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Car Trips

© Carrie Webbenhurst

Whew! Having just returned from an eleven day car trip with our 12 year old twins, all I can say is WHEW!

Traveling in the car with kids is exhausting, no matter if they are twins or just siblings a few years apart. Basically what kids do in the car is: pick on each other or do whatever they can think of to bug their sibling. I won't say it's worse with twins, but it's got to be different.

I say it's different because they are the same age and know exactly what will bug their brother or sister. As we drove across the country we would continually hear, "Ow, Logan!" or "Let go of my arm, Alec!" It seems they could not go for very long without touching or punching or looking at each other.

We have never had this problem before. Ever since the boys were very little--like 3, we have had a television in the car. We started out having them watch Barney videos. We went on a three day trip to South Dakota and we heard every Barney song there was on those three days. But the boys never fought or picked on each other.

We'll never know if they were just caught up in Barney or if they hadn't figured out yet the joy of picking on a sibling!

Then we started going on trips for hockey games and we brought along movies for them to watch. They were still fine. They would watch movies and laugh, but still no fighting.

It wasn't until recently--just about the time they turned twelve to be exact--that they started fighting. Experts might say it has something to do with hormones, I think it's just that they know exactly what will set their brother off.

I won't say they fought the whole trip, because they didn't. There were times where they watched movies or listened while I read the latest Harry Potter book out loud. But, invariably, we would be having a nice quiet time and then one of them would poke the other one. Then we would have a big fight.

But, on the other hand--I am certainly glad to have twins when we travel. Otherwise Steve and I would never be able to have any time alone. With a single child, one of us would always have to be entertaining him or her. At least with twins (and I imagine siblings), they do entertain each other. They offer to play games with the other one, they tell jokes to each other, they even talk with each other about what they see out the window.