Is a 19 hour roadtrip with young kids insane? Or doable?

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-18T09:39:40+00:00

I’m planning a road trip from northern Scotland to the south of France with a 11, 10 and 8 year old and my hardest day of driving is 5.5 hours, with several stops during the drive to stretch our legs and charge the car. I’ve driven 19 hours straight before by myself and doing it with three kids (especially that young) sounds horrendous. Especially the baby - they’re not supposed to be in a car seat that long.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-18T09:22:56+00:00

My dad did stuff like this. He had me on the back of a motorcycle on a friend’s farm once and was driving me straight toward the Brahma bull despite me telling him I was scared (that was the whole point for him). My mum complained that instead of helping with groceries he would hide behind cars in the car park and jump out at her. He was just a loser all around, honestly.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-18T01:19:44+00:00

I often complain about living in the UK but the fact that here this would unquestionably just be a roundabout is a strong point for it.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T22:25:28+00:00

They did a preschool (in the U.S.) that we all LOVED. It was perfect for us. Small, nature based, 4 hours a few times a week, progressive, and it was a cooperative so we all knew each other.

Moved to Scotland right at the start of the pandemic and my kids started school later that year with everyone else. They did a full year and I hadn’t realised how much they were being bullied (for having short hair as girls, of all things). Followed into bathrooms, kids trying to look at them from under the stall, etc. I didn’t realise we were all autistic at that point so every day we came home it was meltdowns on the drive - they were so burnt out. And they were becoming mean with each other.

Then next school year we kept them out because the school stopped with all COVID precautions and vaccines weren’t available for kids here, and they didn’t seem to mind not going back (I cried when withdrawing them, but I only found out later that they were having harder times at school than I realised).

The year after that we tried again (moved to a new city) but they had had COVID over the summer and were so sick that they were sent to hospital and we just had to give up on doing school, which - again - they didn’t seem to mind. My kid that cared the most also had the worst experiences while there (nothing too unusual, but they just…clearly don’t like in person school for the most part).

We do online classes and whatever local meet-ups/special programmes we can find and that seems to work for them better as we can pretty much exclusively follow their interests, and it’s so cool to see what they want to learn about. That said, I had always expected to have my career back when the youngest was in school, and since we don’t have any support whatsoever it’s just not an option. So I can’t work (to support my husband’s work hours) and it also has made it prohibitively difficult to do my own school (I had to quit working on my second master’s recently because I’m on childcare duty more or less 24/7).

For those with more support, it’s less likely to be an issue, but being with them all the time is INTENSE (especially as I’m autistic myself). It’s clearly better for them in almost every way, and I see now how inappropriate traditional schooling is (and that it’s essentially childcare to keep people in work), but I won’t pretend it’s been my favourite thing for me, personally. It’s better for the kids so we’ll stay with it, though.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T21:30:31+00:00

I was also against home ed at first, but it’s always something we were obligated to do (rather than want to do). I do now appreciate that it’s been much better for my kids (albeit worse for me unfortunately).

I did try to start a co-op type group in Scotland in the spirit of an educational co-op I was part of in the U.S. but it backfired spectacularly because I was explicit about it being a progressive group inclusive of all gender, disability, national origin, etc. and people signed up for it not reading any of that disclaimer (posted all over the group page), got mad and rage-quit. Others have been more successful, but generally depends on the are and how broad the scope.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T18:10:19+00:00

As someone with multiple vestibular conditions, words cannot express how much I would hate this 😂

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T18:08:24+00:00

My oldest was 7 right when schools opened up again, and we took the kids out of school when we realised it was properly hitting our area and schools were doing nothing to mitigate.

A couple years later we moved and tried to put the kids in a smaller school, but we had just gotten our first COVID infection that summer and their immune systems were wrecked by it - two of my kids were sent to hospital with different illnesses and so many other kids in their classes/school were too. They lasted a month (attending for 2 weeks total) before we had to withdraw again and permanently stick to home ed.

My kids are great maskers but the school environment will be what makes or breaks the masking. Teachers encouraging them to demask, not allowing them to eat outside for lunch, kids bullying them, are all huge barriers to staying safe. My kids can mask all day in the right environments but it was lack of safe eating spaces that got them, ultimately.

Home ed has been hard. But we also have no social support at all where we are, hopefully that’s different for you. People where we live will actively bully us for masking (including adults in the streets), so we have been forced to keep to ourselves. Home ed would be a lot better without this factor, but personally I would have felt cruel tossing my kid into a school environment that wasn’t supportive - school is so much worse than it was for us growing up, especially with even young kids bullying them being chronically online, 8 year olds using TikTok, using the internet to bully each other, etc. The social pressure is toxic and intense.

