AIBU to tell people off who park in parent & child spaces but have no children with them?

[Ameybee]

This does my head in when I'm struggling to get 2 kids out the car in a normal space yet some idiot without kids is parked in the child space!!

I told a lady off today! I said 'do you know this is a parent & child space?' She said 'yeah' I replied 'so you're just being inconsiderate then?' She thought about it then made up some bullshit about her child being 'down there, in that shop!!' - she had just driven in!!! Clearly lying. So, would you say something to someone!???

I do have two kids.

ABF

Well I did have 4 children, but three dissolved. There's your house Maryz.

Ahhhh, long gone are the days where I used to schlep on a bus with two toddlers and a baby in a pram, get off the bus, go to the store, get the food, bag it up, schlep back to the bus with it all plus kids. Smile thanks at a stranger who helped me on with it all - no bus ramps in those days! Then walk home with all of them and the food from the bus stop.....
People are so spoiled today - me included I have to say, I now own a car!! But honestly, this thread? Get a grip guys, come on. Walking with a baby from the far end of a car park, be it rain or shine, is not going to kill either you or the baby.

No dissolving babies MaryZ

Because they cannot get out of the car

Clearly car seats, and babies have doubled in size and car park spaces have been cut in half since dd and DS were little?

It would be nice if you could find a wide space when you want one - it certainly makes things easier to be able to open the door fully - but I do find it odd that there is so much insistence that people can't manage, or find it spectacularly difficult, without one.

Most places I go have no P&C spaces. I have 2 children. I can only remember two occasions in three and a half years when I couldn't get the kids in the car. One was in a shopping centre with notoriously tiny parking spaces - I came back to my tiny car and found 2 4x4s parked tight against both sides because they'd helpfully left themselves masses of room on the other side to get their children out. I found someone to hold DS1, climbed in the boot and back it out.

The other time was at a soft play with a tiny car park when someone had squeezed into something that wasn't really a space and I couldn't get DS1 or my pregnant stomach through the door and had to get her to come and move her car.

So that's three and a half years and only 2 tricky parking/children situations.

Yes, I can see why you might want to have the extra spaces, but I'm surprised you would get so het up about it as to actually challenge someone about it.

Thankfully I no longer have this problem but when I did we could never find a P&C space anyway, and I do remember how irritating it used to be.

Around here there are loads of huge 4x4s, MPVs etc. They tend not to bother with the P&C spaces. They just park slap bang in the middle of two spaces.

Why not?

I might add, some people do this simply because they have a posh car they don't want bumped and scratched.

Of course you might end up being challenged yourself - but you can then have the satisfaction of giving a lecture about how it wouldn't be necessary if people weren't so inconsiderate as to park in the P&C spaces when they have no children...

AmazingBouncingFerret People saying they can't get carseats inand out. Do you not just park ever so slightly nearer to the left side white line of a space and put the carseat on the right hand side of the car?

Assuming just the 1 car seat there Ferret. Some people have twins or triplets or closely spaced children.

I don't know why it is entitled to want to use the P&C spaces when you qualify and would find it helpful? Some kind of weird machismo going on on MN today.

Some people have twins or triplets or closely spaced children.

You take one out, lean over, and then get the other out. Not ideal but very doable. What does family with twins or triplets do if they are in a different carpark, or the child and parent spaces are taken up with genuine users? Do they turn round and go home

Why can they just do away with p&b bay's then there would be no fighting

There is nothing wrong with wanting to use the P&C spaces but to go all arsey and claim you cannot possibly use a regular parking space because you have, shock horror children is a slightly enormous overreaction.

And more than one removable carseat is easy done. Lean over. Any mobile children can easily climb out themselves.

Landofsoapandglory - I have a microwave, a food processor, and a handheld mixer that make my life a bit easier when I am cooking. I could manage without them, but I see nothing wrong in using something that has been provided for me and makes my life a bit easier.

As someone else has said, if all parking spaces were wider, everyone's life would be a bit easier. But as they aren't, and as many parents of small children do find that P&C spaces make life a bit easier, is it wrong to think that people who don't have small children should stay out of those spaces? Or to think that objecting to a small thing that makes some people's lives a bit easier, is pretty mean and churlish?

