I live in a road with a school

[Truffle55]

Apologies in advance for the rant and slightly long message…

I live in a road with a primary school at the end. I’ve lived here for 25 years and I totally understand that parents need to get their kids to school - I too, need to do the same.

But…

Recently the behaviour of the parents dropping off and picking up their DC has been, frankly awful.

I have come home from picking my DC up from school to find someone parked on my drive! And now, someone thinks it’s “ok” to park across the T-junction into the road. This means I have to drive around them and into cars coming out of the road (from dropping off/picking up DC) to get onto my driveway (assuming no one is “borrowing” it).

I do understand people need to take their kids to school, I have to do it too! But really? Why are they so inconsiderate? When I pick my DC up from school I park away from the school… and we have an agreed process if I’m not there due to not being able to park SAFELY (I do get that DC is at secondary school and its easier to do this).

However, the parking by my house is getting out of control - the person who parks across the junction lets the children get into the car - roadside…. This is just dangerous!?

I’m at the point now that I just push through the cars because I feel “I live there, and I have right of way” - but that makes me uncomfortable.

And, let’s not talk about the addition is of an ice cream van!

Anyway, I’m considering contacting the school or even the police to see if they can do anything - sadly, I really feel, it is an accident waiting to happen 😕

@Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain yes but then she needs to walk home again to get her car to drive to work which would make her late.

The vast majority of parents dropping off at 9am and picking up at 3pm are not working full time 40 hour weeks are they (those of us working ft use wraparound care daily)
if you are part time I'm sure the extra 5 to walk could be accommodated by leaving earlier or even by driving part of the way or with older kids shock horror getting them to walk themselves or cycle to school

and often people claim it's quicker to drive but if you are within a mile of school I can guarantee it's not quicker to drive unless you walk incredibly slowly I daily walk past about a dozen mums loading up kids in cars at their houses and I get to school before them every single time I am the furthest away of them all and then low and behold they all drive back home again after drop off and again I walk past their drives just as they pull in ! What do they achieve? What time is saved for them!?

and even if you are one of the very few where driving really is the only option there is absolutely no excuse to park badly or drive inappropriately which is the point really

yes I drive some days when we're going to swimming after or brownies
I use breakfast clubs and after school and my partner and I shuffle hours to make it work but I don't just drive because of some imaginary time saving ! We are 1 mile from school 🤷‍♀️

Getting there earlier will only help if you can leave them there earlier. Playgrounds aren't supervised.

Unless you are suggesting that all schools should have free breakfast clubs? It only costs £2 at DCs school, but even £2 can add up for multiple children.

What did parents do before this? Answer me that. It is not my responsibility that parents have to walk/drive home from school and in any case, they're lucky parents who wfh/hybrid. Most parents like my SIL (she's now on mat leave) had to drop her DS to school then commute to work, rely on DB to do it or use breakfast club.

I see this myself too with parents who quite literally save 5 minutes or so or not even that by the time they drive to school.

And as pp say - it's not so much the parents driving there I mind, it's how bad it's got in terms of rudeness and entitlement by parents, which is why we had the restricted zone put in. I live opposite a row of 6 privately owned garages with a strip of pavement in front of them. Luckily most parents are polite, park properly and behave in a normal, civil manner. But I've seen parents park in the driveway or block drives of houses further up the street, whether a car is already parked there or not. And then they stand there arguing with the owner of the house when they're asked to move. If I had my time again, no I wouldn't buy a house near a school but as pp said about 10 years ago it wasn't as bad as it is now. Entitled parents ruin it for others.

@Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain "what did parents do before this?"
Well the children walked themselves to school. Many would have been left at home with the instructions of "leave at half past and make sure the front door is closed properly".
From around 7 years old they walked themselves. Many would also be in charge of their younger siblings with just the instructions to "don't forget hold her hand when crossing the road".
At the end of the day they did it in reverse and were latch-key children.

I don’t know how, after reading about the extreme behaviour described here, you can still trot out ‘well you knew the school was there when you bought the house’.

Are adults exempt from considerate behaviour when dropping their children at school?

Areas change, sounds like yours has.
I have a school quite near that I have to drive by, on a corner of an a road, think it is/was the most polluted primary school in Britain?
Some of the parents are disgusting, double parking on red routes, slamming brakes on to let kids out in the middle of the road, lots of people have complained to the school and the police, but nothing is ever done. It will take a child to be killed, which no one wants. It was never like this 10 years ago.

Yep. I did this from 7, with my younger sister. Roughly 40 minute walk each way. My mum was a SAHM at the time but she still didn't drive us to school and back.

I don't want to be That Person but I genuinely don't see how children have changed so much in a generation that this is no longer possible for them anymore.

It's not ok to park inconsiderately/illegally but assuming the school was there first I do wonder why people live on school streets and then complain. Surely it's obvious there will be an issue.

@DragonFly98

No.

The property I live in now was there before the two primary schools. In fact they became two separate primary schools after I moved in.

