can stop at rest parks and let them move around outside if the weather is nice. If the weather is cold or rainy, look for a big store or large gas station where they can stretch their legs. On one regular trip we take, we usually make a stop by Bass Pro Shops because it’s a fun store for the kids to explore with the live fish and various interactive displays.

When it comes to bathrooms, one of my favorite things when my kids were toddlers and preschoolers was a folding toilet seat. I kept it in a large zip-top bag in our diaper bag. It made using public bathrooms so much easier! For kids a bit older and bigger, these disposable toilet seat covers are ideal. It helps alleviate stress of finding great bathrooms, which can be challenging sometimes on road trips.

9. Play car games that don’t need anything.

Don’t forget about games you can easily play in the car with just your words. There are quite a few options that work as long as your kiddos can talk.

I Spy

My family likes playing “I Spy,” but it doesn’t last too long in the car because we have the rule it can only be an object inside the car while we are driving. Otherwise, there’s no chance we’d be able to spot it!

20 Questions

“Twenty Questions” is another good car game. One person has something in mind and everyone else asks questions to figure it out. If the guessers can’t come up with the item within 20 questions, then they lose. With kids, especially, you might want to have some parameters of items that are allowed and not allowed. As the mom of a little boy, I know some of the things he comes up with sometimes to be funny. And, of course, you also want to make sure the item is real and not imaginary.

The Alphabet Game

If your kids are preschool aged and up, a version of “The Alphabet Game” works well in the car. You can play it where you are all looking to spot words that start with the letters of the alphabet in order. Or you can play it where you build off of each other and come up with words that start with the next letter.

We have often done grocery shopping with “The Alphabet Game.” So I might say I’m going to the store to buy apples. Then my son would say he’s going to buy bananas. My daughter would go to by cheese. And so on and so forth. You can pick nearly any broad topic and come up with words related to it that go through the alphabet.

Tell a Story

Another creative option is to tell a story together. At home we use the game “Story Cubes” to do this. Because it uses dice, it’s not so conducive to playing in the car. So, we have told stories together where each person says one or two sentences and then the next person add their sentence or two and on it goes. We usually end up with lots of giggles!

Both the “Ultimate Kids’ Road Trip Activity Book and Journal” and the “Ultimate Teen Travel Activity Book and Journal” have story starters included along with other family verbal games.

10. Keep the vehicle and yourselves clean as you travel.

If you’re on a road trip with kids, you don’t want your vehicle to get too out-of-control messy. While messes and children go together, there are a few ways we’ve found to at least help keep our vehicle and ourselves relatively clean while on the road.

Have a bag for trash.

There is always trash to be dealt with on road trips. We use plastic bags from stores as a bag for trash and then toss them at our next stop. They hold enough but aren’t too big. Bring some along or just acquire them on your trip.

Be prepared for germs.

Even pre-pandemic, I was ready for germs and made my family clean their hands when we got back in the car from being in public places. Now, I’m even more vigilant. I have kept canisters of Wet Ones in the car to pass around. The original ones work well but don’t have alcohol to kill COVID germs. You can now get Wet Ones with alcohol in them to help kill COVID germs as well.

Since my kids are older, they use hand sanitizer gel effectively and without getting it everywhere. Find what works best for your family and go with it. You don’t want any germs tagging along on your vacation!

Bring wipes for faces.

Neither of my kids have been in diapers for a long time, but having unscented baby wipes along on trips comes in handy for messy faces.

Keep a stash of napkins.

Not all messes need a wipe. A stash of napkins in your snack bag or glove compartment can come in handy. You can get them from a drive-thru or pack your own to bring along. (I usually do both!)

11. Use technology to your advantage when traveling.

Aside from your smart phone being a potential source of entertainment for music or games, it’s also a great help on road trips. Of course you can use it for directions to your destination, but don’t forget other things you can do to help yourself as well.

Use maps to find bathrooms.

With smart phones, it’s easier than ever to plot out stops for bathroom breaks. You can find rest stops or other places you want to stop for bathroom breaks. You don’t have to rely solely on road signs any more to help you find the next best stop.

