Down with portable DVD players

How about suggestions for a 15 m.o. who HATES the car and car seat and cries on even a five minute drive?
 
Wow, scenery to keep you entertained! Such a forgotten thing.

As a child, my most imaginative moments were staring out the window on long car drives. I would create all kinds of things in my mind about what I was looking at....wonder why certain things were built the way they were, etc etc etc.

Why are you only replying to people who agree with you?

If you're going to post holier-than-thou opinions, and make sweeping generalizations about people and the tools they use within their own families, you have to have known you were going to get dissenting opinions. And then when other posters (myself included) have asked sincerely, what you would suggest in specific situations, you simply ignore us, and move on to the next post that agrees with you?

I guess you were just trying to stir the pot, and nothing more.
 
Wow, scenery to keep you entertained! Such a forgotten thing.

As a child, my most imaginative moments were staring out the window on long car drives. I would create all kinds of things in my mind about what I was looking at....wonder why certain things were built the way they were, etc etc etc.

After I posted I started thinking about it and remembered wondering what it would be like to live in these places we would drive though and the people that lived there. I can close my eyes and still remember how petrified my mother was going over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge between Annapolis and the Eastern Shore of Maryland while I looked out the window at all the water that seemed never ending. I still at almost 33 yrs of age do that when DH is driving us on long car trips. I'm also the type of person that one of these days will take the backroads to get somewhere so that I can take in all the small towns, maybe find something I wouldn't have come across otherwise even if it takes longer to get there!!! :thumbsup2 It's one of the best ways to learn.
 
Why are you only replying to people who agree with you?

If you're going to post holier-than-thou opinions, and make sweeping generalizations about people and the tools they use within their own families, you have to have known you were going to get dissenting opinions. And then when other posters (myself included) have asked sincerely, what you would suggest in specific situations, you simply ignore us, and move on to the next post that agrees with you?

I guess you were just trying to stir the pot, and nothing more.

Because I didn't come here to FIGHT. I started this thread not finger pointing at anyone specifically....but then everyone who felt personally offended began targeting me....personally. And other people feel the need to explain WHY they use them because of challenged children, etc....which is fine, even though I wasnt targeting them. I safely ignore those people (which is proper msg board etiquette), and continue the conversation where I think i have something productive to say.
 
Because I didn't come here to FIGHT. I started this thread not finger pointing at anyone specifically....but then everyone who felt personally offended began targeting me....personally. And other people feel the need to explain WHY they use them because of challenged children, etc....which is fine, even though I wasnt targeting them. I safely ignore those people (which is proper msg board etiquette), and continue the conversation where I think i have something productive to say.

I believe you didn't came here to fight, but you questioned parenting skills. Any parent would be defensive to that.

I say let the thread die a dignified death.:upsidedow
 


No wait a minute. :) Lots of parents manage to make multiple children behave in restuarants, my own included. My brother and I were less than 2 years apart and squabbling was a part of life but we did NOT cut up in restaurants. Okay, we did ONCE. Suddenly we were in the car with mom, dad got their orders to go, we went home and had peanut butter and did not get taken out for 6 months. We never did *that* again, lemme tell you.

Point being, "oh we have more than one" does not excuse poor behavior in public. Even when there were three of us no nonsense was allowed where it would bug other people.

Totally agree - no excuse for bad behavior, well, let me amend that - no excuse for not being punished for bad behavior (because it will happen - that's why we discipline, to 'teach' it not to happen) - no matter if you are at a restaurant with one or one hundred. All I was trying to say was that it is a totally different scenario when there is more than one - a lot more work involved (obviously, depending on the children, but in general) - so that this might also be the type of parent who chooses to use a convenience device where a parent of a single might not even imagine it is necessary - because it is a much easier job to keep a child entertained and not too fussy and not too 'are we there YEEEEEEETTTTT??' (thereby ruining the start and end of everyone in the family's vacation) than it is to keep multiple children. Same thing at a restaurant - When I have 1 of mine - MAN is it EASY!!!
 