With my parents houses the deeds showed that the properties were 50 to 70 years older than the nearest primary school including the one on the road.

It is actually dangerous for children to walk on their own to primary school until they are about 11 thanks to the traffic.

The traffic is mainly caused by the school run drivers shown by the fact that my road is completely dead every single school holiday unless Thames Water or whoever are digging it up.

It follows though that if everyone who could, let their children walk to school, the traffic would be reduced to a level that it was no longer dangerous?

I don't believe that everyone is driving their kids because they live too far away for it to be walkable (as in, hours and hours, not 30-40 mins). I could be wrong, but I find that improbable.

And did many of them die? No. In fact when I was a child I walked to primary school with DB. We weren't latch key kids either DM was a teacher and finished at 3/3.15 ish.

The two schools before when I moved there were an infants school and the junior school, in separate roads and buildings. The infants school was sold off to be a special school (autism etc) and the junior was combined with the infants and a nursery added on. This meant the caretakers house was lost too.

I won't lie - any parents I've known since e.g. 90s/00s have not wanted their DC to play out/walk places as we did, due to, danger (?!) - I don't know if the danger has increased or if indeed parents are more protective. A 10-15 minute walk with a sibling is actually good for children by themselves if anything, as long as they follow instructions not to speak to people unless necessary etc. I've seen the dad of a 12 year old boy (NT) in my street be collected by his dad in secondary school - approx a 15/20 minute walk away, how embarrassing is that?

@Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain yes most children were perfectly fine walking to school and being fine by themselves at home.
Many parents would be perfectly happy to still do that with their children.
However it's the schools that don't allow it.
Most only let Years 5 and 6 walk alone (and most wouldn't let a Year 6 walk alone and be responsible for a younger sibling).
I once left my Year 5 daughter stay home for 5 minutes while I dropped off a friends child (mine was not going in that day). I literally live next to the school - I can see the playground from my window - so it was a case of crossing the road and making sure friends child walked in the door.
As soon as I got home I had a phone call from the school welfare officer concerned about how I had left my 10 year old child home alone.

I don't think schools help themselves when it comes to this issue. My DCs route to school is pretty short and safe but I'm not allowed to use my own judgement to decide when they are ready to walk it by themselves.

As I've said schools were designed for a bigger proportion of the children to be walking themselves to school.

It would be great if there were more walking buses or cycling trains

It;s more than schools not allowing kids to walk. In Scotland we don't have these sorts of rules and parents ARE trusted to make their own decisions about whether or not their children should walk alone or with friends or siblings. We also have a different admissions system which means most children go to school locally - children are not allocated places across the other side of a town or city.

Yet we still have a lot of parking issues because parents in Scotland are every bit as lazy as parents in the rest of the UK.

I do think some people have a really weird attitude to walking, even fit types that play sport or go to the gym.

I'm remembering a cinema trip with some colleagues years back. I finished earlier than most of them and it was a nice day so I decided to walk the 45 minutes or so. They were horrified that I'd walked so far, it was like they thought I'd risked rupturing my spleen with the exertion or something.

Most of my friends with kids the same age as mine are fulltime but do some work from home. I only go into the office twice a week (and sometimes leave early so i can pick the kids up and finish my day at home) and work the rest from home. I pick the kids up and for the last 1.5 hour of my working day they play/nap/watch tv.

The school is a twenty minute walk away from my house, that's a 40 minute round trip (sometimes longer as my youngest is 3 and often tired after school so a slow walker) plus the 10 mins or so waiting for the kids to be let out. I can't have an hour where I'm away from my laptop and not contactable even when working from home. Driving it's a 10 minute round trip and perfectly doable.

So long as you park safely and sensibly that's fine but you are likely in the minority of parents as most companies won't allow you to work half the day with kids under feet anymore
also most kids go to schools under a mile away thats a 10 min walk maximum !
I also love that you add in the time waiting at the school when discussing the walking option but omit it in your drive like it doesn't exist to help fit your narrative
either way I agree in your circumstances driving makes more sense but it's just an observation on how people tend to twist things to favour driving above all else

There's a parent at the school by me who keeps blocking my neighbours drive. Only when she's in on her own, never when her husband is there, I'm not sure if she knows she's married. She appears to have taken umbrage to my neighbour extending her drop kerb last year and parks right up to her bumper on the road. My neighbour is parked over half her drop kerb and the parent parks over the other half, the cars are practically touching.

ANYWAY, the husband has just arrived home and parked behind the woman so she has no way of getting out. I'm meant to be going out but need to see what happens. To be fair, he would've parked on his drive if he could've!

And yet there are many who don't, or who work from home and don't live far away. The ones who turn up at 14:15 and sit idling for an hour certainly haven't rushed from work.

A 30 minute walk is a 10 minute bike ride. We need more safe infrastructure, but you should see the social media reaction whenever my local council make improvements (grant funded so not out of their own budget). Honestly, there's no group more entitled than motorists.