Find restaurants you know.

You can use the map to find restaurants you know. This comes in handy while traveling on the interstate, for example. If you’re looking for a particular restaurant where you know your whole family will eat well, pull up your phone and find one nearby.

Check out reviews.

If you are feeling advantageous and want to try a new restaurant with your family, you can also pull up reviews for local restaurants in the area. Oftentimes menus are available online as well so you can even go over with your kids (and yourself!) what you have in mind to order before you even stop.

Do trip research.

I’m a planner through and through and do research before we take trips. If you aren’t, being in the car is a great time to do some research on your smart phone. Even if you are like me and have everything planned, you can read through some ideas you have saved for your trip or look up interesting places to stop along the way when everyone is getting cranky and needs a road break.

Be sure to check out this Family Travel Planner to plan your trip and stay organized! Use the code FWGFAN to save an extra 10%!

12. Prepare your kids before your family vacation.

I learned long ago that my kids do best when they know what to expect and what is expected from them. So, before we take a road trip with our kids, we talk with them about it. (We even do that when traveling just an hour away.) We go through a checklist of sorts to make sure everyone goes to the bathroom before we leave, the kids have whatever car toys they’ve chosen and cover our food bases.

When we start out on a trip, we also remind everyone that they need to let us know when they need bathroom breaks as soon as possible since finding a bathroom while traveling takes time.

Basically, if you can explain to your kids approximately how long you’ll be in the car and ideas you have to keep busy in the car, they handle it better. Remind them that where you’re going and the fun you’ll have once you’re there is worth being on the road for a while. And do your best to maintain a positive attitude about being on the road, so they will, too.

Find more great posts about traveling with your family:

Family travel advice

10 Family bonding ideas

Summer planning tips you can use

How to create an atmosphere full of grace, love and faith

When I think of the perfect family life, I think of a family happily being together in a serene atmosphere. I envision lots of smiles and smells of homemade dinner wafting through the air. I can just imagine the delighted conversation the parents are having while the kids calmly play together. Everyone is well coiffed and put together.

But, in reality, our family life is different, because life isn’t perfect. Life is messy. You can look around my family and find one child hanging out in a messy bedroom and the other stretched out on the couch watching Minecraft videos on YouTube. My husband and I are working in the home office or scurrying around doing our household chores. The dog adds in his flare of barks for dramatic effect, and dinner is a frozen pizza stuck in the oven.

What we need most in the midst of that chaos is grace. I need grace from my husband and children when I get grumpy because I’m tired and overwhelmed. My kids needs grace from me when they are out of sorts. If everything was perfect, nobody would need grace!

Through the 21 years I’ve spent as a wife and 11-1/2 years I’ve spent as a mom, I’ve learned some things along the journey about how to create a family life filled with more grace, love and faith than irritation, grumpiness and grousing.

1. Pray for grace, love and faith.

Unsurprisingly, the first step of creating a happier family life starts with prayer. I cannot live a life filled with grace, love and faith on my own. Without God’s help, I’d be too irritated and annoyed to be loving and grace-filled. While we remember to pray for so many requests, we overlook this one.

One of my daily prayers is for God to help me be the kind of wife and mom my husband and children need me to be. I don’t believe that He put my husband and me together by accident or gave us the children we have without a reason. If I am called to be a wife and mother, I want to do it how God wants me to do it. I want to be who He created me to be. I can’t do it on my own.

On the days and in the moments when the day is lasting longer than our patience, we need Someone with more strength, grace and patience than we have to help us through.

2. Speak kindly to each other.

The words we speak reflect our hearts. They are so very important. My husband and I learned early on in our marriage to talk kindly to each other. We promised to not be passive aggressive. Instead of nagging and grousing, we ask each other for help and say “please” and “thank you.” Speaking in kindness goes a long way.

We have kept the same attitude with our children. Unless our kids are in danger, we start out kindly asking them to do things. We do our best to not start out with a stern or irritated attitude toward our kids. If that happens for no reason other than our own grumpiness, we also do our best to apologize.

