I slip into the distastefully coloured velour seat, put my hands on the steering wheel and come over all caveman. This is my kingdom. The controls are set before me. I have a mission I must fulfil responsibly, transporting the family I have wedged around me safely and efficiently to our holiday destination. I turn on the ignition and feel a hit of adrenalin as the engine . . .
“Dad, Eathelin’s snatched my donkey,” whines my eldest, Chiara.
“Well, ask her for it nicely,” I say.
“I have done and she won’t give it to me. Give it BACK Eathy.”
I feel my kingdom under threat. “Darling, do you mind just sorting this out, I venture to my wife Mirella as she gets into the passenger seat, realising (but sadly too late) that she has spent the past hour trying to sort it out while I’ve been packing the car in an efficient, hunter-gatherer-type way. She explodes and the tone is set for two hours of bickering and frosty silences as I try to re-establish my proud dominion of Kingdom Car.
This, I am relieved to discover from psychologists and human behaviour experts, is quite normal. Cars take their occupants into some basic places, raising conflicts and sensitivities that might never arise in the home.
Peter Marsh, the author of Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car (Faber and Faber), says that where human beings are concerned cars are about everything except getting from A to B. “At one level you can see cars as an extension of home territory; people fart and pick their noses in a car in a way that they never would in public. But cars also change the dynamics between people. People are not only physically closer, but psychologically closer; there’s something about a car that’s quite intimate. That can be good, and it’s no coincidence that a car is where many people have their first sexual encounters, but it can also be stressful in the wrong circumstances.”
Marsh, a psychologist who is also director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, adds: “Being at the wheel of a car can give a driver the sense of suddenly being in control of his or her destiny and there’s a sense of dominance. But there are other factors, such as traffic jams, and your children wanting to stop for a pee, that can destroy this illusion that you are master of all around you. Again, that causes stress.”
The differences between men and women are often the sources of bad car karma. Because of its closed confines a car can exacerbate some of the fundamental differences between the sexes that have been concealed in a more forgiving home environment, where you don’t have to sit two feet from each other, make conversation for a couple of hours and do intensive problem-solving together.
Take those classic car flashpoints between partners: map-reading, asking for directions, and back-seat (or passenger seat) driving. Studies have shown that they are indicative of specific differences between the male and female brain, differences that inevitably cause conflict. Men can get incredibly frustrated at women’s problems reading maps, their inability to decipher whether they should turn left or right from the information on the printed page (at least, not without turning the map around). But study after study has shown that men are hardwired to resolve spatial puzzles far better than women and are particularly good at imagining how a figure would appear if a pattern is rotated. Experiments at the University of Hamburg have confirmed that this ability is directly linked to testosterone levels.
Women, on the other hand, are continually frustrated at men’s stubborn refusal to ask for directions, and their defensiveness about their driving and navigating abilities. This arises from a man’s biological need to be seen as a strong protector in situations where there are potential hazards — it’s all about our inheritance from the cavemen again. Being vulnerable to error hits to the core. Allan Pease, an American relationships and body language author, says:
“When a woman says ‘Let’s ask for directions’, a man hears, ‘You’re incompetent: you can’t navigate’.”
I’m ashamed to say that I can see it in myself. Driving the family to the shops last weekend I saw an oncoming car quite late as I was turning right because it was tucked behind another car. I put on my brakes at the moment Mirella said: “Oh my God.” I immediately felt peeved because I knew I’d always had everything under control. It felt like an insult, thought it wasn't meant as anything of the kind. She could see that I was tense and wondered what was wrong. She got fed up with me for being upset about nothing. I wondered why she was being so frosty with me all of a sudden. The children picked up that Mummy and Daddy seemed grumpy and started demanding attention, and so it escalated — car bedlam.
Now the scientists can explain a lot of the sources of these gender-based car tensions in terms of differences in male and female brain structure. Women will be amazed at men’s inability to turn their minds to conversation or to entertain the children while driving because of the male innate inability to multi-task. Research at the University of Pennsylvania has confirmed this by charting blood flow in the head, and showing that women use many parts of the brain when given a wide variety of verbal and spatial tasks, while men channel it through one part.
On the other hand, male passengers will be driven to distraction by women’s ability to open bottles, sing songs, do crosswords, solve the Middle East crisis and hold lucid conversations while negotiating a motorway junction. "Keep your eye on the road," they'll hiss through clenched teeth. They may have some justification; researchers from the University of Michigan have pointed out that multi-tasking makes you slightly less efficient at each task, and that might prove important when driving. So if they’re worried, men should always be on the ready to help with the mobile picnic and to start up a happy song.
