Driven Mad

One way I have found to ensure a slightly more harmonious car journey when you are travelling with your children is to take a different combination of children with you. Whenever we go anywhere with friends the children all clamour to either go in a different car to their own or just with a different mix of children that don’t include their own siblings, or if they can swing it, both. This often means there is a girls’ car and a boys’ car and usually involves a great deal of car seat swapping and inconvenience to the parents. However it is ultimately worth the effort for the resulting lack of squabbles and relative peace of the drive, even if it is only a 10 minute trip.

Children like going in my car, particularly those from smaller families. It is just a bog standard MPV but to them it feels like a bus, it is high up and has ‘back, back’ seats. These are coveted by visiting children and loathed by my own, who fight over not sitting in the very back seat. Whether this is due to travel sickness, as they claim, or whether it is more the fact that they are just the least heard, way back there, I am not sure.

That is the other thing about my car, all the children feel quite far away. Generally I discourage the front seat, because of the airbag so sometimes when I am driving I can be in my own little bubble. I am sure I am not the only parent to sometimes long for a soundproof screen like those between chauffeur and passenger which will shut out the kids’ noise and demands at the touch of a button.

Although, having said that, I do like the way we are all forced together on a car journey. It is one of the few moments that I manage to get everyone in the same place at the same time. Even when we walk together, everyone has their own pace which means I am alternately speeding up and slowing down between them in order to maintain some semblance of control of my brood.

I like to have them all contained sometimes, and made to have conversation, play games, make observations and just be a family. The dinner table is good for that too, if you can get off the topic of table manners, that will be about the time of the last mouthful, knives and forks will be laid down and one or more will try and make a break for it, back to whatever it was they were doing. There is no such opportunity in the car.

Admittedly we don’t actually have to do very many long journeys but in any case I resolutely refuse to have any DVD/TV or computer style in-car entertainment. That, as far as I am concerned is CHEATING.

It is character building dealing with boredom and having to make up and play games to keep themselves entertained. Mostly it is ‘I Spy’ or spotting the most of a certain colour of car but sometimes we come up with something more interesting. The ‘which is better’ game, (where you choose 2 things/activities/food held in equal regard or equal distaste and decide which you’d rather have,) gives some insights into the children’s preferences that you may not have known otherwise.

In the early years, when I was keen and enthusiastic in my parenting, I actually prepped for a journey. I gave them each a sheet of hand drawn pictures of things they were likely to spot on the way, (if that is they could identify them from my depictions of a cow, caravan, horse and post box.) In hindsight it seems quite cruel to have them scouring for post boxes on the motorway, but it certainly kept them occupied.

These days though I just herd them all in the car with water and snacks and divert boredom with anything I can think up on the fly.

They do now come up with their own games. Recently we had what appeared to be a ‘how many Star Wars characters can you name?’ game – there is apparently quite a lot of mileage in that. That worked mainly because we only had all boys and Rachel in the car at the time.

Emilia complained recently “I hate having 3 brothers!”

“What?” I answered confused, “but you don’t have 3 brothers, you’ve only 2?”

“Yes.... but Rachel?!”

 That was all the clarification I needed. She does have a point there.

This particular day though, I was on my way to Legoland with one extra boy and Rachel, and no Emilia to bemoan the lack of ‘girllishness’ and the atmosphere in the car was agreeable. At least it was on the way there.

Now, my car I admit is a travelling skip. It is 18 years old and I have had it for over 7 years. We’ve had many a close call with its MOT failures and for a long time we put off fitting a tow bar to it, in anticipation of its imminent death, but it keeps scraping through and will not totally give up the ghost. 

The central locking doesn’t work, the bulb in the dashboard has gone so after dark I have no idea what speed I am doing, the speakers are staved in and I accidentally smashed a hole in the tail light with a swinging bike which I carelessly tried to sling in the boot by the handlebars. It is full of sand, stones and biscuit crumbs even after the rare occasions I have cleaned it. It is a permanent home to, crayons, assorted lidless felt tips, paper, several books, 2 spades, a torn map book, a kite, rain poncho and a bag full of emergency spare clothes, and waterproofs and wellies in the winter. There are also the temporary additions of scooters, rollerblades, teddies, prams, balls and Rachel’s comfy cushion that accompany us on any given journey. It is a home from home and if I am in need of anything while out I can usually rummage about in the car and find it. Unless it is change for the parking machine which can never be found in there.

On this occasion however, we weren’t in my car – it had presumably failed the MOT again, so I was driving my husband’s car instead. This is a very old, uncool but practical diesel Ford Mondeo saloon, it looks and smells like a taxi and I need a booster seat in order to see over the steering wheel, but it is cheap to run, can fit all but one of the family at any one time and has an enormous boot for all our paraphernalia.

I pulled up in this car to collect my friend’s boy. The father came out with his son and casting an eye over my vehicle said with a raised eyebrow “So THIS is your OTHER car?” as the realisation dawned that the tin can I usually drive around in, was actually our better car. (So says the driver of a Land Rover, whose other car is a Porsche.)

We may not drive in style but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The car is also the place that I can really let rip at the kids, confident that at 70 mph down the motorway that no one else can hear or witness me losing my cool.

Now the transition from bigger to smaller car with many children is not an easy one. In the closer confines of a smaller car, you have to be even more tolerant, from the foot in my back to having a small and insatiably curious person in the front seat who gets in the way of the gear stick and delights in the new found joy of being able to reach and control the stereo and windows. I have an issue with the children opening the windows unannounced. This stems from mother who used to cry that the sudden opening of the window made her think somebody had fallen out of the car. Presumably that was a very real risk in those days, when my carry cot was placed over the hole in the floor of the car which went through to the road. I have inherited this association with a sudden rush of wind which inspires momentary panic in the driver.

I also find myself bellowing at the kids for distracting me with their squabbling when I am driving and telling them they are going to make me have an accident (which is another repeat of my own mother.)

Ben, aged 3, was obviously hyper aware of the need for concentration while driving as he stopped me trying to do the actions whilst at the wheel when singing along to Tumble Tot action songs.

“Mummy!” he called from the back of the car “Stop doing that! You’ll lose your concentrate and crash!”

If anyone is going to make me ‘lose my concentrate’ it is going to be Rachel, as after she tires of the stereo and windows, she reclines her seat back so that her head is in the back seat with the boys on her brothers’ laps. She reaches round to touch their hands and at the same time her foot hits the volume button on the radio whacking it up to full volume and is unable to turn it off. The boys all protest, she cries because it is too loud and I am shouting at her because she seems to have broken it. It is carnage.

This is nothing new. Car journeys are often fraught with arguments about who is going to sit where, what CD we’re going to endure, who wants windows open or closed and whose singing is annoying who but I do want my children to just learn to get along. It would be much, much easier just to plug them all into their individual screens and headsets and off we could all go in peace and contentment.

That is not to say that we don’t have good journeys too. We do mostly. Recently we were driving somewhere and the children were all getting along beautifully, just being really silly and roaring with laughter at their own absurdity. They were having a great time but consequently annoying the hell out of Mark and me. They were just being so squeaky and irritating, and as I sat in the front of the car, unable to tune them out, I literally felt I was being driven mad.