We avoid teasing or making someone feel bad for something they prefer. My husband and I remind our kids often that anyone’s success in our family is a success for the whole family. We have to stick together and support each other — not tear each other down.

Think about whether you’d speak the same way to a complete stranger as you are to your family. I know. That gets to me! Sometimes we are more polite to someone we don’t know than to our family members who we love most. Of course we need to be free to have disagreements with our spouses and discipline our children, but we can still do so with a measure of kindness.

3. Listen to Christian music.

Listening to Christian music might sound like an odd way to improve your family life, but hear me out. Music is powerful. It can shift our moods and thoughts. Christian music can also help us focus on God throughout the busyness of life.

Being cranky with my kids is difficult when I’m humming or singing along to a song about God’s love! So many times I have heard God speak to my heart and been able to truly worship Him best through music. Making it part of our family life just makes sense.

(In fact, I feel so strongly about the importance of the music we listen to that I’ve created a Families with Grace playlist on Spotify and continue to add to it with songs I find inspiring and uplifting.)

4. Guard your family’s time and activities.

Because I’m an introvert who needs downtime to re-energize, I learned early on that I needed to be intentional with my family’s time and activities. I am protective of my time and energy because it’s limited. My chronic health issues impact how much of me there is to go around. I won’t say yes to something that will interfere with my relationship with my kids or my husband. After God, my family is my top priority, and I want to make sure there is enough of me left for them each day. Sometimes that’s easier said than done!

I am also protective of my kids’ time. I tell them that they have their entire lives to be busy. Childhood should be when they have downtime to just play or pursue a hobby for fun. For our family, that means limiting our kids to one ongoing extracurricular activity at a time during the school year. As they get older, that will evolve, but for now it’s what works best for us.

I’m doing my best to teach my children that it’s OK to say no to some things and not do absolutely everything all the time. Because if we are too busy to recharge and we are too overwhelmed by our schedule, then grace and love fly right out the window!

5. Put down electronics.

Pretty early in my motherhood journey, I realized I was more likely to snap at my kids when I was using my phone. While both my husband and I do work-related tasks from our phones, I do my best to limit any other activity on my phone when I’m with my kiddos. I want to be present in the moment with my family instead of caught up in a digital world that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme.

I’ve also instated a policy when it comes to social media that has improved our family life. If I am on social media and come across a post that upsets me, then I log off of social media. Those feelings have a residual effect that then spills over in my attitude and how I interact with my family.

We also don’t allow electronics at the dinner table (unless we are watching a movie or show together).

6. Maintain a consistent routine or schedule.

I’m naturally predisposed to routines and schedules, because I thrive on them! I know not everyone is schedule-oriented, but having at least some non-negotiable times is a great idea. Schedules allow children (and adults!) to know what to expect when. Schedules also keep everyone sleeping and eating regularly, which helps maintain a happy family life because nobody feels like being full of grace and love when they’re tired and hungry!

My family does well with routines. The simpler a routine is, the easier it is to stick with. And sometimes you need to reassess routines to figure out if something isn’t working and needs to change. Through the years, for example, our bedtime routine has evolved and changed as our children have gotten older.

7. Have fun together!

Having fun looks different for every family based on what you like and enjoy. But its impact is the same: you make memories, have fun and aren’t grumpy. It’s not possible to have fun and be grumpy at the same time! While life isn’t all fun, find time regularly to have fun together as a family.

Figure out some small, everyday sort of things you can do for fun together. We enjoy watching movies, playing games and reading together. Of course we have bigger family fun, too, like trips to the zoo or an amusement park, but it’s the smaller activities with family fun that help our family bond most.

8. Communicate.

In creating a family life filled with grace, love and faith, you’ve got to have good communication. So many problems can be solved with communication. I know my husband can’t read my mind, so I tell him when I’m struggling. (Sometimes he knows based on how I’m acting or reacting!) I’ve learned to do the same thing with my children. If I need a moment alone to sit and read or just be, I tell them rather than assume they’ll figure it out.

