to ask about school run "dilemma"?

[CurtainsForNow]

I realise this is very previous but for boring reasons I won?t go into, need to think about it now.

I currently do a school run share with 2 neighbours who have children in DS?s year. We do a third of the journeys each.

In September (barring an extremely unlikely combination of events that means she doesn?t get a place) DD will also be starting at this school.

DH points out that taking 4 children to school is no more difficult than taking 3 and there should be no problem with sticking to our current arrangement.

I slightly feel that as we have half the children perhaps we should offer do half the journeys?
And then I thought a good compromise might be that we split the week so we do 4 of the journeys and the other 2 families do 3 each, so we each have regular ?runs?.
(at the moment we have some regular runs and some we swap about a bit).

This is all assuming it would be ok with the other parents (who I haven't spoken to about this yet).

If you were one of the other parents what would you expect/want us to do?

It's a junior school so they have to be over 7. OP's youngest is starting in September aged 7 so the other kids must be at least 8 or 9?

Yes, the older children are all 9. I didn't think through my previous comment about car seats - as one child is already too tall to need one and there's a good chance the other 2 will be by September we don't have any issue there.

It's immaterial to this argument really as all the children's parents are quite happy that we use just boosters (with no backs) - or nothing in the case of the tallest child - which makes us all "legal" as per car seat laws - I was just surprised that requiring HBB till 10/11 was thrown up.

another safety point - do you and the other parents know that children should NOT be carried in the front seat of cars where there are airbags - they can and do KILL and seriously injure children, who are lower down than an adult would be. Even in low speed collisions the impact of the airbag inflating has done serious harm.

seriously, google it - it's horrendous that more people dont know about these dangers. we think with our modern cars, kids car seats, seatbelts and airbags they are safe.

Good point about the airbag.

Mine are 10yrs old, there is no way on god's earth they would still sit in the high sided booster seats. One of them still has to sit on the actually bottom booster bit and he hates it with a passion but of course I make him. I do think 11yrs old with the high side is a bit much.

To the original questions, I share lifts like you with two other parents and it is very much how many parents are sharing rather than how many children. Probably still just as well to clear it with them though out of courtesy.

Yes, I'm lucky that it's very easy to turn off the passenger airbag in my car (a switch inside the driver's door) but in our old car you had to get it done at the garage at great expense.

so do you really turn on and off the air bag depending on who's in the front seat? and are you sure the other parents do too? every time?

I know I would never remember to do this all the time, so the simple rule in our car is no kids in the front at all

as to the original dilema, I think its about how many parents are sharing the driving and not how many kids each has in the pool, so same share as you currently have IMO would still be fair

I think you should offer to do extra runs. 4 children can take more time than 3 - getting in and out of cars, forgetting lunch boxes and running back into the house, whatever. If they want to carry on as before, then fine, but I do think you should offer.

Snot, yes, of course I do, although for us it's occasional play dates rather than regular school runs.