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Bickering Kids in the Car: A Practical Dad Solution

Perhaps the worst place to have children bickering is the family car.  You're stuck behind the wheel as the kids whine, accuse, pick, poke and annoy one another - and you.  In many instances, this is caused by the kids feuding over who gets to sit in what spot.  It might be who gets to sit shotgun or in our case, who gets to sit by the automatically-closing minivan door.

You could hit a storefront for the distraction it causes, so you have to figure out some workable, consistent and verifiable solution for the problem.

My favorite was created by a Practical Dad for his quarreling kids.

He ran an older vehicle without front passenger airbags, so the kids could sit shotgun.  But who's turn was it?  And the last trip really wasn't that long so it doesn't count, does it?  And you forgot that I didn't get to sit there last week when we went to the mall, didn't you?  Huh?  Huh?  Dintja???

Bill's a precise guy with an affinity for building and creating.  He stole a page from Isosceles and created a triangle from thick cardboard, reinforced along the edges by heavy tape.  Each corner was then labeled with the name of one of his three children.  He kept the device inserted into an easily visible seam on his dashboard and when he had the children in his vehicle, he shifted the triangle so that the name of the shotgun child was on top, towards the ceiling.  He kept it in that position and when the next trip came along, shifted it to show the next child's turn in the seat.  He used this device faithfully until he was able to retire it.

But kids being kids, it might still come in handy.

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