My husband and I have learned we have to be intentional about communicating and connecting while raising our kiddos. We also have to be intentional about communicating individually with our kids. Since our kids were smaller, we have had one-on-one playtime. It was the best way to communicate with them. We’d set a timer for 20 or 30 minutes and each take a kiddo to play with one-on-one. When the time was up, we’d switch.

While we still do playtime like that every so often, now we’ve evolved into bedtime talks. Twice a week our 8-year-old gets to stay up with us past our bedtime routine to talk with us or read with us. And three times a week, our 11-year-old gets to do the same thing. We just finished reading through a book about middle school with her and are now reading a book about boys. We have had some great discussions!

9. Praise often!

When my children do something right, I try to praise them for it just like I would discipline them if they had made a bad choice. Everybody feels good to be acknowledged for what they’re doing. So when I see my daughter helping her little brother with something, I praise her. And when I notice my son doing a chore without being asked, I praise him. As a result, I have reinforced good behavior that improves my kids’ confidence as well as our family life.

I do the same with my husband. I tell him I appreciate the things he does around home. It can be as simple as saying, “Thanks for taking out the trash.”

10. Accept your family’s imperfections.

No matter what you do, you are going to fall short because you’re human. Your family is the same way. Your kids will behave badly. Or your husband will get grumpy. You’ll snap at all of them out of frustration. Give yourself and your family some grace. Of course do the best you can, but don’t put pressure on yourself to be perfect. It just isn’t possible.

Instead, show your family what it looks like to learn and grow from your mistakes. Even if you’ve made the same mistake 20 times already, the next time you move forward with something different, celebrate that. Just keep showing up and trying every day. Go back to square one when you have to. Press the reset button on a day after spending a few minutes praying for grace, love and faith. You aren’t on this journey alone!

This post is part of Realigned Motherhood: Juggling the Joys of Motherhood. Be sure to also check out the other posts linked below for more encouragement and tips!

Cultivating Connection in Your Home from Inspired by Family
14 Refreshing Bible Verses For The Struggling Moms from Mindy Jones
Self-Care Tips for Moms from Clothed with Dignity
What I’ve learned from Motherhood and Marriage from Life Notes Encouragement

Free Mother’s Day craft printables to make gift-giving meaningful and easy for moms and grandmas

Affiliate links are used in this post, if you make a qualifying purchase via my link, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products and services I use and love. It helps support my blog, so thank you for your support! Read my full disclosure here.

Maybe it’s because my kids are still relatively young, but one of my favorite kind of Mother’s Day gifts to receive are those from the heart. I love when my kids make a Mother’s Day craft for me that includes a bit of sentimental stuff to boot.

Because I’m not a crafty person, my favorite kind of crafts to do with my kids are simple ones that are more content-based than art-based. A few years ago, I did a Mother’s Day craft with my early elementary Sunday School class and it’s one of my favorites.

So, this year I took that idea and expanded on it. I created some free printables for kids to express their feelings for both their moms and grandmas. I broke them down into age groups to best match kids’ skillsets. And I’ve also included a free printable craft that I’ve done with my kids as toddlers and with my son’s entire kindergarten class a couple of years ago. It’s easy and adorable!

All About My Mom worksheets for preschool through 2nd grade

Mother’s Day crafts that have kids thinking about their moms and what she likes as well as what they like about her are my favorites! While some kids are writing up a storm throughout at least parts of this age group, others aren’t as much. My daughter loved writing from the first time she could figure out how to do so. My son, who is a current 2nd grader prefers drawing. So the preschool through 2nd grade All About My Mom worksheet is designed so that kids can do either.

You can totally do this for a group of other kids to give to their moms. But, you could even print it out or pass it along to your husband and let your kiddos do it on their own. I’ve got to be honest that I’m totally going to print these out for my kids just to see what they say. I have one kid in each age group!

There is also a sheet for grandmas designed the exact same way. It makes a great Mother’s Day gift that you can include with a nice card, a photo or even in a picture frame.

All About My Mom worksheets for 3rd through 12th grades

I didn’t want to leave out older kids by any means. I started this worksheet at 3rd grade, but definitely pick whichever one would best for your child and what they like to do as well as their skillset. For this Mother’s Day craft, I went a little deeper and made boxes for the kids to write in.

