Going on holiday with four kids under seven is a nightmare — what do you do in the car?

When you’ve got as many young children as I have, the prospect of going on holiday anywhere isn’t very appealing. It’s not being somewhere else that’s the problem, though there’s a risk that their sleep patterns will be disrupted. Rather, it’s getting to wherever it is you’re going. How do you keep four children under seven entertained during the journey?

This Easter we’re off to Suffolk to stay with my parents-in-law and that means a two-and-a-half-hour drive. One method of passing the time is to get all four children to play I Spy, not easy given their ages. Charlie, our one-year-old, only participates in the guessing part of the game — and he always guesses the same thing, namely, ‘choo choo’. If I happen to see a train, I’ll say, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with “t”,’ in the hope that when Charlie immediately pipes up with ‘choo choo’ I’ll be able to say, ‘Yes, Charlie, that’s right.’