“Men can make difficult passengers anyway because who’s driving tends to indicate who’s dominant in the relationship,” says Rachel Andrew, a clinical psychologist specialising in family work in Burnley, Lancashire. She has noticed something very interesting regarding men and satellite navigation systems in this respect. “They always pick the woman’s voice on the system, but they always get into the same patterns of complaining as they do with their wives, moaning about the directions.” Maybe men just need a woman to moan at to drive properly.
But for all the emotional dangers of getting into a car together, there are some boons. It’s a chance to bond like nowhere else if you’re aware of the pitfalls too. There’s something about sitting close, but side by side and not face to face, that lets people raise things. As long as it’s not that long-suppressed grievance about your partner’s driving ability.
Simon Crompton
‘Mummy, I need the loo’
We have just pulled away from our house. Beyond us lies the eternity of the M4; a five- hour trawl to Cornwall. Behind us, still very much in view, is our West London street. Then he goes and asks it: “Mummy and Daddy, how much longer?” No other question can send a parent into a freefall quite so quickly. Also, I wonder irritably, how can a four-year-old’s view of the universe be so at odds with reality? Does he really believe that the sandy dunes of Padstow beach lie just beyond Hammersmith Broadway, even though he has been there 20 times before? Unfairly, I’m already impatient that my son hasn’t grasped the basics of time and relativity and we have barely left our home.
It doesn’t need Einstein to figure this one out: long car journeys and small children fly against the laws of nature. Yet as modern parents, we don’t have that much choice. Flights are expensive and, anyway, there’s always a drive at either end. Meanwhile, long-distance trains offer a different version of hell; if you’ve ever tried calming a teething baby at Rome railway station in the July heat when the last train to Tuscany has been cancelled, you’ll know that heaven is an air-conditioned Volvo.
And so we are stuck with the inevitable. Around now, hurtling across the motorways of Britain, France and beyond, thousands of parents are rapidly running out of options. Will it be I-Spy for the twentieth time? Hula Hoops or that nasty Day-Glo carton of orange Ribena? Or, please no, the happy-clappy musical nursery rhymes CD? “It’s like torture,” admits Catherine, 33, a PR manager who lives in London. “Max pitches his whine at a constant level designed to make you feel murderous. He spends the next two hours saying he wants the loo. You stop, and he says it’s fine. Then the whining starts again. Saddam Hussein would make an easier passenger than an active three-year-old boy.”
We put ourselves in this position each summer. Next year it will be different, we think. Maybe we’ll stay at home. Yet there is another way of approaching this, apparently. The only hope, according to Dr Richard Woolfson, a child psychologist and author of Why Do Kids Do That? (Hamlyn), is to embrace our children’s behaviour, accept that the journey will be a struggle and treat it as a challenge. In other words, ditch any secret hopes that you can languish in the passenger seat texting your friends, choosing CDs and passing the driver limp cucumber sandwiches. Something I mistakenly assume every time we set off on a long journey.
It is only when I have to climb into the back seat, wedging myself into the tiny gap between the two car seats to stop my children Louis, 4, and Evie, 2, from drawing blood that I realise how ceaselessly interactive you have to be. For the rest of the journey, locked between the two of them, I talk and play with each one at close quarters and they’re usually content.
Shock, horror; they just crave your undivid-ed attention. To what extent you’re willing to give it will define the quality of your car journey. Basically, by the time Louis is hurling his toy monkey past my husband’s ear and screeching “How much longer?” I know that I haven’t put in enough effort. Woolfson agrees. “You’ve got to assume right from the start that you’re going to have to work to keep them happy.”
That means preparation: packing plenty of small snacks and treats, favourite toys and books to read aloud. Even thinking about games you can play beforehand will help you to be more realistic about what lies ahead. “Don’t look on it as an intrusion to the journey but part of the journey,” he says.
“Cars are not a natural environment for children. Sitting in a fixed position does not fit with what they instinctively want to do, which is explore. So it’s perfectly normal for them to whinge.” It’s also perfectly normal for whoever is driving, and let’s face it, it’s usually the father, to whinge at the mother, who then feels even more resentful at the task that lies ahead. “I hate it,” says my friend Deborah, 39, and mother of two, through clenched teeth.
Last summer’s drive from London to Devon is still etched on her memory. “Will, my husband, was driving, as usual, which means that I get joint navigation and child management duties. It was a boiling hot day and I was turning round to give them some warmed-up orange juice that had turned to listeria-filled fizz when the sign for London sailed past. To get back, we had to go on all these twisting A-roads and Sophie, our youngest, was sick everywhere.”
