Park Runs: Children - Why?

[Knowillbeflamed]

There’s a park run every Sunday near me. They jog along the pavement by the seafront taking the whole damn thing up so no one else can even walk along it.

Honestly, I don’t get running. But, what I understand even less is dragging young children along?! Yes, the older one’s (10+) seem to enjoy it but there’s at least 5x more that seem wayyyy to young - toddlers, very young kids - who hate it. They’re dragged along by their parents, literally kicking and screaming and crying.

AIBU to think if your kid hates running that much or patently doesn’t want to be there, that you do NOT force it on them?! Just because you like running doesn’t mean you force it on them. Find them an activity they enjoy.

PS. Yes I am annoyed by the sheer ignorance of 100+ people taking up that much space and forcing others to dive out the way - but mostly it’s the shrill screams of toddlers being forced to run that drives me bonkers. Someone will pop up and say ‘they love it,’ but I’m sorry - kids screaming ‘it hurts’ ‘I don’t want to’ whilst their parents drag them along by their wrist just angers me. And it’s not one parent one week - it’s multiple different parents on various weeks.

This is the biggest load of bullshit I've heard in a while.
Encouraging kids to exercise is hugely positive, and I don't know if you have had kids, or ever met one, but they complain all the fucking time about doing things and have to be told to do things they don't want to do. Because surprisingly parents do frequently know better and this is why children end up having hobbies or eating something other than sweets.
But it's nice to know you're issue is the welfare of the children and not your indulgent whining about other people inconveniencing you.

@FiveWhatByFiveWhat except, luckily, we’re in the majority! But as always, it appears to be the ‘silent’ majority with those who disagree yelling loudest and being rude😁

So odd how the most vocal are always the rudest…

Why don’t you go at 8am or 10am or after? It’s a Sunday!

Why do you need to go at 9am?

Sounds like you enjoy barrelling through the runners with your 2 large scary dogs.

I have very busy weekends so 8:45-10 and 7-8 (evening walk) are my only dog walking window on a Sunday.

I’m sure someone will pop up and say my dogs only need an hour a day, or could go without a walk…but they’d wrong. You don’t get a dog and not exercise once a week on the same day just because it’s ‘busy’ etc.

FWIW they’re Malis - so they do need good exercise every day.

Go one more time to report the abusive parents to the RD, then change your route if seeing these crying children is bothering you so much. This also has the added bonus of keeping your unsuitable dogs away from being right on top of a children’s activity.

There you go, I’ve dealt with your ‘main objection’.

Unsuitable?!😂

I'm a dog lover, but yes, why are you dragging indimidating looking, extremely high drive dogs into the middle of a children's sporting event?

It’s the only time that morning I can exercise them and the sea-front path, that they do the park run on, leads directly to the beach.

Not that it’s relevant, but they’re ex-working (as in actual working, not running through bushes looking for a shot pheasant) so they pose far less risk than the average cockerpoo or chihuahua - which IME seem to be the dogs most likely to attack people and other dogs.

We don’t stereotype people, we shouldn’t stereotype dogs.

But you’ve stereotyped the parents and kids who do junior parkrun on the basis of a minority?!

Actually I haven’t, I said older kids enjoy it - but the younger ones clearly don’t, and if they’re that miserable then the only reason they are there is for their parents.

That’s not stereotyping, it’s a reasonable deduction.

