to worry about seeing older and older children in buggies?

[mariebl]

In the last couple of years I've really started to notice many more children in buggies, some of them must be almost school age.
I also very often see them looking unhappy and bored and trying to get out and being told off for being "naughty".

I'm beginning to think it must be my age as not too many years back there didn't really seem to BE any buggies for older children, babies went in prams, when they started toddling they had reins and when they got tired people picked them up and carried them for a bit.

I appreciate that there are children with conditions where having that transport is helpful and necessary but I also believe that having older and older children in buggies is a recent trend which is in danger of becoming the norm. We are also told we have a child obesity crisis and are told that children do not get enough exercise.
Am I being judgemental to say is this kind of trend a part of it?

I notice it here in Spain too (which has some of the highest rates of child obesity in Europe). I think a lot of it is that it's easier to strap them in than keep a proper eye on them or make them walk when they're being bolshy. DS was a great little walker at 2 and then we got careless and carried him too much and it got to the point where he wouldn't walk at all. I was pg with DD and couldn't carry a strapping 3 yo so we went hardcore and refused to carry him. Took one afternoon of whinging and now he walks everywhere as the buggy is used for his little sister (4 months old). I was buggered if I was buying a double for a 3+ yo.

My DD is 3 and a half and we use buggies some days but she is up at 6am every morning to do a shift with me 5 days a week at work, then with going there, back, shopping and visits to places I do up to 6 miles a day some days. Its too far for a little one some days.

I have no problem with buggies its usually car owners that are overweight. Owning a car is usually a one way ticket to being overweight or out of shape.

I would always take my three year old twins up to school in the afternoon to fetch their big sister. It was such a nightmare to make them walk 20 mins there and back as they were often really tired after nursery in the morning, and quite often had a nap in the buggy which at least gave me a chance to give the eldest daughter some attention when she came out of reception.

I think people who drive cars short distances are very selfish the carbon emissions, the congestions, the awful habits they are teaching their children will be around a long time after a child has grown out of buggies. Our area is full of very obese car owners driving short distances with their kids blocking traffic, peoples entry ways so they cant get out of their houses etc. It is way more of a problem than non car owners pushing buggies miles.

How on earth do you manage to track everyone in your area and where they go with their car? You really are amazing

I lived opposite a school for 15 years!

Jellybeans - DH owns a car. Many people own cars. Most aren't overweight. DH certainly isn't. It's driving the car to the takeaway just round the corner every day, to pick up a very big order, that makes car owners fat.

ouryve - My husband drives to however the vast majority of car owners I know are overweight as they are as you describe. Seems like a large amount of people get like that when they have a car as they think why walk? or maybe its just the people I know on my estate, workplace, college etc its only the minority of people in my life who dont do this

It doesn't worry me. DS was in the back of the Phil + teds until he was 4.7. I only stopped as he was about to start school.

I really couldn't care less what other people thought. We walk most place, I walk very fast (faster than adults) and I'm not going to dawdle for anyone. Better to have a buggy they can hop in and out of than use the car all the way. 3yo DD will be in the buggy for another 18 months yet. A 5 min walk with her takes 20 mins, not really an option on the school / nursery / work run!

One theme that is emerging in this thread is that people are in such a hurry they can't walk at a child's pace. Whatever happened to leaving early and enjoying the journey? I loved walking outrageously slowly with my DS. Sure, it would take an hour to walk 800yds to the library but we would see weeds growing out of Walls, walk along the "train tracks" (lines of dug up and refilled pavement) and make up silly songs.
I wonder why people rush so much, though I am glad of the return to rear facing buggies.

"Whatever happened to leaving early and enjoying the journey"

For the school run, we would leave the house at 8 to get to school for between 8.45/9am. That is for a walk that would normally take me about 15/20 mins. I would have to aim to leave about 7.45, because usually something happens before we have to leave the house - ds does a poo, needs feeding, dd2 has a meltdown and takes off all her clothes and hides under the bed etc. So we usually had enough time to 'enjoy the journey', unless dd2 decided to have a meltdown on the way and decide she didn't want to walk (pre double buggy!) or ds did a poo/decided he was hungry on the journey and then screamed all the way - it's not so enjoyable then!

inmysparetime do you work? It's certainly the reason why I have to hurry alot. I am grateful DD is not a dawdler but if she was I would have had to keep her in her buggy a wee while longer or buy a car.

I'm of the school of thought that says 'can walk, will walk' so DS's pram has been in the loft since his first birthday but I have realised recently that I'm using the car far too much and am cutting down drastically. As other posters have said, it's better to have a buggy for a small child to hop into for part of a long walk than to drive everywhere. I do sometimes go when I see 3 and 4 year-olds being pushed from the carpark at the park to the play area though so YANBU in general.

inmysparetime you enjoy spending an hour walking 800 yards and looking at weeds? I think I would have died of boredom.

YABU to worry about it.
You also don't know how far the parent needs to walk and what sort of errands they need to run. Sometimes you just can't walk at a child's pace. Some children love going for long walks in the countryside and loathe walking to sainsbo's.

I actually did enjoy seeing the world through my child's eyes on our walks, and yes I do work, and no I did not die of boredom. They are not small and dawdly for long, what's an extra 20 minutes spent with your child?

Well that's an extra 20 minutes of ds screaming, or being late for school.

Or leave 20 minutes earlier. DS won't scream every day forever, a few weeks at most, then he'll learn that screaming won't get him a lift in the buggy and he's expected to walk. IME kids live up (or down) to parents expectations of them.

Sorry you must have missed my last post, ds is a baby (14 months old) he is pretty erratic routine wise, and when he was younger and had terrible reflux he was very unpredictable about when he would need feeding, which is why an extra 20 minutes on a journey would be hard. The walk was to get my dd1 to school and dd2 to preschool, and for a while, we used a double buggy, because the journeys were so horrendous. As I said in my post, we left an hour to walk a walk that would take me 15 minutes on my own. We leave the house at 8, yes i suppose we could leave the house 20 minutes earlier, but that would have meant that about 4 hours a day I and dd2 would be walking to and from school.

Inmysparetime, do you seriously consider popping a toddler in the buggy to run some errands or go somewhere a bit more distant than usual like a sign of parental disinterest?
Because I can reassure you that it is possible to chat to your toddler even if he/she is on a normal buggy watching the world go by and stop whenever you feel like it to have a cuddle.

I have 2 DCs actually, and was not attacking emergency users of buggies, I was noting a general theme in the thread that parents seem to find the fact that young children walk slowly a hindrance to their routine, and little argument that walking might be an activity in itself.

But it is not that shocking that parents might be - at times - in a hurry!

I agree that walking is an activity, but, for instance, when my ds was smaller he loved walking in the countryside, but loathed walking into town to follow me to the supermarket and was much happier in his buggy, watching people go by and chatting to me.

The only other options people have come up with for going distances too long for the child to walk is to get the bus, drive or carry smaller children. How is that going to help child obesity rates? And my 4 yo regularly walks 7 miles to town and back but there are distances that even the fittest child can't manage. Why is it OK for an older child to sit on a bus/in a car seat/be carried but not for them to go in a pushchair? And why do some parents feel that their opinion of what is OK should matter to anyone else?
inmysparetime - I am a sahm so like you I generally have the luxury of pootling along at my childs pace. It's not the case for everyone though.

Of course walking can be an activity in itself, and we usually enjoy going for a walk, if that is all we have to do. But you talk about interrupting the parent's routine, as if trying to get children to school or get to the drs on time were some sort of unreasonable adult behaviour depriving the poor children of their rambles.