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Car Seat Crying

When the Buzz of the Engine Doesn't Lull Your Baby to Sleep

By Laura Cone

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When your baby doesn't fall asleep, one of the old standby tricks is to take him for a car ride and let the motor sound and motion lull him to sleep. But what do you do if you have to take your baby on an extended trip or across town and he still won't stop crying? Experts say parents need to keep safety in mind first when keeping their baby entertained and happy on the road.

Tracy Wood of Land O' Lakes, Fla., says she keeps children occupied all day as a kindergarten teacher. When it comes to dealing with her toddler Tyler, who is 18 months old, it's a different story. "I am going through that right now," she says. "I distract him. My older son is a good distracter. I have his favorite toy, a radio, and I start playing that and hand it to him. I keep his sippy cup in the car."

When her older son, Dylan, was an infant and cried in the car seat, Wood would pull over to make sure he was fine. "He made me so nervous when he was younger," she says. "We had a television in the car and that was the biggest help."

Jennifer Stockburger, a certified child passenger safety technician and a senior automotive and tire test engineer for Consumer Reports in East Haddam, Conn., says some of the styling trends in car seats make it impossible for infants to see out the window. To keep your baby entertained, purchase pads with patterns and colors that hang on the back of the front seat for the baby to see.

Stockburger and her husband, Jack, often tag team when it comes to keeping their 2-year-old son entertained in the car. "Somebody would sit in the back to converse and play or hold the bottle for the younger baby," she says. "We took an 11-hour trip to North Carolina with a 1-year-old last summer. We just planned it out and found rest areas that had playgrounds."


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