No wait a minute. :) Lots of parents manage to make multiple children behave in restuarants, my own included. My brother and I were less than 2 years apart and squabbling was a part of life but we did NOT cut up in restaurants. Okay, we did ONCE. Suddenly we were in the car with mom, dad got their orders to go, we went home and had peanut butter and did not get taken out for 6 months. We never did *that* again, lemme tell you.

Point being, "oh we have more than one" does not excuse poor behavior in public. Even when there were three of us no nonsense was allowed where it would bug other people.

I agree, having more than one does not excuse poor behavior in public.

However, I think it's a very different dynamic having one child, vs. having two or more. And, until you have more than one, you can't really know what it's like. Just like I have no idea what it would be like to have 4,5,6 or more (!!) kids. Obviously, it would be a very different experience for me if I had 10 kids rather than three.

I can often tell when a poster has one or no kids, based on what they say. A few of the "anti-DVD players" posting on this thread have also been very vocally against 1) child harnesses 2) older kids in strollers. And--again--I say it's very, very different vacationing with one kid vs. more.
 
Totally agree - no excuse for bad behavior, well, let me amend that - no excuse for not being punished for bad behavior (because it will happen - that's why we discipline, to 'teach' it not to happen) - no matter if you are at a restaurant with one or one hundred. All I was trying to say was that it is a totally different scenario when there is more than one - a lot more work involved (obviously, depending on the children, but in general) - so that this might also be the type of parent who chooses to use a convenience device where a parent of a single might not even imagine it is necessary - because it is a much easier job to keep a child entertained and not too fussy and not too 'are we there YEEEEEEETTTTT??' (thereby ruining the start and end of everyone in the family's vacation) than it is to keep multiple children. Same thing at a restaurant - When I have 1 of mine - MAN is it EASY!!!

I agree!! And, yes, it is a piece of cake when I take just one of my kids out in public! It's about like a vacation in itself.:rotfl:
 
How about suggestions for a 15 m.o. who HATES the car and car seat and cries on even a five minute drive?

I've got none for you, but if you get any good answers, please pass them on. My niece is the same way, and we're heading for an 8 hour drive to WDW in June.
 
When I was a kid we didn't take family vacations until my sister (who is 3.5 yrs. older than me) and I could read, draw and work word problems. I would have loved to have had a DS, PSP, or DVD player and I'm sure if we would have, we would have taken more vacations :) . My Dad would usually drive all night so that we could sleep which most of the time eliminated our need to be entertained. Our vacations were 16-18 hrs. in the car to drive to the grandparents' house so when we got there my Dad would sleep, not really an option for us when we head to WDW.

Luckily we are only about 7 hr. from WDW but we do take anything and everything we can to keep the kids entertained, from hand-held electronics to coloring books. We have a DVD player in our vehicle and we also take our DSs and PSPs. Our kids are 4 yrs. apart and with the youngest being two he isn't the best conversationalist for our oldest so having them chat isn't really an option just yet. DH & I will also occaisionally 'plug' in (iTouch or satellite internet on the laptop) while the other is driving but we also do a lot of talking. I don't see these items as intrusions on our family vacations (I think of the cell phone and DH's crackberry as more intrustive than the DVD, especially if it is the ILs or his work) because we are all together and I know that we'll have tons of 'bonding' during the vacation. If the kids are happy in the car it makes for a much nicer ride and those 7 hrs. don't feel like 15 hrs. (I still have bad flashbacks about those from my childhood..... "she's looking at me", "she is on my side", "she won't share her pens", etc."
 
However, I see people like my cousin who as soon as the kids get into their Odyssey DEMAND the DVD player be turned on and get their way, I get annoyed. I see tons of people just driving around town using them. When we drive around town I ask DS what he sees out the window and try to keep him engaged that way or we sing, etc...

We had the portable DVD player in our car all the time when we first bought it and it was TERRIBLE. They began demanding to have it on all the time and when something ended, they'd demand what they wanted to watch next. They would never look out the window. I thought how tragic for my kids to never appreciate what's going on around them!