When my children were small, the spaces were Parent and Child spaces, so when the boys were older, I could, technically, have carried on using them (or, as another poster has suggested, I could have used them when out with my mum), but I didn't, because I figured other people needed them more. That's what this is about - having a bit of thought for other people - which is a good thing, I think.

Erowid - in your specific circumstance, there was a very easy solution that didn't involve you using a P&C space without a child actually in the car. You could have dropped your friend as close as possible to the store entrance, then gone and parked the car. When you'd finished shopping, you nip to the car and come back and pick her up somewhere convenient, so she doesn't have to walk too far. Problem solved.

Some people have twins or triplets or closely spaced children.

You take one out, lean over, and then get the other out. Not ideal but very doable. What does family with twins or triplets do if they are in a different carpark, or the child and parent spaces are taken up with genuine users? Do they turn round and go home

I've got 2 yo twins and a 6 yo. When they were little and couldn't walk I needed to put them in a double seater trolley direct from the car, these were always kept at the front of the store. The P&Cs were half way to the store, so I would park there, leave the kids in the car and sprint to the store, get trolley and sprint back. I didn't like leaving them in the car on their own so I didn't like parking at the back of the car park in the quiet bit as it was further. If they kept the double trolleys there, fine but they didn't. So, yes I was annoyed when people in plasterer's vans, middle aged couples who then walked into town parked there. I have no problems with disabled people or elderly people who looked like a shorter walk would help parking there.

I wouldn't like to be leaning over in my car when the kids were small to put them in as I've knackered back loads of times twisting and carrying the twins, there has been extra stress put on my back as a result and I'm not risking it again.

Now they are older, I can park at the back, still prefer the P&C spaces though. I put reins on them to get them to the shop but I need to be able to open the doors wide enough to get them in, I can't do it in 4 inches of space. I hold one twin on the rein, open door wide, gather other twin under the arms and swing them into the car. Its a high car so they cannot climb in yet.

So in summary, I can get out and about but it is a lot easier if I can use a P&C space, why cannot someone able bodied walk a little further to provide a curtesy to someone else. If I'm on my own or with DS1, we park in a normal space and walk.

I parked in a P and C bay the other day as the disabled ones were full, I was willing someone to challenge me

valium

I used to use them when I used to take my Grandma to Morrisons, she needed the space to get onto her deathtrap mobility scooter. I'd have loved it if someone said anything!

No one has ever challenged me, I'd like to see them try

I was up at the supermarket with my elderly mother last weekend. We drove all around the car park and it was full. Then a p&c space near the door became empty. Yes, we parked in it. Were we supposed to go back home without our shopping in case a mum with a child arrived 5 minutes later?

TBH I have heard of some total rubbish about P&T spaces. That people recovering from operations or very elderly people have no right to use them just because they're near to the door. They can go and shop online if they don't want to walk across the car park etc. Some parents are very self entitled, they really are.

'I can not believe the amount of people who get their knickers in a twist over a parking space! The only people who should have a designated space is the disabled, the rest of you should park where ever!'

I couldn't agree more.

That is rubbish, atthewelles. But I don't think the entitled-ness is confined to parents, to be fair. I think that entitled people are going to be entitled parents, and, on the flip side, decent people don't lose all grip of themselves when they become parents.

Let's be honest here. The supermarket don't give a flying fig about being 'nice' to parents or 'making life easier' for them. They know that young families spend a lot more money in the supermarket than, for instance, an elderly person living alone. So a healthy young mother in her 30s can have a space by the door before she loads up her trolley with disposable nappies, and enough food to feed a family of 5 for a week, and bumper bags of crisps,etc etc while elderly Mrs Jones can just shuffle across the car park with her mingy half a sliced pan and packet of hobnobs.
Likewise, if you're single and living alone, tough if you're recovering from surgery. You're only going to buy a packet of pasta and a tin of chickpeas so off to the back of the car park with you.
Bring back small family businesses who would have offered Mrs Jones a chair while she was waiting her turn, and insisted on having the surgery patient's shopping carried out to their car for them!

At our supermarket the other day, a car held up all the traffic trying to get into the car park because the person in it was waiting, yes waiting for a parent and child space to become available, even though there was no sign of anyone vacating one. About 20 people waited 10 minutes for this idiot to move before we could actually get into the car park.

Parent and child spaces encourage this kind of bonkers behaviour. So they should be scrapped.