To ask for a woop woop on the day I got my first buggy shaming?

[toomuchtooold]

I've waited so long for this day to arrive - my kids are really growing up! I was picking blackberries with my 3y3m old twins in a quiet pedestrianised lane near our house and a woman cycled past us, stopped, looked back, shook her head, said "those children are too old to need a buggy" and cycled off.

Dear cycling lady, I've no doubt that at 3 and a bit your wonderful children were doing 6 mile hikes through the Schwarzwald (we live at the Swiss/German border), but I also suspect that if they were tired you gave them the odd sneaky carry. Which I cannot do with 2 15kg kids, not at the same time. Also, when we are waiting for the tram it really helps to only have to keep my eye on one stationary object instead of two that move randomly in different directions.

Anyway, it's cool, it's just funny. Loads of people on here have posted about getting judged when they went out with a buggy and a tall two year old and I was like . I get it now!

[ChanandlerBongsNeighbour]

I don't drive so I do a LOT of walking and I absolutely love my buggy! I'm dreading the day I will have to get rid of it (have had the same buggy through both DC's so far) so I plan to use it for as long as I possibly can!! Youngest DC is 20months so I've got a good while yet hopefully! Never been buggy shamed though but would like to think I wouldn't be too flabbergasted to give an appropriately cutting response!!

[Mrsfrumble]

How about a 7 mile round trip littlejohnny, like the one we did the other week to get to the shopping mall and back, under time constraints as we had to be home by midday to let the plumber in? If your little trooper does this on a regular basis, you are perfectly welcome to judge my ocassional buggy use as ridiculous.

[MrsHathaway]

littlejohnny is she an only child? Honestly it's a completely different ball game when there are siblings in the mix.

[thatsshallot]

I've got blackberry gin and vodka making from weekend pickings and have more in freezer and we're London/Surrey

smug face

[AugustHasToBeBetter]

why are you bothered by it littlejohn?

[BathshebaDarkstone]

I kicked DD out of the buggy a month before DS was born because I wasn't going to buy a double to use for a few months, I kicked DS out of the buggy before he got too heavy and broke it (he's a bruiser)! There's no such thing as too old for a buggy, just too heavy. Whoop whoop!

[Talkingfrog]

My dd has not long turned 4 and we still use the pushchair when we go to town. All the car parks are at one end of town, but we have to go to shops at the other end of town. I know a lot of adults that would not walk it unless they were really pushed too. My dd is only the height of a two year old (we have finally made it into 2-3 trousers but they are folded up!) so seems unfair to make her walk all the way there and back, plus going into shops after she has been to both nursery and gymnastics. It is not unusual for her to walk most or all of the way there, but by then is too tired to walk all the way back too. She sometimes wants to go to sleep part way through as she is on the go all week. She is also too heavy for me to carry all the way, along with the shopping. As she is so short, most people think she is about 2 and a half, so no-one has ever said anything - yet.

[Bambambini]

I had a double buggy i still used when my oldest was 4 or 5, sure my youngest was still using the buggy at 4 as well - because we liked it and it made life easier in different ways. No sn, no disabilities - i just wanted to and so did they.

[NotCitrus]

Dd is 3.6 and can walk miles. She can also have a great strop and thinks it's hilarious to run in the opposite direction faster than I can.
When I collect her from nursery after work, I have under 15 minutes to transport her a mile down the road to collect ds from after-school club.
And then it's a mile home with two tired hungry children.

She (and my handbag and the kids' bags) are having the buggy come with, probably until she starts school in just over a year.

I remember one chap tell me ds was too old to be in a buggy - ds would have been about 3.5, I was around 7 months pregnant and on bed rest outside of the nursery run. By that time my arsy streak was a mile wide - I asked him to carry ds the mile home.

For some reason, he declined my kind offer. Don't know why - he'd probably have only been kicked repeatedly for about half the journey as ds demanded to go back to nursery...

[Roonerspism]

We need a "like" button on MN ????

[Twentyninedays]

Ds2 was so tall his knees hit his chin in his buggy at 21 months. I became inured to the comments.

Mind you, when he went to school the reception and nursery children shared a playground, and in the first week there were a couple of misunderstandings about which class he belonged to, to his indignation.

[MakeItACider]

Blackberry vodka?

Do you just shove a whole lot of blackberries into vodka, close bottle and let it stew?

My Terrys chocolate orange dishwasher vodka was a hit at the last mum's night out.......

I even found some wild raspberry bushes recently.

[HexU2]

Had family like this who we ended up on holiday with - oh no you won't need a buggy. Two days of carrying the youngest and they were suddenly behind the idea of hiring one .


I've yet to receive a decent explanation as to why strapping children into a car and driving them 2 miles to the shops in the rain does not make them fat and idle, but pushing them in a buggy does

^^ Yup.

Now there are older they walk everywhere for miles and will go all day - but you'd never have thought that from the comments we got.

[tobysmum77]

Tizwailer I'm not convinced that having no sense of danger at 3 only applies to those with autism .....

[JasperDamerel]

My kids both used a buggy until they could competently ride a bike because we travel long distances without a car or public transport.
DS didn't really need a buggy when he was 5, but I still hung on to it for when he was ill so that he didn't have to walk several miles to the the doctor, or to take him home if he was ill at school. As it turns out, he has managed a year without illness, but it certainly came in handy for his big sister at the same age.

[SaltySeaBird]

I'm just at all of you who can get your older children into a buggy still. DD has refused since 18 months old to go in one - and I mean full hysterics for the duration, requiring multiple people to force her in and then twisting, thrashing, screaming get me out, help me.

I haven't even owned one since before she was two and glance jealously at people with older children who do go in one.

I have to take a rucksack instead of bag everywhere, and have a bad back as a result of carrying an almost three year old a lot when she gets tired (she just lies down and screams I'm too tired to walk).

I am at my wits end with it but nobody has any suggestions on how I can change it.

[Ledkr]

My dd is 4 but will happily jump into the buggy at every opportunity she can yet this is a child who is on the go constantly.
I like it to carry things too, we are on holiday in France ATM and last night I carried beer and wine in it back from the super u

[Ledkr]

We are taking it to a festival soon to smuggle our drinks in and so she can sleep if we stay out late.
Matvelous things they are.

[m0therofdragons]

We've just started getting blackberries in Somerset

[thatsshallot]

Blackberry vodka/gin - just shove a load of berries in a bottle of spirit of choice with a load of sugar, shake loads and stick in dark cupboard, shaking whenever you remember.

after a couple of months taste and poss add more sugar, then strain through muslin and rebottle, drink at Christmas and it's delish

[Pythonesque]

hazeyjane :) at the "on your bicycle" comment - I guess the retort should have been along the lines of "we're still waiting for the adapted one" (not that I ever think of good responses till ages after they are needed!)

My two were both around 21 kg at 3.5 and about that time I could no longer carry them on the bicycle seat, was very glad to get them on a tagalong at 4. With nearly 3 years between them we managed without a double buggy but I had thought seriously about getting one (till I discovered that eldest would be too big to fit in many). Eldest was back in buggy for a while at nearly 4 due to illness though.

I didn't have it as hard as my mother did with me though - age 3 I had poor balance and little speech due to ear problems, so if I ran off couldn't be called back. But was big enough that she had to carry my birth certificate in order not to be charged a child's fare on the bus. And when I started school, young in year, someone took one look at me and said "the primary school's that side" (ie year 3 up).

[Pythonesque]

Oh, meant to say, thanks for the heads up about ripe blackberries - now I know what to send me kids out for when they say they're bored! (eldest nearly 13 and do we ever know it ..._