To remind everyone to hold their children's hands

[littlemisscomper]

TIGHTLY around roads.

www.facebook.com/chris.leigh.adi/videos/2221828591393207/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDU2NTA0NjA2ODoyNDQ1MjkyNTQ1NDk5NTU2/

Even if you think they're mature enough to walk along without, they can really take you by surprise. Once I was walking through town with the little ones I nanny for. They were around 4 and 6 at the time. The little girl dropped some crappy leaflet she'd picked up at the library, pulled her hand out of mine and dove after it - straight in front of a car!! Thank goodness it stopped in time. When I exclaimed that she could have been run over her older brother defended her with 'But if she hadn't the LEAFLET would have been run over!'

I hate seeing young children walking independently, or using scooters or bikes along pavements. They just don't have the road sense. It's not worth the risk.

i think u can get done for h and r even if theyve hit you he was a child someone s got to take reposnibility

If I am walking along a pavement with my 44yo sister, she does this involuntary hand movement when we approach a road where she literally has to stop herself grabbing my hand....! It's so cute.

I honestly want to shout at the parents on the school run who let their little tiddlers of 3 or 4 years old scoot ahead of them down the sloping road to the school to the crossing where drivers (other school parents) don't want to have to stop so they speed up as they approach it.

Gives me the shivers most mornings.

I mean how are they so sure that the child has the self control stop every time, that they won't fall off etc? Makes me pretty furious.

I used reins with all my DC, with my twins it was just impossible to keep hold of both their hands, one being a runner, and the amount of comments about dogs I used to get was ridiculous.

Some people are just so stupid and arrogant, they believe nothing bad will happen to them.

It's not just roads but footpaths as well, DS had an incident where he was running along the footpath in front of me and a car reversed out of a drive and he smacked into the side of it, lucky he didn't get hit by the back. Driver didn't even stop.

Reins or pushchairs are a good idea for keeping kids safer.

My 75yo DM still goes to grab my hand crossing the road, I'm 43 and DP works in road safety! It's cute and I love that she's always so cautious about any of us crossing the road.

My DS was a bolter as a toddler. Mostly in supermarkets but once or twice in car parks or streets, which aged me in seconds. DP basically wanted to never leave the house with him until he was 18 but I knew I had to keep plugging away with road safety so I made a point of doing errands locally and he got a choice of buggy, hand hold or reins at all times. I got a few odd looks about the reins but I don't give a fuck. Judge away.

My mum still grabs my arm when we cross a road together. I'm 34

That said, I was hit by a car at 17. Totally my fault, but I ALWAYS hold my kids (9 & 7) in a vice like grip, because it really fucking hurts. And I was one of the lucky ones.

I'm pretty laissez-faire, as parents go, but if you have kids under 10 and you don't hold their hands, you're a fool.

We had a 5-year-old near us get run over by a bus some years ago - she'd been allowed to go ahead on her scooter and she'd ventured too close to the kerb and got dragged into the road by the bus. Serious head injuries thankfully she made a full recovery after some months of rehab. I think railings were put in after that.

I’m going against the grain here but my DC and I have walked along busy roads since they took their first steps (London).
We’ve played the ‘go and stop! game, we wait and look & they get a turn to say when they think it’s safe to cross.

Roadsense is a practical skill it can’t be taught verbally from the driving seat of your car.
it’s ingrained in mine not go off the pavement or pause while crossing the road if they drop something.
DS3 (5) dropped his class mascot in the road yesterday and didn’t miss a step until we were safely on the pavement. (We watched it get run over twice before I could go and fetch it).

The problem isn’t small children not having their hands held (I have twins - I’d love to see you ‘firmly’ holding the hands of three under 5s on the school run )
It’s parents who ferry their DC around in cars everywhere and never teach them road sense.

Every September there are gaggles of Yr7s spilling out on to roads cos they’re walking home with their new mates for the first time.
Most of these DC have zero road sense from never having walked anywhere.
My 5yr olds are much safer than they are.

Watched in horror as a little boy on a scooter whizzed downhill over a busy junction, parents were 15m+ behind watching on in horror. He was fine but I've never forgotten it.

I’m not advocating letting small DC, on scooters, loose on busy junctions that happen to lie at the bottom of steep hills.

I’m just saying that you can teach small children to be sensible around busy roads but it takes effort and forethought.

When the DC were learning to walk, we would play the stop! game with them. It’s so deeply ingrained that my 18yr old will stop dead if DH or I use ‘that’ voice .

You can ( and, I think, should) teach your DC road safety from a surprisingly young age.

They run out into the road because they see something in/on the other side of the road that they want to look at, touch or have and children's brains are very good at screening out all other info and zoning in on that thought/impulse.

If you as an adult saw a £50 on the other side of the road it wouldn't occur to you to simply walk towards it, you'd look around and take in the dangers and risks before you started, look for an appropriate place to cross etc but this kind of thing is learnt over many years of life experience which children don't yet have. And they can be entranced by something as random as a pretty, shiny empty crisp packet on the other side of the street which you wouldn't even register as being interesting to them.

I don't think you should be holding children's hands religiously until a certain age but absolutely you need to be aware that they are not reliable, and have a back up plan like having them within grabbing distance or making sure they're always on the side away from the road etc.

