Motion Sickness (action for those who get car sick)

It used to happen to me when I was young and it still does if I am a passenger sometimes. Motion sickness is caused when the messages from the inner ear (balance department) conflict with the messages from the eye (vision department) causing the brain to take some measures to remove the conflict. As a natural defense against poisoning, the brain will listen to the inner ear over the eyes because vision problems are an early indication of poisoning.
What this means is that if your eyes and ears are telling your brain two different things the brain will believe the ear and assume you have been poisoned and begin to make you feel sick until you vomit. Once you vomit the brain will assume you have removed the poison from your body (thats why you feel pretty good just after a vomit session) and resume normal operation. If you are in a car and are looking out the side window your eyes will continue to send a different message to your brain and soon you will begin to feel sick again.

How do you prevent travel sickness?

You must try to get the eyes and the inner ears to say the same thing so the brain has no need to make you feel sick. When traveling in a car the best way to do this is to look out the front window. That is why the front seat passengers rarely get car sick because they look out the windscreen where there is little difference between what the eyes see and the ears interpret as there is little movement of the objects apart from coming towards you. When you sit in the back seat you should attempt to look out the front windscreen if you can and you will find the motion sickness is reduced dramatically.

Children and Motion Sickness:
It is much easier to tell an adult how to battle motion sickness but how do you explain all this to a child?

You don't.

A good strategy for children in cars is to play games that involve looking out the front windscreen.  We find this works well when you have to drive through mountainous and winding roads where it would be tempting for a child to look out the side windows at all the trees moving past. We play games such as "What am I?" "What colour will the next car be?" and the all time favorite "I Spy- windscreen version". There are a lot of websites out there that suggest looking at the horizon which is great advice for open plains and sea travel but for situations where the view from all windows is moving objects then the windscreen is the most stable place to look.
Children will not always tell you when they are feeling sick but a good indicator is when they go quiet. They may also go quiet because they want to have a think but  drowsiness is often an early stage of motion sickness. If your kids are going quiet but appear to be going to sleep it may be a good idea to stop the car for a short break. When you do this encourage the quiet ones to get out of the car and walk around or throw a ball for a few minutes. This will send some familiar signals to the brain and give them some fresh air and get them feeling good again.

Keep them distracted and looking out the front windscreen is working for us. See how it goes for you.