My husband’s family has a beautiful lakefront property that is just about as close to paradise on earth as you can get.
Crisp refreshing water, gorgeous pastel sunsets, choruses of loon calls hanging in the air, summer showers clouding up the horizon before disappearing across the big northern sky – you get the point. It’s amazing!
The only problem is, this lakehouse is on the other side of the country from us.
So if we want to get there, we have to endure a 1.5-hour car ride to the airport, a 5-hour plane ride, a 1-2 hour layover, another 1.5-hour plane ride, and then a 3-hour car ride.
And that means waking everyone up before 5 AM, backseat bickering, ear-popping induced tantrums, greasy overpriced airport pizza, at least one child forgetting to pack something essential, the overwhelming feeling that you’re turning your kids’ brains to mush by letting them zone out in front of tablets all day, long rental car lines, more backseat bickering – anyway, you get the point. It’s terrible.
So earlier this year when we finalized our summer plans and bought our flights, I started on a plan of my own: Operation Make Our 14-Hour Travel Day with a 6-year-old, 9-year-old, and 11-year-old a Little Less Terrible™!
I started on a list. I needed something that:
- Entertained the children for LONG stretches of time
- Could be enjoyed by all 3 kids (not just 1 or 2)
- Is compact enough to easily throw in a carry-on
- Didn’t just zone them out entirely (ie, if it involved a screen, I wanted it to at least be interactive and collaborative)
My initial search for this magical activity was… not inspiring.
The kids do really enjoy some board games, but they’re not big fans of UNO or other playing-card-sized games.
I did see some fun little electronic and magnetic games that could fit well on a tray table, but they all seemed kind of gimmicky and like they wouldn’t hold the interest of my kids, anyway.
A few months went by and I kind of gave up on revolutionizing our travel-day-entertainment. We could always just rely on the iPads, after all…
Then, I stumbled upon a box of family-oriented conversation starter cards called the Family Pack, made by Talking Point Cards.
It’s a small box with 200 family-friendly conversation-starter cards, meant for kids and adults to have fun and meaningful conversations together.
This description definitely intrigued me (my husband and I had already agreed that we should both be doing more to get the kids to spend more time talking and less time on the tablets) but it wasn’t until I read the reviews that I was really sold…
There was review after review (over 2,900, to be exact!) from Moms just like me talking about how these cards helped them bond as a family, ‘reclaim family dinner,’ and other amazing-sounding things like that.
That was more than good enough for me, so I bought the Family Pack and tried to contain my hope.
Our First Time Using the Cards:
I made the decision to only bring out the Family Pack once before our travel day. I wanted to gauge how much the kids liked it, without wearing out its charm.
So we brought out the cards one night at dinner… and the kids absolutely loved it! We talked for about 20 minutes about a couple of different cards, and it was just a ton of fun.
But then I cut our session short: I had seen enough. It was go time.
The Travel Day (AKA, the True Test of Talking Point Cards…)
The Travel Day started off with its usual chaos, but we made it through the car-ride and airport security without totally imploding.
We were seated on one of those big planes with 3 seats on each side and 5 in the middle, and luckily we were able to take up an entire middle row.
Once we were in the air, I decided to pull out the cards. I handed them to my 11-year-old (sitting in the very middle) and to my delight he was pretty enthusiastic about the cards (which, of course, got the little siblings on board too).
From the very first question he read (“If you could have any view from your bedroom window, what would it be?”) the kids were just chatting away.
They’d go back and forth reading the questions and were really good at giving each other time to respond. My husband and I were both having fun chiming in when the kids asked, but for the most part we just let them amuse themselves!
I quite literally lost track of time as I listened to the sweet sounds of my children being relaxed and polite on a plane… and before I knew it we had already been in the air for three whole hours!
Three Uninterrupted Hours of My Kids Having Meaningful Conversation… on a Plane!!
Operation-14-Hour-Travel-Day was already a wild success!
I let the kids have some individual iPad time for the rest of the flight once my oldest decided he needed a nap, but there was no mistaking it: These cards worked!
The ensuing ~7 hours of travel was just about the most harmonious time in an airport, an airplane, and a rental car that you could imagine.
I sat down next to my 11-year-old and 9-year-old on the shorter flight as my husband sat with the 6-year-old. My two oldest and I once again pulled out the Family Packed and talked the whole time!
I absolutely loved hearing their opinions (there were more than a couple of times when I was absolutely dumbfounded at the depth of their responses to certain questions… proud Momma moment!)
By the time we navigated the airport shuttle and rental agency lines, our moods were still sky-high.
There had been no tantrums, no bickering, and barely any iPad time!
Even More Conversation in The Car (The Cherry on Top)
As we were hitting the home stretch, and on our way to the lake house. The sweet little voice of my 6-year-old son echoed through our rental car:
“Mommy, can we do more questions?”
We proceeded to talk for over an hour before the day’s travel finally caught up to 2 out of 3 kids and they started to drift off to sleep.
So, we ended up spending over 1/3 of our 14-Hour Travel Day using the Family Pack to have great conversations with each other… how amazing is that!?!?
The Family Pack Exceeded My Wildest Dreams
We didn’t just survive our super long travel day… we thrived!
The most magical thing about the cards is definitely the way that the questions are able to captivate kids’ minds and just make them want to talk and listen and connect with the people around them.
Seriously, I don’t know how they put together 200 questions that are all so amazing, but I know I’m going to be upset when we finish all of them!
So, all in all, here’s my review:
100000/5 stars for the Talking Point Cards Family Pack!
I know, I know, that rating might be a little hyperbolic – but seriously. When I think back to the criteria I set out for this travel-day operation (entertain my kids, involve all three children, fit in a carry-on, and ideally not involve screens) the Family Pack absolutely passed with flying colors.
And it actually didn’t just pass the test – it added an entirely new category!:
5) Help my kids grow as conversationalists, get us all feeling closer as a family, give us a more meaningful way to spend time together, and on and on and on…
The Family Pack didn’t just help us pass the time, it changed the way we spend our time together as a family!
So… yeah, if you have a family, then you’re almost definitely going to want to be getting the Family Pack!