So I can understand not liking portable DVD players when they are always being used.

I do love imagination. My 2 little boys are learning how to use theirs more and more every day and I encourage it and love to see it.

However, I do still feel that long car rides merit a little movie watching. When I was a kid I would have loved it and I have one of the wildest imaginations. I don't think it would have interfered with that as I certainly watched tv and movies at home and it only seemed to feed my imagination. (And I also had a wonderful home life and my mother and I are still best friends so no lack of interaction there)

To the OP, I think that there are lots of movies that foster imagination and require some thinking on kids' parts. While I understand your point, I disagree that portable DVD players are really terrible. The parent has to decide how they are going to be used and when.

Like I said in another post, there is really no way to post something like this and not have people become defensive.
 
They only serve as a way to "shut the kids up",

and the undermine the family time that you get to spend together. Mostly they're used in cars, which these days of

double-income families,

is one of the precious little time that parents get to spend with their kids.


I only got to page three before I decided to chime in. I agree that some kids probably get too much TV/DVD time.

In our situation, we have 14 and 12 year old extremely gifted boys who attend different schools in the Atlanta area- a magnet school for one and a performing arts for the other child. This means that you will see a DVD player in our "one" income family vehicle.

I have been a stay at home Mom for over 14 years now. So plenty of family time for our kids.

Anyway, what I want to share, is what you percieve as non-family time for us is a different situation. Our 2 year old has to be strapped into his car seat for 2 hours non-stop every morning while I fight Atlanta traffic AND, he has to do the run all over every afternoon of the school year while we drop off and pick up his brothers.

So, we have probably over 50 dvd's from numbers, shapes, colors, sign language, and now we have started him on foreign language tapes for kids, stored and ready for use in our van.

He is only 2.4 months old.

He knows, by sight, all of his upper and lower case ABC's- he points to them for us when we ask, he knows all of the letter sounds, has learned almost 100 ASL signs -he was premature so he does have issues like not being able to speak words themselves- he does letter sounds though much to our happiness! :love:

So, your opinion is yours to have but not all of us are shutting up our kids and being lazy by using a dvd player - especially in the car.

Oh, and by the way, we are taking a 15 state road trip ( loads of family time hiking water falls and state parks trails ) this summer over a two week period, from The Keys to Canada and back home :yay: :yay: :yay: a different route. My older boys are compiling a list of movies that they want to rent for the long night time drives during our trip.

So, be nice, wave as we go by and remember, just because one person percieves a situation as a lack of parenting doesn't mean that they are correct.
 
Hey now!!! Cut me some slack. there's times when I have a lot of down-time at work. :rotfl2:

This is much more interesting than a few dozen repeats of threads on PhotoPass, whether you can use an extra ticket-day to park-hop, and what kind of shoes to bring to WDW. :)

OP has admitted to starting this thread to ruffle some feathers. I say let it go.
 
I don't particularly care who uses what device to entertain their child but I do find it funny that ppl don't seem to agknowledge that even just a few years ago ppl managed to do all the things we do today w/o the assistance of electronics to entertain or calm the children.

I happily use our DVD/VHS car player (big bulky heavy thing but plays 2 movies at the same time! :thumbsup2 ) on the 12hr drive from IN to VA. I wouldn't survive on my own w/o stopping a few times to cry on the side of the road w/o some electronic assistance. :rotfl:

We don't use it any other time though. The kids can deal with their boredom and learn ways to entertain themselves. Seems to be a dying skill these days. I've spent many hundreds of hours of my childhood in airports and on planes w/o electronics to entertain me.

Sounds like I'm judging but I'm not. These are just the same things that I tell my kids when they complain to me about being bored or wanting whatever electronic thing has come out that I'm not interested in feeding batteries to.

and yes, I have kids...4 of them(2,3.5,4.5,10), and yes they fight...a lot! And yes I tell them to work it out between themselves and yes I do allow the oldest to plug in and tune out to the little ones when they are becoming overly annoying to her.
 