Yet again, there are versions for both moms and grandmas. Especially with this worksheet, you could easily print it out and let your big kids have a go at it by themselves. While we want them to come up with their own ideas for gifts, sometimes a nudge is OK. After all, you are still going to be surprised by what they write. I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be anything you expected!

I Love You to Pieces craft

And then there is this I Love You to Pieces craft. Along with the All About Mom (or Grandma) worksheet, this works for a card, especially for younger kids. I have done this with my own child when he was a toddler and with his entire kindergarten class. Basically, you print out the sheet, let your kiddo tear up some pieces of construction paper and then use a glue stick to attach the pieces to the heart. Don’t forget to include your child’s name and age as well. It’s a great Mother’s Day craft that moms and grandmas will love!

Picture frames

To kick up these Mother’s Day crafts a notch, go ahead and frame the printouts to make a nice keepsake. I found a few picture frames that would be great for these.

Looking for more Mother’s Day ideas? Check out these posts as well!

Changing assumptions can lead to a happy family dynamic

One of the things I want most as a mom is to have a happy family. I want us to have a good relationship with each other and get along.

Yet, the truth is that nobody gets along all of the time. We get short with each other. My kids argue sometimes. My husband and I can get cranky with each other.

One of the biggest things that can trip us up in relationships is making assumptions about the other person or people. We’ve found a trick to help make those assumptions positive instead of negative. And it makes a big difference in how we treat each other.

Negative assumptions

We may not even realize it, but we can make negative assumptions about other people quickly and easily. In fact, we are more inclined to make negative assumptions about someone than positive ones.

When someone cuts us off in traffic, we may not consciously think, “That guy is just trying to make my drive more difficult!” But we react that way. We get angry and offended.

We do the same thing within our families and it can result in anything but a happy family. When your husband does the laundry then forgets to get it out of the dryer, we don’t consciously think, “He’s trying to make my life harder. He knows I’m busy!” But we react that way. We get upset with him. Our attitude shifts negatively and soon everyone in the family feels the effect of that negative assumption.

The root of negative assumptions

When it comes down to it, the root of negative assumptions is selfishness. Sometimes we are so caught up in ourselves and what we have going on that we subconsciously think the world revolves around us.

Of course most people would never admit to feeling that way at least sometimes, yet it can be how we act. What we are really feeling with our frustration at the guy who cut us off in traffic or the husband who didn’t complete a chore is that they are personally affecting us. And, gosh darn it, we deserve better treatment!

So many issues in relationships come down to the root of selfishness, because we can struggle to get over ourselves and think of others. God is clear in His Word that we are to think of others before ourselves and not do things out of selfish intent (Philippians 2:3-4). He knows we can’t have happy relationships or have a happy family if we are too focused on only ourselves.

Changing to positive assumptions

Making the shift to positive assumptions isn’t as difficult as you might think. For us, it started in our marriage before we had children. Since then, it has grown and expanded. We’ve put it into practice and gotten better at it so that now it’s our first reaction 90% of the time.

Instead of assuming that the other person is trying to be difficult or intentionally hurt you, assume they aren’t out to get you. What you really do is give them grace.

In the laundry example, instead of assuming my husband is trying to get out of folding the laundry, make my life harder or couldn’t care less about taking care of our family’s needs, I ask nicely. I know that most likely, he just completely forgot. Maybe we can fold the laundry together or he just has a friendly reminder to do so.

It sounds like such a small shift, but it makes a big difference in our relationships. We are able to more easily stay on the same team, so to speak, because we recognize that we’re not battling. We recognize that our loved one isn’t out to make our lives more difficult. We give grace.

Teaching children about positive assumptions

Our kids are still learning about positive assumptions, especially our youngest who just turned 8. He has a strong sense of justice. Sometimes he mistakenly assumes that his sister purposefully went to the bathroom when he needed to brush his teeth. The list could go on.

But we remind him to not assume she is trying to make his life more difficult or that she’s out to get him. She’s not trying to make him angry. It’s OK to talk and find solutions while keeping in mind we all have the same goal.

