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Having taken countless road trips as a child with no TV, I am fundamentally opposed to having a TV in the car... however we have one, and we use it! We bought our cars used and weren't looking for one with a TV, but they both happened to come with one. My husband's is so old it has a VCR instead of a DVD player. Anyway, yes, it is a luxury, and one of many, many things people have now that we didn't have when we were kids. ETA we only use it on long road trips, and limit the use even then.
So do mine. As a matter of fact, so do I. But all of us also enjoy other things besides books; like movies, games, talking, etc.
As do mine but they get enough of that at home so i think for small car trips they can survive with tv. I mean when i was 3 we took some godawful trip to nc that took 18 hours because the car broke down and i survived on my little books and comics and capri suns . Now i submit to the fact for long car trips having one can help out. But lets be honest with ourselves, most people with those things don't just occasionally used them. Sadly enough we are in an age where everyone seems to need some level of constant visual simulation.
I guess I am one of the few that only use them on 8 hr road trips. I live within 5 mile to everything else I need to drive to. I think it would take more time to find a video and hook the thing up ( it's not part of my van, it's in a bag that straps to the head rest) than it would for me to get to where I was going
If you are going down the I40 for 5 days west to east, not so much. There's only so much flat desert I can take before I go nuts. If I didn't have the radio and my kid didn't have the dvd player, I probably would have committed murder somewhere along the way. We didn't use it all the time, but as many other posters have pointed out, it's good to break up some of the monotony.
We have one. I'm a single dad and my daughter is an only child. We talk and do other things, but on a 6,000 mile trip: that's not happening every nano-second.
As a rule she can use it on road trips unless we're in interesting scenery. The 20th time from US 61 from St Louis to Cedar Rapids on US61: yes. The 5 Billionth time through Yellowstone: no.
One of the problems I have noticed due to all the entertainment kids have during car rides, is that many of them are incapable of giving directions. I can't believe how many times I've driven home a friend of one of my kids, and asked them to let me know when I need to turn, only to get blank stares.
How do you know what's credible in most families? That threat still works perfectly well, AFAIK.
Here's the other thing.. when we were kids on long car trips you could move around in the back seat, stretch out, lie down, whatever. We didn't bother with seat belts, so you had a lot more freedom to play around.
Now kids are restrained in one position the whole way. I don't see anything wrong with entertainment that keeps their mind off being stuck in their car seat for long periods of time.
And who would you rather driving alongside you on the freeway? A really stressed out and distracted parent who's kids are tired of sitting in one spot and are miserable, or a calm and concentrating parent who's kid is happily watching a dvd for an hour or two?
We most definitely had seatbelts in the 80's and 90's when we went on road trips. There was no moving around in the car for us. I'm the most uncreative person I've ever been in contact with, and even I could always figure out things to do on the trips.
No more distracting than the radio or books on tape. Or "Are we there Yet?" "What's that?" "Why can't we stop at the worlds largest ball of yarn" "I have to go to the bathroom" (for the 5th time in an hour)
Maybe that was it for us. We almost always went to one of two places on our trips. We always stopped at the same places. It was either the neverending desert or the neverending ocean. By the way, I hate looking at the ocean, so that never held my attention. We knew when we were going to stop to go to the bathroom or stop for lunch. We knew how far away we were from our destination. Still, my parents have said that there is no need for them in the car, even with very young children. I don't know, it must just be different parenting. I will say that I've taken trips with my niece when she had one. They were the most unbearable trips ever. I've also taken trips with her when she didn't use it, and we interacted with each other. Those ones were much, much better.
Just because YOU don't see any use for them, doesn't mean that other people don't. If I want to have a DVD player in the minivan, how does that affect you? You parent your children, I'll parent mine.
I've been in the car behind cars that have them and find them exceedingly distracting. This is a particular problem at night when there aren't a lot of lights around. Other people I know have said the same things. It does affect others than those in the car.
As do mine but they get enough of that at home so i think for small car trips they can survive with tv. I mean when i was 3 we took some godawful trip to nc that took 18 hours because the car broke down and i survived on my little books and comics and capri suns . Now i submit to the fact for long car trips having one can help out. But lets be honest with ourselves, most people with those things don't just occasionally used them. Sadly enough we are in an age where everyone seems to need some level of constant visual simulation.
I wouldn't know how much people use them so I try not to judge them. As for the "when I was a kid...." arguments I think they are kind of weak. We *all* use things that weren't around or available to us as children.
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We bought our cars used and weren't looking for one with a TV, but they both happened to come with one. My husband's is so old it has a VCR instead of a DVD player. Anyway, yes, it is a luxury, and one of many, many things people have now that we didn't have when we were kids. ETA we only use it on long road trips, and limit the use even then.
