Having a young child who is prone to travel sickness is not nice for all concerned. Our three year old has been travel sick ever since he first moved into a forward facing car seat so, over the years, we have tried a number of different remedies and strategies to try and stop or, at least, manage his sickness, with varying degrees of success.

Our most recent and, to date, most successful purchase is a pair of these travel bands, which claim to use acupuncture type methods to reduce all different kinds of sickness and nausea, including travel sickness, sea sickness and morning sickness. I'd read generally positive feedback about the success of these bands so thought it had to be worth a try. The obvious advantages of this kind of method is that it is non-medicinal so no need to worry about dosages or any potential side effects. This makes it ideal for many of those likely to experiences regular bouts of nausea such as children and pregnant women - neither of whom really want to be taking any medication if it can be avoided.

The bands are small stretchy fabric bands, similar in appearance to the cheaper style of girls' hair bobble. Each band has a hard plastic ball embedded into the fabric which needs to be lined up against a particular pressure point on the inner wrist. This pressure, apparently, disrupts the signals that are being sent to the brain telling it to feel or be sick. The bands are supposed to be suitable for children from the age of three right up to adulthood. This seems a surprisingly large age range and we were a little unsure whether the bands would actually be small enough for our three year old son who is particularly small and thin. The bands must stretch considerably to accommodate adult wrists though as these do actually fit round my son's bony little arms! To help make them a tighter fit (bearing in mind the need to create pressure to relieve the feelings of nausea) we have sometimes used folded up kitchen towel at the opposite side to help to make a tighter fit. I must admit I don't always do that and it doesn't appear to have any impact on the results.

It does state on the packaging that there are children's Sea Bands also available but these don't appear to be readily available within shops. The standard version is quite widely available although not particularly cheap. We paid around £8.50 for a pair from Lloyds Pharmacy which does seem a lot for a stretchy bit of fabric with a ball in it! On the other hand, this is a one-off outlay and, providing it works, should offer excellent value for money in the long run.

The instructions for aligning this are pretty specific and we take them really seriously - to the extent that we mark out the exact point on our three year old's wrist with a felt tip pin and check before our return journey that the ball is still resting against the marked point. I suspect that there is room for some margin of error but we'd rather not run the risk, having spent far too many journeys in a car stinking of vomit! This is supposed to be lined up from the fold at the base of the hand and the correct spot is measured using three fingers. (Specific instructions can be found online as well as on the leaflet included.) http://www.ehow.com/how_5183338_use-sea-band-morni ng-sickness.html

As we are using this on a child we have to use his smaller fingers, rather than ours, to locate the correct spot so that could be problematic if the child doesn't feel very co-operative! Fortunately our son is more than happy to wear these 'sick bands' as he, understandably, doesn't like being sick whenever we travel. Once in place, these don't cause any discomfort or irritation and we often forget to remove them meaning these can be in place for several hours without any issues. The only evidence of the band being used is that they can leave a visible mark where the plastic stud has been in place but this soon wears off and doesn't lead to a bruise.

Now the crucial bit is whether these have resolved the problem for us. Certainly, the early results were brilliant. My son is generally prone to sickness in the mornings, especially within a couple of hours of a milky breakfast. We used this bands on numerous journeys during the mornings on routes and at times where he has previously been sick many times. Each time, he stayed sick free - amazing! There were a couple of times where he did say that he actually felt sick but he didn't turn the shade of grey that we have grown to recognise so I'm not sure whether he was just more conscious of feeling sick because of having the bands on. Up to just a couple of weeks ago we had a 100% success rate and we thought we'd found a total cure! Sadly, he threw up in the car over half-term - typically when we had Mother in Law in the car with us! To be fair, it was a particularly windy, hilly route and it was during the morning. He got much further into the journey than he would normally though - frustratingly about a mile from our destination after a fifteen mile trip- so I do think the bands helped to delay the feelings of nausea somewhat.

As we have tested these on a child, I also think there is less chance that the effects are purely placebo as some cynics might believe, as he generally forgets that he is wearing them certainly now the initial novelty has worn off. Whilst I can't promise that these are a total solution to travel sickness, and we won't be leaving the spare clothes, carrier bags and wipes behind just yet- they do seem to seriously reduce the number of sickness incidents my son has, on journeys where he would previously be sick. I would certainly recommend giving these a try.