I’m still numb from the horrific news from London yesterday. But instead of dwelling on that crap, let’s move on to something lighter. It’s Friday after all, and the best way to fight terrorism is not let it carry us into the mire of fear and hate. And because the terrorists represent everything that is uncivilized, dark, and primal, let’s talk about something that is yet another signal that mankind is on a gentle upwards slope towards progress.
I’m talking about car DVD players.
OK, we fought it, despite the fact that we have a very, very long drive to Cleveland twice a year. Partially, because with this new house, we’re running through money like it’s juice boxes at a birthday party.
Partially, we fought the DVD, because we feared that they would lose some quality thinking time in the backseat. They would lose out on great conversations with their old folks. They would miss out on seeing the hawks and the deer, because they were glued to a screen watching Nemo.
And partially, we fought the DVD because we suffered, damnit, and they should, too. 1978, three of us, in the back of a Plymouth, with no A/C, fighting for a roll down windows, all the way to Florida. Yeah, nice time. But it made us tough. And kids today are going to turn into some sissies who need to have leg room and cup holders and fast forward past the scary parts in the movie. Sissies, I tell you.
But when the father in law offered to pay for it, we took him up on the deal. Because frankly, those car rides sucked. Why glamorize them?
We zoomed across OH, PA, and NJ and made the trip in record time. Nine hours. Not once did we hear “Are we there, yet?” We took lots of movie break for book reading time and for leg stretching. But the ride was pleasant.
That’s what civilized people do. They don’t resent others for their privileges. They accept change, eventually. And they take handouts from relatives.
Apt. 11d 
You know we are still resistin,but then we quit taking the kids anywhere. I figure we will medicate instead, a couple of bottles of Benadryl and some eye masks and I figure it’s smooth sailing.
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I like your definition of civilized. 🙂
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Probably just got delinked for being so glib about a serious topic.
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I totally agree — we gave in too, and the ride with our 3 year old and 6 year old was fun. And we made the rule quite clear — if you can’t agree on a movie we will turn it off. And now they are asking when can we go on another vacation in the car!
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Like you, I was staunchly anti-DVD in the car. Then recently I was reminded by a Washington Post article that, although we didn’t have DVD players, we also weren’t bound into confining carseats till age 8 (or whatever it is). In fact, on long trips, many of us weren’t buckled in at all. I remember riding down to Florida in the hatchback (seats down) of my mom’s car, playing board games with my best friend. So, no, we didn’t have TV screens. But with today’s (admittedly better) safety restrictions, I needn’t be so hard on kids who really don’t have as much in the way of car-ride entertainment options as my generation did.
And if you can get someone else to pay for said DVD player? Bonus.
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APL, you got me there. Melissa and I have resisted the car DVD too–partly because we haven’t been able afford a minivan yet, so the point is moot; partly because we like talking to and interacting with our kids while we drive (through road games, songs, etc.); but mostly because we just didn’t like the idea of them being captive viewers, sucked into the videoscreen for the duration of the drive. But that’s actually the point isn’t it? Thanks to seatbelts and carseats and the laws that require them, they really are captive, whereas back in the 70s we weren’t. (I too can remember sleeping, playing boardgames, and rough-housing with my brothers in our family’s Suburban, with all the back seats down.) So maybe the car DVD is a good way to respond to the unfortunate incidental costs of progress on the safety front.
We’ll have to decide by sometime next year; as the family grows, we probably won’t be able to put off the minivan any longer than that.
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Oh, Geez, this was a topic of conversation last weekend in our house. How timely. Both of my siblings have them and I had sworn them off, but now I am thinking we will do it and buy one for the long car trips.
We’ve been driving at night so the kids sleep during the drive, but that’s not so much fun for us.
I guess we’ll jump on the bandwagon and buy one.
That will save the sanity of the person in the passenger seat who has to turn around now every 2 seconds to find out what the kids need, etc.
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We chose a Gameboy, and god is it great–especially because M can play games and E who is too young for games can watch Dora mini-DVDs. Plus I decided it was a feminist act: every boy M knows has a Gameboy and none of the girls, and I don’t want her missing out on the skills and knowledge that someday we will discover boys have gained from all those hours at the Gameboy! And we only let them use it on long car trips, so we don’t have those ugly tear-the-Gameboy-out-of-the-kids’-hands issues that our friends have…
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Russell, we don’t have a minivan either. Just another handme down Toyota. Our DVD doesn’t need it. It actually has two screens (!) and they strap to the back of the headrests.
It is really decadent. Mostly, I think this points to progress, but sometimes I think of the decline of the Roman Empire.
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To any parens out there who drive at night, I caution you not to. My cousin and her husband often did this (as did we) because then our kids would sleep. January 2, 2000 my cousin, her husband and 3 children were driving back from a Christmas vacation and her husband briefly nodded off at the wheel. When he woke, he overcorrected and flipped the car. My cousin had taken the seat belt off moments before to grab her two year old’s pacifier. She was thrown from the car and immediately died. Everyone else was wearing seat belts and in car seats and walked away with minor injuries. We never drive after 9 at night now. It’s not worth the risk. I am sorry to sound alarmist, truly. It just breaks my heart to think a split second in a tired parent’s life could destroy another family. Get the DVD player, it’s a much safer way to occupy kids. Sorry to be so morose.
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You can have the best of both worlds. Buy a player that removes from the car and only use it for longer vacation-style trips, not for daily trips. That’s what we did. Really, for a longer trip, it’s impossible to do without it, unless you want to make yourself crazy; it’s just too difficult for kids to sit still for hours and hours, and they end up bugging you all the time. But I prefer to listen to music and talk on shorter trips.
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Lisa SG is right, the removable DVD player is the way to go.
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So far, we’ve resisted the DVD player in the car. But our car trips are almost exclusively to Chicago (2-5 hours depending on traffic) and to Minneapolis (4-5 hours) so it’s not too bad.
We buy kids “books on tape” and those annoying “sing along” tapes. They work – they really do.
We even got a version of the Incredibles on tape. The kids (age 2 and 5) listened to it twice in a row on our last trip.
But if it were a gift, I would certainly not turn it down!
And did anyone see the NYTimes magazine article this weekend questioning the necessity of car seats for older kids? It raised some interesting points, but it seemed to skip over a lot of the data.
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Kristen, books on tape have done more to make long trips in the car possible for our family than anything else. We love them. (Also excellent is story-tellers on tape. Check out some of the stuff by Jim Weiss.)
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The new york times article about car seats is probably wrong. Somebody with a bigger set of data found a statistical advantage to using baby and booster seats for kids over two.
It isn’t a big effect though. The important thing is to always use seat belts and keep kids out of the front seat.
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