We don’t stereotype people, we shouldn’t stereotype dogs.

oh the sweet sweet irony op! 🙄

You're making a lot of assumptions OP, and being quite closed-minded to any of the reasons the families might be there. I highly doubt that the parents are dragging along small kids who have said they don't want to do it, they dislike running, and also moan that they are in pain all the way through, and then continue to bring them, hating every minute, for the next several months or years. If a parent wants to run there are far more enjoyable and easier ways of achieving that than junior park run. I don't run but I'm capable of imagining the myriad reasons they might be there:

• try exercising as a family, they said, it will be fun, they said.
• Mummy Toby goes running with his dad can we do that
• the kids loved it one week hated it the next
• they often enjoy it, but it was cold this week and less fun, and one of them had a cold, and on balance, they probably shouldn't have gone
• they usually do a different one that is a bit easier or they enjoy more
• they were supposed to meet friends there but they couldn't come at the last minute so decided to go ahead anyway
• the child asked to drop their other activities because they weren't enjoying them, and didn't want to play in the park because they had fallen out with their pals, and the agreement was that was fine for now, but they would need to keep up park run for exercise. Fine, the child said.
• there was an argument about trainers before they left the house.

You seem to be assuming they are doing it because they are selfish and don't care about their children, but I think that's an easy and lazy assumption, because they also happen to be inconveniencing your very precise weekend schedule.

I knew you’d nitpick something. I thought unsuitable was quite a restrained word to choose. I based it entirely on your own description of being the type of dogs parents want to keep their children away from. Your own description. Is picking out one word with a question mark and exclamation mark the only thing you have to say about my post? Not gonna give me a whole list of reasons why you can’t just change your route?

First of all, you stated yourself that the appearance of the dogs intimidate people, yet you still put them in the middle of a kid"s event. That's very disruptive of you.

No amount of training in the world will make a high drive dog a low drive dog. If you don't understand that, I'm not sure you should be handling mals.

@DearDenimEagle I first heard "jokey" (mocking) comments like that when I started running nearly 30 years ago. Wasn't particulary funny then and has worn even thinner now. I enjoy amusing comments when they are actually funny. Putting a laughing face does not mean it is automatically funny, and that emoji is also used by people being snide.

I’m so sorry about your stroke. My previously fit and active, health conscious mum had one 5 years ago and is also still learning to walk. It’s devastating 💐

A sensible, to the point post, dealing with the thing OP claims to be upset about. I can guarantee OP won’t thank you for the advice.

Actually, I did take it on board and if the same parents are there this Sunday, I will make a point of speaking to someone.

But thank you for the assumption that I wouldn’t thank them for their advice 😁

But you didn’t. My post upthread included similar advice, and you ignored it, even though you took the time to quibble with the word I used about your dogs.

Glad you’re going to speak to the RD about your concerns.

I’ve also suggested you could change your route a little (as you say you can’t change the time at all), but in 19 pages I can’t find a word that you’ve said about why you have to take your dogs to where JPR is. Bearing in mind that you don’t want to keep seeing these children crying and no doubt want to avoid it.

It's about 10 years since first taking my 4yo his first junior parkrun. They were quite a new concept then. We ran walked a couple, then got to November, did one lap because the weather wasn't great, came back the next spring. We went more regularly when they were 6/ 4 and the youngest really took to it. Oldest will age out soon, but he's keen to get to 200 runs first. It turns out that he's dyspraxic and autistic- not a natural sport lover, and the best thing I ever did for his fitness was gently teach him that he could run. He's got a sport for life that is flexible and only as sociable or competitive as he wants it to be. That's better than my childhood of being bellowed at by PE teachers for being shit at sport and shrugged at by parents who just accepted that females in the family are shit at sport.

I've tailwalked many times, and directed many more than that. Most parents are very good at encouraging their children appropriately. Our team has made a safeguarding report when it was neccesary, that's out of thousands of attendances. The reality is few parents will make an effort to drag a child out at 9am on a weekend to do something they actually hate. Cajoling for a while to get a child through the hump of something they wanted to do, and will enjoy having done is a different matter.

9-10am at the weekend is quite a quiet time. Landowners (usually councils) would not permit parkruns if there is a major clash of users or safety risks. Many dog walkers/ runners (the main users) are up and about before then, and public spaces tend to busy up with leisurely users mid-morning. Parkruns are a great way to encourage people of all ages to get into running and activity, and are a small proportion of avaliable public space being used. Even at the busiest 5k parkruns, the peak is over by 9:20 because the first finishers are coming in and the various paces of runners and walkers have spread across the route. By 9:35 the last 20% are gradually trickling in and the finish area can wind down the numbers of volunters, and multiple funnels as they don't need to accomodate high numbers.

