With the summer travel season upon us, thousands of families are taking to the highway for their vacation. But for kids who experience motion sickness, the car ride is anything but fun.

Motion sickness occurs when the body's motion receptors -- eyes, inner ears, skin, and muscles and joints -- send conflicting signals to the brain. If you read while riding in a car, for example, your eyes don't detect the motion, but your inner ears and muscles and joints do. Your brain becomes confused, which can lead to sweating and nausea.

Fortunately, many children outgrow this condition by adolescence, although people can continue to be more sensitive to some types of travel (like by boat) than other types.

Here are some tips from Consumer Reports on Health and other sources on ways to minimize your travel troubles:

• Don't let carsickness-prone kids read, color, play handheld games or watch videos. It helps for the child to look out the window to see the distant horizon as a stable presence. It may help a younger child to sit on an elevated car seat to get a better view outside the car. The driver of the car can also help by making less sharp turns and avoiding sudden braking and accelerating.

• Have your child listen to music or audiobooks and play games such as I Spy that involve looking out the window.

• Plan frequent stops for fresh air. Wear the kids out at a park or fast-food play area. Sleeping children don't get carsick.

• Be prepared with a waterproof bag and a cleanup kit. A wide-mouthed empty ice cream carton (with lid) also could be a good receptacle if a child gets sick. And you have the tight lid to cover it until your next rest stop. Include a change of clothes, paper towels, an enzyme-based pet-spot remover (good for cleaning and deodorizing after human accidents too), and a towel to cover the cleaned seat.

• Sometimes an over-the-counter antihistamine like Benadryl helps. Try a test dose at home, however. These drugs make most people drowsy, but some kids have the opposite reaction. And you don't want to be stuck in a moving vehicle with a hyper child.