How positive assumptions make for a happy family

I’m not saying or implying that shifting to positive assumption is going to mean you always have a happy family. I’m also not implying that I always have a happy family — because I don’t!

But, I can tell you that it makes a difference. We don’t criticize others as much. We don’t get as upset and indignant over the small stuff. All of the stuff I’m talking about here is small stuff. Do I want to argue with my husband over laundry or my kids over dishes? Nope. I also don’t want my kids to argue over bathroom time or whatever else they come up with.

So, we do our best to assume that the members of our family only want good for us and not bad. We promote that as much as possible. Because when it comes to people you love, you do (and should) only want good for them. The challenge is living that our in the daily grind of family life.

We can want to be away from and with our children at the same time!

I originally wrote this piece about motherhood in March of 2014 when my daughter was 4 and my son was 1. While they are now 11 and nearly 8 and some things have changed, the feelings of the push and pull of motherhood remain.

Not that long ago while my daughter was trying to prolong going to sleep by keeping me in her room, she stopped me as I got to the door and said, “But, I’ll miss you while I’m asleep.” I’m a sucker for her. I went back for yet another hug and told her I’d miss her, too.

At the time, it was the end of the day and I was tired. I’m not a night person. And by the time we manage to make it until bedtime, I’m usually quite ready and happy for the kiddos to go down so I can have an hour or two of downtime before I hit the hay, too. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I miss the kids at that point in my day. (I know. What a horrible mother I am!)

But, I’ve realized that in the mornings (now that they are both sleeping through the night more often than not), I really have missed them. When my daughter comes out of her room and comes to find me, I’m mostly happy to see her. (Full disclosure: sometimes I take a couple of minutes to feel this joy when my quiet morning time comes to a close.)

And I love morning snuggles. When my son wakes up and I get him out of his crib, we snuggle for just a moment before I change his diaper. Is he always on board? No. At 13 months, sometimes he’s squirming around in the snuggle to try and get a peek at his sister or dog, but that’s OK. I still live for these morning snuggles.

I feel like this is so much the truth of motherhood. So many times I long for a break from my kids. Like every night at bedtime, I’m happy to see them go to sleep so I can have just a minute to sit down and breathe. But then 12 hours later, I’m happy to see them and feel like I really have missed them somehow.

I love my quiet and alone times. I’m an introvert. These are the times that feed my soul. I wouldn’t be anywhere near a happy mom without some downtime, but I really am finding that I do (gasp!) enjoy my kids!

Motherhood is this constant pushing and pulling. We think about it from the beginning with kids trying to pull away when they can and gain independence, but I think it’s true for us moms, too. We sometimes want to push our kids away to get a break and then just as quickly, we want to pull them right back for a hug. It’s an odd dichotomy. And it happens often.

Earlier this week, I had to wheel the trash can to the curb for pick-up. My husband usually does that job, but he’s been sick for a week, so I did it after dinner. I had made dinner, fed the kids, made an alternative to the alternative for the toddler who threw most everything I gave him on the floor, cleaned the kitchen, fielded a barrage of questions and comments from the preschooler, sorted through some things in the freezer and bagged up the trash. I was tired.  

As I was about to head out the door, I smelled the dirty diaper on my son. I sighed and continued. It might have been the slowest walk to take out the trash anyone has ever done. The weather was nice and it was blissfully quiet outside. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to go back inside at that moment. I knew what was waiting for me.

So, I took a deep breath and went back in. That minute break was needed. It wasn’t long enough. And then I told my son he needed a new diaper. His latest trick is that when we tell him this then he walks to his changing table. This time, he reached up to grab my hand before he started off to the changing table. My heart melted. I found myself refreshed in the midst of a long evening. Just one minute earlier, I’d been ready to just be alone for a while. But with one little hand reaching up for me, that melted away.

That’s motherhood. We long for breaks; we need breaks. However, we long for our children; we need our children. It’s a constant back and forth.  

Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I go.  While I’ve been writing this, my daughter has finished her breakfast and come over for a snuggle on the couch in our PJs.  I’m not about to miss out on that!