There's several parks that I can't just rock up to with a picnic to place wherever I may want because they'll be full of amateur football matches/ Sunday League for a large chunk of Saturdays and Sundays. I either would have to pick one of the parks not used for that, a different patch of the park or different time. I'm no football lover, but it's a positive thing that public spaces are being used for affordable organised sport and recreation.

The park run is on the path that goes directly to the beach - there’s no other way to get to the beach except walk along it, unfortunately. It’s an incredibly busy path as the path also has cafes, coffee shops and bistros along it - so Sunday morning is chaotic in general (hence bad timing for a park run).

And it needs to be there as one of my children has sports training nearby and I don’t want to vanish miles away in case something happens. It would also be a bit bonkers to drive away, to walk my dogs for less time than they really need, then drive back again tbh!

I've taken multiple different friends kids to junior parkruns, have volunteered at them, and most surely don't completely take over an area. The last one I went to was pretty big with 100+ kids, but people don't arrive until about 8:50am and then you have the warm up and briefing at the start area. After that the kids set off and it's busy on the first stretch until the faster kids get on and further away and everyone spreads out, but that's only for a few minutes. The fastest kids finish in 7 or 8 minutes, the slower ones can be more like 20 mins, but only walkers take longer than that. Everyone except the volunteers packing up has gone by 9:30am.

As others have said if you're concerned about parents/adults being unpleasant to children during a junior parkrun, raise it with the volunteers - ideally the run director in blue/white hi viz. There is guidance under 'pushy parenting' in the parkrun safeguarding policy. https://safeguarding.parkrun.com/hc/en-us/articles/18811933690770-2-2-What-is-abuse-and-how-we-might-see-it-at-parkrun.

But even that acknowledges that children can be more emotional than adults and there is a spectrum of acceptable parenting, just because a child is crying doesn't mean the parent is being unreasonable. My friend's 5yo was in hysterics yesterday evening because he was tired and we said it was bedtime, how horrible of us!

I’m certainly not suggesting going miles away or driving OP, I don’t know where you got the idea that I was.

Clearly you know the area and I don’t, so there’s no way I’m getting drawn in to suggesting changes to your route that you will bat away. But I find it astonishing to the point of literally unbelievable that there isn’t a workaround to avoid the very short space of time, and the precise spot, where junior park runners are taking up the space.

I don't much like running so am not/have never been in this particular situation, but I'm not against parents facilitating prioritising their own hobbies and the kids having to suck it up for less than an hour a week. I've spent hours or maybe even days of my life in playgrounds, skateparks, soft plays, gymnastics halls, swimming pools etc for my children. I wasn't having the time of my life every minute, but they were so I did it for them. When I was a kid mum would drag us around national trust properties which we hated (one of my fave things to do now!), there has to be give and take in family life surely? Likely there are parents out there who struggle to fit runs in during a week and this is a way that they don't have to juggle childcare, whilst also getting the kids out exercising. Doesn't seem like the worst thing.

At the same time I wouldn't enjoy whatever the thing was if my child was genuinely kicking and screaming behind me, would zap all the enjoyment completely.

@Substitutiarylocomotion - the Sunday events are kids events, so this whole issue is around that kids version, a 2km run/walk for children aged 4-14. Adults would only be there supervising the kids, it's not a run for adults, they don't get a time or their run counted towards the adult parkrun figures. After the first few times kids would usually run it alone unless they want an adult along with them for moral support, there are volunteer marshals keeping them in eyeline across the route so they can do it solo. Tbh if an adult is into running, a 2km run at the pace most of the younger kids or not that keen kids go at really wouldn't be much of a run!