Parent and child parking

[Scotsmum2017]

What age were your kids when you stopped using parent and child spaces? My youngest was 4 when I stopped, however was astonished to discover my friend still uses them for her DS who is 11. All lighthearted here, not looking for dog’s abuse, but AIBU to think she should park in the main car park now, and leave those spaces for parents with prams etc?

Surely the only point of them is so you can open the doors wide to strap your kids in? I'll use them til I no longer need to do this. For me the spaces are not about proximity to the shop.

Here for the bunfight

I still use them when there's space and my youngest is 6, can't always rely on her opening the car door carefully and not bashing the next car.
I really don't care if people use them and don't have any kids with them or their kids are bigger, ive better things to worry about, obviously they're handy for car seats etc, but you could just as easily park in a quiet bit of the car park, which I've had to do loads of times without moaning about it!

I would use them up to the point I’m not having to climb in the backseat trying to buckle a child into the seat. My oldest is 5 (youngest is a baby anyway), but I still appreciate the extra space to get in the car to get her in her booster seat as it can be really hard in some normal sized spaces. If your kids can get in and out themselves though then I don’t think there’s any reason to use them (unless you’re just lazy!). That said most of the people who use them at our local store are just lazy sods who are too precious about their expensive cars (without any kids).

I've seen plenty of people with no children at all use them, so at least if you have a child, regardless of age, with you I think it's fair enough. At the end of the day the child could be really difficult or have special needs.

I used to use them without kids before I got my blue badge 《rebel》