I had always assumed it was unsafe for a child to eat or drink in a car seat, so I didn’t give my daughter food or drinks in the car.
I don’t know what I based my assumption on, but I recently broke my own no-eating/no-drinking rule when my daughter was fussy during a long road trip. I gave her lots of puffs, rice crackers and water to calm her down.
Luckily, we all made it home okay, and since then, my daughter has become a car seat eating regular. But I couldn’t help wondering what the real story is about consumption by little ones in the car. So I asked a well-known car seat expert.
According to the expert, when children are hooked up in car seats in moving cars, it’s harder to get to them if they are choking. For that reason, the car seat expert advises against letting children eat anything that could be a choking hazard while riding in car.
This list includes obvious choking hazards like grapes and popcorn. But even foods that aren’t obvious choking hazards can be dangerous if kids shove huge quantities in their mouths. Little kids who aren’t exercising portion control really “can choke on anything,” the expert says. So the expert says not to give your child other foods (say puffs, Goldfish crackers or Cheerios) until your little one has exhibited portion control at least several times when putting the food in his or her mouth. In other words, wait to give food in the car until your toddler knows to eat one or two puffs at a time.
A Vapur Quencher water bottle
On the other hand, according to the expert I spoke with, liquids are generally fine, as are liquid-like foods such as the mush kids can slurp out of food pouches. “It’s harder to choke on a liquid than a solid,” the expert says, adding that an advantage of water as the drink of choice in the car is that if kids spill, “it’s pretty hard to make a mess with water.”
But if you’re going to let your child drink in the car, make sure that the drinking vessel passes an “ouch test,” which I covered in an earlier post. “Sippy cups are often quite hard,” the expert says, noting that softer Vapur bag- or pouch-like water bottles could be a fun “special car water bottle.”
What do you serve your child in the car and why?
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[…] and it’s getting worse everyday. Look in, and around, my daughter’s car seat and you’ll see remnants of puffs and other car-seat friendly food. The backseat floor, meanwhile, is covered in magazine scraps and my daughter’s old Starbucks […]