It's also why I'm not keen on the justification of harsh punishment for safety issues - because you really need to NOT be relying on the DC's own impulse control until they are of an age where they can absolutely understand and make the judgement for themselves. It doesn't matter how scared they are of the consequences for it to not work one time. So you need to have the back up to stop them yourself in place anyway which means that the punishment/deterrent aspect is essentially unreliable which brings into question the justification for it in the first place.

About 5 years ago I was walking along Northcote Road in Clapham and had to dive in front of a child on a scooter zooming down a sloping side street to stop them flying into the path of a double-decker bus. The child couldn't have been more than 5 years old.

Most kids in that area weren't ferried around in cars and have good road skills, but a young child does not have the sense of danger or ability to control themselves that an adult has.

I once read a heartbreaking post made by a mum on a thread like this.

She and her young child were crossing the road, carrying a small trike between them. There was a small traffic Island in the middle of the road. They stepped onto it, mum stopped but the child carried on and stepped into the path of a car and was killed.

It has always stayed with me. I felt that mother’s heartbreak in every word she typed.

We live on a busy 30mph road.

It makes me feel sick when I see pre-school kids/ toddlers on balance bikes outside our house, often well ahead of their adult. Blows my mind that people would think it’s ok.

if you have kids under 10 and you don't hold their hands, you're a fool

That doesn’t leave you much of a window to get them crossing roads independently before starting night school at 11.

I would think 8 would be a bit more realistic for loosening the reins so to speak. I still hold my 8 year old’s hand, but 10 year old is now able to cross roads in our local village (20mph limit) independently. We built up from a loose hand hold, to next to me within grabbing distance, to in front of me within grabbing distance, to within shouting distance over about 2 yrs. I have drummed in road safety since toddlerhood. They both know it’s the thing that is most likely to kill them.

high school!! Before starting high school at 11.

Definitely don’t want them doing it at night!

The trouble with the philosophy that you can teach very young children to be aware of road safety and train them to stop instantly at your command, is while that might be true for 99% of the time, would you want to take that chance? Would you leave the bottle of bleach out because you've told them they mustn't drink it?

Yes life is about learning to manage risks but IMO it's got to be a very gradual process when it comes to child safety. My mum doesn't drive so we walked everywhere when we were little. She taught us to take care and wait for the green man and all the rest. I was a 'sensible' girl and never a 'bolter', but it didn't stop me running out impulsively that time. It was just chance I wasn't killed.

My sister is a vet and all too often she hears a tearful 'He's never done it before!' with a case of a dog eating sewing needles or getting kicked by a horse it chased. You would not want to be the mum or dad tearfully repeating that phrase to the ambulance crew.

In a way it's up to the parents the risk they take with their children, but I think there should be a certain respect for society too - if that child in the clip had been run over by the Audi that's the driving instructor's, the learner's and the Audi driver's lives ruined, and the knock on effect it would have on their families, quite apart from the emergency services, medical staff, witnesses at the scene and family and friends of the child. That's a huge ripple effect from a parent deciding to trust in their child's road-safety awareness.

This type of video is exactly why I get so annoyed with posts on here about two year olds and walking when parents won’t use reins. Even older kids can be unpredictable.

My kids have grown up living on a road that leads to a main artery into the city. It’s busy. We didn’t have a car for a long time either, so walked everywhere.

Yes, I did instil good road safety in them from a very young age. But no, I didn’t trust them at all. My older two were bolters while the youngest wasn’t - he still had reins because I’d rather be using it and not need it than not have it and lose my child to a totally preventable accident.

Well done @sleigh for being the voice of reason on such a smug thread!

I have drummed road safety into my 2 dc, we live on an estate on the outskirts of a big city and ds has to travel for school, he's 15 now and I still worry about him ( he has AS ) so I am overly cautious but thankfully he's so bloody sensible! Always cross at lights where possible and wait for the green man.
He has travelled independently from age 11, to and from school and socially and I made the point of allowing him to go into town etc with his friends at that age as I had to stop mollycoddling him and it has served him well.

Dd's school is ten minutes walk away and the road outside it is a thoroughfare from the motorway and it's an accident waiting to happen. We have a lollipop lady who is away with the fairies and you have to duck so she doesn't hit you with the stick. I've been hit on the head more times than I can remember. Dd is almost 8 and again, very sensible. I do hold her hand at crossings though and she knows a lot about road safety. Her school do workshops on it every year and the council come out and teach the children all about the many dangers.

After a very tragic case here a few years ago where a little boy let go of his mum's hand and was hit by a van and killed outside his school ( different one to dd's ) aged 7, there is so much awareness about and that can only be a good thing.

I always hold my kids hand on the road. I get so worried when they go on school trips a d the whole class it walking independently and free on roads. Some kids being super silly and running around etc.

Yeah, how are you supposed to get from vice-like grip until age 10, to crossing roads completely independently at age 11?

I live in a country where kids go to school independently from age 6 or 7. Schools take road safety very seriously and the kids are drilled in how to do this safely.

When I see primary school trips walking round here, they’ve always got the children marching sensibly in pairs - often holding hands. I assume the children I see holding the teachers hands are the ones known to be more impulsive and therefore less reliable around roads.

It’s very unusual for me to see the children on a school trip running around or being silly unless they’ve arrived somewhere like a playground where running around is appropriate.
(One of my favourite parks to take my toddler to is very popular with school trips in the summer term)

What used to scare me was small children running ahead or trailing behind while mum yapped into a phone totally oblivious.

To be properly safe next to a road you need an understanding of the dangers involved which a pre schooler won't have. Relying on them doing what a parent tells them to do isn't enough.