We all have our philosophies about entertaining children in the car. Mine is: Low Expectations.

Not mine. Theirs.

You see, I think if that you embark on a trip having informed the children that we must take lots of stuff so we will be entertained and not bored, and first we’ll do this, and then we’ll open this bag and do that, and then we’ll open this secret surprise box if we’re all very good, and we’ll get to do this very special thing…you end up with children who will expect a 3-ring circus in the confines of your vehicle.

So, I say, take a minimal amount of stuff and ignore them unless it gets ugly back there.

That said, I suppose we’ve reached some extreme point of wretchedness when your traveling child amuses himself by tearing off the leftover white parts in a sticker book (because the stickers were mostly gone when you put it in the Travel Bag) and very carefully placing them on his arm.

I’m thinking we could do better. Really. That’s pretty sad, don’t you think?

(And no, we don’t do video games – there are no such machines in our house – and we don’t own a vehicle with a built-in DVD player or some such. I just prayerfully wait for the day they learn to read. Worked for me riding three days from Kansas to Maine, and however many days it took to get to Oklahoma from where we lived at the time every summer. It did.)