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.

Don't be a misery. Go another time of day if your knickers are in a twist

It’s not a reasonable deduction based on a handful of encounters from an activity which attracts thousands, no.

You’ve made an assumption. Kids whinge about things all the time. You’ve no idea if the child has begged to go, was having a “sore loser” moment because their friend has got ahead of them, or was on the end elated when they crossed the finish line.

It’s no different to anyone making assumptions about the nature of your dogs.

Occasionally they do, but there's nothing to say they wouldn't have dropped dead anyway.

You do get the odd youngster with cardiac problems but that's why you take any teenager with an interest in sport to have a CRY assessment (my son had one for free and we just made a donation to the charity).

No, but it needs dragging (kicking and screaming) into the 21st century. I loathed PE at school and it's put me off sport for life. There was murmurings about adding dance and some other things into the curriculum when I was in sixth form, but that never happened. I liked swimming (and because I was shit at it I got extra lessons on a Friday afternoon, which got me out of school) and we did one lesson with the ribbons (is that rhythmic gymnastics?) in the entirety of my school career. I was actually allowed to give up PE as I hated it so much and refused to do it.

I did dance in PE in the 90s in both primary and secondary school. In secondary school we also had a small gym built at the school and spent some of our PE lessons there.

Realise this is an old post but had to chip in ... every week my daughter wanted to go .. I took her .. her idea 100 per cent ...she complained loudly the whole way around ... struggled ... but was always so very proud to have finished ... then the joy of waiting for her time .. once it arrived she always beamed and was so happy and made me promise to go again the next week. The things that are good for you are not always easy - it was awful "dragging" her around especially as she was so vocal about the "pain" but only at the time .. it all dissolved at the finish. She really really loved / loves it and hopefully "dragging her there" helped to instill a love for exercise / doing what is good and right even when you don't want to. She might have complained on the way around but she was a little kid who wanted to be there> Managing the complaints and emotions was about learning how to manage how to grow into putting herself out there vs want to be in bed / so what you might see as a complaining kid is very often a whole other story...

What a great post! Well done to her, and especially well done to you, @tinylittlepiggy.

I took my daughter on a cycle ride along an esplanade on the south coast. It was a lovely day and 7 miles. She complained and even cried most of the way.She later said how wonderful it had been. She trains hard now, runs and keeps fit. Strange how things turn out.

Join in, then assuming you can outrun a screaming, tantrumming child, you'll only hear them at the beginning.

Dragging kids along to do something they hate, all together as a family? Isn't this what Sundays are all about?

Probably one or a combination of :

• child previously said they wanted to come and changed their mind
• mum/dad is trying to encourage exercise
• Its one of the few forms of exercise which you can bring a child with you, so might be the only way to exercise for a single parent who can’t live their child home alone
• It can be fun and they hoped their child would like it.

Wtf have I just read? If your hobby makes your child cry then do a different bloody hobby. I know some runners are insufferable but this is the worst thing I've ever seen one say.

Middle class virtue signalling at its finest. YANBU kids run miles on an average day, why it counts more on a parkrun who knows

My nephew was crying today because his sandwich was cut in squares.

Is it ignorant? You and I clearly have different ideas about good parenting! Taking a child out to do a healthy activity like park run seems great to me! Fresh air, exercise - what part of that is bad for a child?

It's fine for parents to encourage healthy activities in their children and not simply allow children to do whatever they want. You're saying that parents should only allow their children to do things that the children consider fun? So if the child says "mum I don't want to exercise, I just want to go home, sit on the sofa and play on the iPad!" that they should be allowed to do so? That's nonsense - parents need to encourage healthy activities in their children, especially in this era of obesity.

Do you also get annoyed when parents ask their children to eat healthy, balanced meals instead of letting them just eat junk food all day? Ridiculous.

that must be why we have some of the fattest kids in Europe?

perhaps w/c parents need to get of their fat arses?

Additionally, my children are 5 and 8 and adore running! I live abroad so don't have Park Run here but would absolutely take my children if they did as they'd love it. I don't particularly like running either but it's important to teach children healthy habits.

As for your claim that most children hate running and are being dragged along while wanting to go home - I'm a teacher and would be VERY shocked if this were true. I can't think of many students of mine who wouldn't enjoy running with their parents - they'd think it was great fun!

My DS loves Parkrun on a Sunday and will ask to go throughout the week, it's a fun atmosphere. I'm not running unless someone is chasing me with a knife but I don't think it's a bad thing to encourage exercise either other people.

That said, if you see him crying there it's not about the running, it's more likely he wanted red shorts and I put him in blue. Or because his tongue feels funny. Because kids cry sometimes.

You seem to have an awful lot of excuses why the absolute only time and place you are able to walk your dogs clash with junior park run. You are adamant there is no other space. That means there is no alternative location for park run. In which case you just need to put up with it. Public spaces are shared

In an ideal world you'd walk them in the remaining 23 hours and 20 minutes of the day not affected by park run..

I've only seen kids enjoy running evemts Are you sure you aren't just observing the odd recalcitrant /tantrumming/ crying child that might happen at any family event? I'll take your word for it that there's some people pushing their kids at your event . There's loads of volunteers you can complain to.

Every park run I've been at is an amazing joyful event and it's lucky for these kids to be involved. Everyone is having fun at the ones near me.

Ugh ZOMBIE THREAD ALERT

Well as people are still posting here, I will happily confirm that the park run no longer operates in that location due to so many complaints (according to my local coffee shop owner. Don’t you just love local gossip??).

There’s a lot of business along the seafront path, and I imagine their patrons took objection to the screaming and crying when trying to enjoy their breakfast and coffee etc. We’re also very popular with tourists, so I don’t imagine they were best pleased

So I guess I wasn’t unreasonable at all 😁as it is, I have enjoyed many walks sans screaming children as have my dogs.

What a lot of fun people must live tnere! Can't deal with 30 minutes of this on a weekend

It must be nice not to have your livelihood depends on the tourist trade…what a privileged position

Bloody zombie thread

Bit of a stretch @Knowillbeflamed How do you know I don't?

I actually live in a very high tourist area - mainly US and Japanese visitors. Very busy with coach loads of tourists.

Everyone manages to coexist perfectly fine. If anything Parkrun events tend to generate income for local businesses here, as there are a lot of coffee shops and cafes that tend to be very busy afterwards.