Most fathers know they’ve got it easy when they’re in the driving seat. “At least I have to focus on only one thing. My wife doesn’t like driving on motorways, which is fine by me,” Will says. Perhaps the lesson to be learnt here is to share driving duties for at least some of the time. Woolfson agrees. “God forbid that you distract the driver, but you can swap roles. If you start bickering the whole atmosphere becomes fraught.”
Of course, there are less taxing solutions that work for varying lengths of time. CD books are incredibly popular for good reason (see panel below). “The Famous Five” has been a big success”, says Deborah. “Although, after an hour or two, the sound of, ‘Oh really, Timmy, how rotten’, can really get on your nerves.”
The trick is to play only what you can bear listening to yourself; the CDs of Narnia or Stephen Fry reading Paddington and Harry Potter fall into this category. Less edifying but twice as tempting are the increasingly slick DVD players on the back of passenger seats. “They are handy for an hour or two, but I feel guilty that I’m just plugging Luke in,” confesses my friend Penny.
Yet experts don’t seem that bothered. “Why not, if it keeps them occupied and involved?”, says Pat Spungin, the founder of Raisingkids.co.uk. “The main thing is, they’re not whingeing or whining, and all of us can get a bit puritanical.” She believes that harmonious car journeys are essential, partly because of the safety issue. Also, she feels strongly that we should view the car journey as a potential source for happy family memories. “Car games for children of all ages can become part of what they remember about the holiday. In my experience it creates shared moments; singing and talking together.”
Deborah isn’t so convinced. “Car journeys aren’t about formative memories. If you survive them, you’re doing well.”
As for me, I’m staying in the driving seat this summer.
Emma Cook
No more ‘are we nearly there yet?’
- Explain where you are going and how long it is likely to take.
- Try explaining times in units kids understand; the length of a favourite TV programme, or a clock face.
- On long journeys schedule breaks where you give the children attention.
- Be prepared with games and CDs for the whole family. Visit www.raisingkids.co.uk for games.
- Twenty questions: one person thinks of a famous person, place or thing. Everyone can ask the player 20 questions, which can be answered only “yes” or “no”. Whoever guesses correctly gets a turn to think up something.
- Counting cows: play as individuals or in teams. Decide on a destination where you will stop counting. Then count the cows on your side of the road. The winner has the highest number of cows.
- Geography: think of a place name; England, for instance. The next player has to think of a location with the last letter of England; Denmark, for example.
- Rock, paper, scissors: two players put one hand behind their backs. After counting to three, they reveal their hand as a rock (make a fist), or paper (hand flat), or scissors (scissor shape with fingers). Scissors beat paper as they cut it; paper beats rock as it can wrap it; and rock beats scissors as it blunts them.
Avoid that seething feeling
- Don’t store up grievances; talk them over at home or they are likely to explode in the car.
- Car flashpoints — such as directions, maps, criticism — are often predictable. Talk about them befor ehand and negotiate them with caution on the road.
- Try to make a joke of the different ways that men and women tend to approach car journeys.
- Plan your route carefully before departure.
- Take some CDs that have happy personal associations.
Pass the sick bag
Car sickness is a type of motion sickness. Our senses provide different messages to the brain about where the body is, but when we are moving along in a car, the eyes, responding to visual cues, say one thing about where we are, while the inner ear, responding to balance cues, says something else. This confuses the brain and causes nausea. Trying to keep your eyes on a point within the car, by reading a book for instance, only makes car sickness worse. Keeping your eyes on the horizon will help to stabilise the relationship between the eyes and the balance system of inner ear.
Children are particularly susceptible to motion sickness, which peaks between ages 4 and 10. Their anxiety about travelling doesn’t help. Here are some ways to prevent it:
Put them in the front seat (first checking that they’re old enough and there’s no problem with airbags) and look straight ahead.
Eat an hour or so before travelling. Eating immediately before travelling is a bad idea, but some people find it helps if you don’t have an empty stomach.
Doctors recommend motion-sickness tablets such as antihistamines — such as Piriton, which children can take — but they can cause drowsiness.
Ginger is regarded as a good natural remedy for nausea. See if they’ll chew crystallised ginger, or try real ginger beer.
Keep sick bags handy but hidden from the children. The more worried they are about travel sickness, the more likely it is to happen.
Play games that involve looking ahead rather than looking down.
