Thanks Danica, that's a good idea, it's a 4 mile round trip & she does walk a fair chunk of the way but I put her in the buggy if it rains & I haven't got rainsuits, also for the busier sections. Sometimes it's difficult to steer, balance the toys, bags etc. Sometimes things happen in the wrong order, faster than I would like. The road is very broken up outside the school & every previous time she's walked she's fallen there. Perhaps long reins would allow her to walk far enough away from the buggy to have more chance of staying upright! Sometimes she's screaming for a snack &, horror of horrors, I make her wait until it's safe to stop and I can get her something suitable. Some of you would cave in & just give her something straight away to avoid a scene I guess but that's not the way I parent. Maybe some kindly soul will start giving her sweets :)
For reasons I don't particularly want to go into on this thread even before my son started at this school I was given a strong message that there was little I could do to help him with an intimidating situation and have found the whole experience of him starting school hugely upsetting whilst of course maintaining an air of cool calm so he has the best chance of feeling a tiny bit confident. I don't remember it being at all like this with my older children. I guess that's why I reacted so badly to the gift as I felt my control of a situation with my child had been hijacked by another, albeit kindly, nae saintly, person who has no idea how much I'm just trying to hold myself together
I didn't know that to come on here was to be given an emotion of ranting, I didn't feel ranty. I really am not small-minded or bigoted, maybe a bit bitchy though. I am shocked by the way people behave here and the assumptions they make, they would be very unsuitable for jury service, I think I would have been hung last night without an appeal. I didn't realise that I should've put down every detail in my OP, I thought the beauty of social media was that we could chat. I made an assumption that the purpose of a site like this was to help & support each other not shoot each other down in flames. If I had said a lollipop woman would so many people have immediately equated incredibly uncomfortable with an accusation of ulterior motives? I hold a mirror up to you.
A lot of your comments would have been individually fine but en masse were extremely aggressive. Dangerous place this, perhaps we should have to take an emotional itelligence test before we post, I propably should've before I posted this. So, I guess this is not the site for me, flame away people, flame away...