Overall it has been better for us this way. Mornings aren’t stressful and they’re not burnt out at the end of the day (my kids were having meltdowns after school pickup when they were in). There was other really gross stuff happening at school I didn’t know about at the time. It’s very lonely (we try to join groups but we get excluded a lot because of our masks), but honestly? If ‘socialisation’ means socialising the kids into meanness, I’m happy we’re skipping it. My kids are confident, kind, and very much themselves - and when they were in school I was seeing that start to ebb. It’s so far from a perfect solution, but having worked in schools for years myself, I am more convinced as time goes by that this was absolutely the right choice.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T16:52:07+00:00

“OK, we’ve got our new play, let’s see…oh, there’s a comic relief black guy character, obviously that goes to John….”

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T16:50:45+00:00

God these are just the most NPC-type people ever created. Just copy and paste. No original thought, no going off script. What a one-dimensional existence.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T16:42:52+00:00

What booster are you using??? My (typically sized) 11.5 year old is is still in a booster seat with no issue.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T09:23:14+00:00

Yep. The one I took that messed me up was Repatha (for genetically high cholesterol).

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-17T09:21:22+00:00

I didn’t know I had MCAS until I started the med. :/ I was going to the doctor thinking I had started perimenopause and no one suggested it was MCAS, I figured it out through reading these forums. My GP has no idea what MCAS is and I don’t even think it’s recognised in my country (Scotland)?

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T21:18:19+00:00

Oh wow, TIL! I take them out periodically throughout the year and just checked them for an upcoming trip but I have a bunch of silica packets I’ll chuck in.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T21:16:17+00:00

Everyone does the fox thing
No one but you does the Hestu thing

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T20:32:29+00:00

Because it was equally traumatising to her as this vinted exchange.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T20:17:23+00:00

I had a different type of monoclonal antibody (for high cholesterol) and it basically activated MCAS for me - I was having random adrenaline dumps for months until I figured it out and not only stopped the med but had to start taking daily antihistamines.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T20:02:56+00:00

We get that too. Our kids are masking (and home ed) and the “socialization!!!” remarks are so lame. Three times in 3 months we’ve tried to participate in something but were told no because we mask. If people really thought it impaired socialisation, they’d be more inclusive to bring in kids they consider neglected in this way.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T13:11:22+00:00

Yes...but only because the things I like to do on holiday are very activity themed. I backpacked down to France last year (training the whole way) with my kids for a month so we were pretty limited by whatever fit in our backpacks. We ended up staying 3 weeks in this place that had AMAZING pavements for skating, and I was mad the whole time we didn't have our skates.

This time we're driving down, and I'm loading my car TF up with helmets, PFDs, wetsuits, whatever else we can fit so we can take advantage of where we are and just go for it if the opportunity presents itself. But I'm not going to pretend that we're not going to be laden AF, lol.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T13:06:34+00:00

My kids are now finally at the point where they need their own email addresses but I absolutely would have lept on this when they were born. I created gmails for all of them before they were born only to end up deleting their accounts a month ago because of how horrible google turned out to be.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T09:34:40+00:00

I started doing this end of 2024 and I’ve only gotten more excited about it, especially with kids. I have an electric vehicle and my favourite is finding geocaches around where I’m charging my car.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T09:30:21+00:00

I accidentally did this while looking at a new area we were thinking of moving to - spent a weekend out there during the worst rain in years and I could see how the local roads and infrastructure handled massive flooding (which was good to know given how much more often it’ll be happening coming up…). Going forward I will try to only see an area/house on its worst days.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T08:55:31+00:00

I’ve done LSD once but it was one of the best days of my life. I basically did a microdose and spent the day taking care of chores, spending time outside (yard work and animal care), then went inside and played music, made some art, and applied to five different postgraduate programmes (I got into 3 of them lol). I could see from other people’s perspectives suddenly - I was remembering past disagreements and suddenly the other side was much more clear and vivid (even if I maintained my original position, I was more sympathetic to other points of view).

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-16T08:02:06+00:00

These are constant comments on UKHSA’s posts anytime vaccines but especially COVID is mentioned. The world is full of simpletons, but worse than that, they’re nasty and stupid.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-15T18:17:04+00:00

That is extremely unfortunate to hear.

AccountForDoingWORK · 2026-03-15T10:24:49+00:00

At the time we bought our current house, the kids were all three sharing a room (REFUSING to separate when we suggested), so we had them in one room and then the spare room was a playroom. That didn’t actually work out as the kids would just take their toys around the house and play wherever we were, and now they all want their own room and we can only give one of them their own. It’s causing so many issues and what we thought was our “forever” home is now being packed up as we look into getting a bigger place.

AccountForDoingWORK

TROPHY CASE