Just back from 18+ hour road trip. To each his own but for us

18 hours + 2 Kids(1autistic) + DVD player = Sanity

We usually fly but budget wise this was our option

DD "This is the worst Saturday of my life ever" Autistic DD, who also gets car sick

12 hours into the trip I ran into Walmart and got 3 new DVDs to make it the rest of the way.
 
I don't particularly care who uses what device to entertain their child but I do find it funny that ppl don't seem to agknowledge that even just a few years ago ppl managed to do all the things we do today w/o the assistance of electronics to entertain or calm the children.


I have thought about this same thing many times. One thing not to forget is that even though we have way more 'stuff' and conveniences which make our lives 'easier' for our kids today than we did back in our day is that some things are actually a LOT more difficult today too (to offse the easiness). Think about it - I watched little to no TV as a 4 year old, BUT...my brothers and sisters and I would be outside ALL THE TIME, and not even see our mom until the 'bell' rang indicating dinner. Now, those of us with 4 year olds today...obviously, this is NOT 'allowed' or 'safe' (in most cases) in today's society. Did we have fun and was it educational to keep ourselves entertained? YES! If I could do it today and know my children were safe, would I? YES! Is it possible? No. Because those 5 - 8 hours that my own mother had to clean, make dinner, etc. with kids 'out of her hair' - we need to (okay, choose to) rely on some of the conveniences like TV's and DVD's to get the kids out of our hair to get some of the stuff done that just needs to be done that likely WAS a lot easier back when I was a kid. At least in my own personal situation.
 
I've only read the first page of posts, so I appologize in advance if anything has already been said.

Though I feel it's important to spend time together on vacation, it's hard to have a conversation every second of the trip. I personally am a fan of books (of course my older kids claim reading "gives them a headache"), puzzles, DVD and MP3 players and such because there are times where you can't always keep everybody entertained, especially with two or more children. During long car rides on highways where the driving gets tense, my DH usually has to have everyone silent or at least very quiet so he can concentrate. Obviously kids are going to get bored sitting in silence for an hour, so watching a movie, etc. is their lifesaver so to speak, not mine. These electronics are also handy on an airplane too. With airplanes being so loud, never mind the fact that everyone's ears are popped, it's extremely hard to have a conversation. We can't even ask each other for something such as another piece of gum without having to literally yell. Plus, you always have to prepare for an unexpected event, such as your flight getting delayed, which I now know. On our last trip to WDW in February we got to the airport only to find that our 1PM flight had been bumped to 7PM, so instead of the two planned hours there we would be spending eight! :scared: Since we were on Jet Blue, I brought nothing for my DDs to watch/play, though my DS17 was smart and brought his MP3 player and PSP (of course both batteries died within an hour before he had a chance to share). Luckily there were some other kids for my DD3.5 to play with, but still it's extremely difficult to keep 3-year-old and even 13-year-old girls entertained for that long who were preparing to have a fabulous time once they left the house. Again, it really didn't effect me whether or not my children had something to do (other than them asking "Is our flight almost here?" every hour on the hour:rotfl:), they don't drive me insane, it was all about them.

Just because you have devices to keep your children entertained on vacation doesn't mean you're tyring to shun them away, it can simply be for their own sake so they have a good time. I don't see anything wrong with once in a while letting something other than you do that job. Aren't you doing a similar thing when, for example, you take your kids on an attraction or to see a show in WDW? :confused3
My two cents, everyone has their own opinion this is only mine.
 
I haven't read any of the replies, and I won't have time until tonight, but I think I have time for my own reply!!

I agree with you!! One of my biggest pet peeves is when I see them in restaurants. We were at Jiko with our three kids, and the people next to us had one with their one child. Dinner is for family time!

I will say we have a built in one in our van. My rule is nothing unless the trip is over 2 hours. On a fifteen hour trip to Disney they get 2 each way. No joke, I know lots of people who use them for 5 minutes to the grocery store.

I am sure not everyone agrees with me. My own brother doesn't!!
 

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