Tablet for Toddler for Long Car Rides [on]
TLDR: How can I setup a tablet for my toddler for long car rides? Which tablet do I buy? Can it play downloaded content without wifi or data? Can I control it from my phone?
My almost 15 month old does not like being in the car. I don't think it's motion sickness, I think she just doesn't like being restrained. Same reason she prefers to eat while standing in her toddler tower rather than sitting in her high chair.
She can tolerate short rides in our city, but she often gets upset and it escalates to crying, sometimes she is inconsolable unless I pull over and take her out of the car seat. I'm the past when I have not been able to pull over safely for a time, she has started hyperventilating.
She is currently rear facing and I've seen many parents on Reddit say that forward facing fixed it, but I wanted to have other solutions as well.
We have several long car rides coming up (1-4 hours each, multiple trips, over 2.5 days). We are travelling to the US (by air) to see family and friends, and for these trips I will be alone with her in the car, so there's no one to sit in the backseat with her.
I would like to buy a tablet to play engaging shows to distract her from her discomfort. She's not able to manage playback on her own, and if she holds the tablet she will keep touching it and interrupt the show. So I'm planning to mount the tablet to the headrest where she can't reach it.
I'm hung up on the following:
- can I control playback from my phone? I have an android
- can I download content from Netflix into the tablet and play it without wifi and without data (cuz I'm not trying to add a phone line to this tablet, and also we will be roaming in the US so I don't want to use the tablet's data at all; I will be using data/roaming on my cell phone for safety purposes)
- if I get a used or refurbished tablet, which model is not too old to work the way I am describing?