Parents parking cars right by school entrances probably making DC unable to walk moderate distances

[nfg]

Where I live, schools are starting the new school year this week. Start date depends on school and the school year.

Parents want to park as close to the entrances to make children walk less.

As well as the dangerous parking which can endanger children. I believe children develop a concept of they think they can be dropped right by places. They probably can’t cope with walking moderate distances such as visiting a shop inside a shopping centre, theme parks, tourist attractions, airports etc. As i have seen kids in supermarkets complaining that they have to walk. They are 8/9 years old and then resort to sit inside the trolley.

Parents let your DC walk further!

YANBU! It’s ridiculously entitled on the behalf of parents.

I get that parents have to drive as they’re dashing off to work etc
im amazed where this school is parents can park at the entrance
most have zig zag lines, barriers etc so you cannot get close to the entrance

There are parents who sit in their cars all day by the schools! As I remember driving past a school at 10am and 2pm when had temp traffic lights. There is a lay-by outside the school. Both times the 5-6 cars were the same with a parent sitting in them!

How sad are these parents? Where do they go to the loo? Doubt the school lets them use their loos. There’s no public loos nearby.

I’ve noticed that a lot of children seem to struggle with walking what I would regard as normal distances. We always walk to school, about 15 mins, and occasionally if we have a friend coming round after for a play date, they will come with us straight from school pick-up. A few times I’ve had a child scandalised that we are walking home and after five minutes complaining that their legs are sore, are we there yet, etc! I took DD1 (6) away for a city break just me and her and we did 15k steps each day, and she didn’t complain once, I guess as she’s just so used to walking as we walk everywhere if we can.

Parents ignore the zig zags and other restrictions. The only way to punish them is hit it where it hurts - money. Fines should be doubled after each offence.

I totally agree with you op.

We used to walk to school everyday, granted it was about 5 minutes from our house, but still. My mum would then either walk down to work, or walk home and get the car. By year 5&6, we were walking ourselves. My sister in law can’t believe it! She thinks it’s awful we didn’t get driven there each day. It’s incredibly lazy.

I used to live near a nursery and parents would park blocking the road. There's perfectly good parking a 2 minute walk away.

I now live near a school and the parking is much better

@doodleschnoodle this is what I’m talking about! Parents that park close to schools are damaging their kids minds. Yet your DC isn’t bothered about 15k steps

Hmm…I dunno I just think some kids are
lazy / hate walking! Mine all began school at an infant school where you had to walk 10 mins up a steep hill to get to it (car park was at the bottom of the hill). So they had no choice. We also have a dog that needs walking, again no choice. Do I ever get to hear the end of their whining about sore legs / tired legs / they want a piggyback? Nope. Drives me crazy.

middle daughter is hypermobile and I think genuinely does get tired walking as her gait changes and I can see her struggling. But the other two have no excuse, esp eldest who does not sit or stand still for 5 mins and so I know has bags of energy and strength

My children don’t go anywhere by car regularly and they complain about walking when they’re in the mood to complain. They can walk for several hours without complaining if they’re in the right mood. It’s not only about the distance.

YANBU OP!

My DC's primary school had a massive, well-designed car park with a specific dropping-off lane, nice wide entrance/exit on a wide side road. Yet we used to get regular pleading emails from the headteacher, because parents would insist on either stopping on the busy main road or annoying local residents on the side road by parking all over their drives etc.

WHY??? It's not even safer for the children!

Ours walk to school about 15/20 mins each way at slow childs pace (.75 mile). When DD was 2.5 she refused to use the pushchair so was doing 3 miles a day as she had to go there and back after dropping DS and again to pick him up.

Yet, a friend who lives halfway between us and school uses a pushchair for her 4 YO who is going in to Reception next week! No SN so reason other than laziness.

My Dc walk for hours as we have a lovely lab. Thst said when dropping off at school they leap out at the school gate as I’m on my way to work. Luckily they are on school buses most days which pause at the school gates and kids leap out then too so they are well practiced.

If schools can I think it’s a good idea to have a safe drop off zone/ one way system if practical it depends on location/ roads. I’ve seen that in a school car park so doesn’t just need to be on the road. Lots of schools have no stopping / drop off exclusion zones around schools to force oarents into dropping off further away too.

At DDs old school there were some very wide pavements on the opposite side of the road. Parents used to reverse onto them so they were perpendicular to the road, but making it completely impossible for any wheelchair users, or anyone with a pushchair, to get through. You could just about squeeze one pedestrian through the gap between the car and the fence at a time.
They’d also reverse on with such little care for all the children walking along the pavement. Then you’d have the people double parking along the road further up. It was awful but completely unsurprising when a girl was hit and ended up in hospital.

There were empty roads about a 3 min walk away. Lazy arseholes.

My daughter’s school is down a tiny, and very narrow residential street. School repeatedly ask parents not to park down there, it really is dangerous not to mention massively inconveniences the residents. There are plenty of potential parking spots within a 5-10 minute wallk of the school entrance, just not down the actual road. Still so many parents insist on doing so - parking half way across the pavements on both sides, idling their engines, standing chatting with the doors wide open completely blocking off the path, forcing parents and children to have to walk in the road to get past them. It really is unsafe, not to mention must be so bloody annoying for the residents who live down there.

We’re going into our third year of school runs (we walk which I know we’re lucky to be able to do but also - we chose a school we could walk to quite deliberately) and I’m still so staggered by the selfishness of it all.

I often hear children complaining about walking or see children out walking looking at tablets or their phones.

What will this lack of exercise and failure to look at the world around them do to their health in future? Despite more active childhoods and less/no screen time obesity and ill health are a problem in the generations above them and yet we seem to be setting the future generations up for worse.

The amount of dangerous parking near our nearby Primary is frustrating. Its double yellows, so they park on the pavement instead. Children are walking and cycling along the pavement/cycle path and cars are mounting it right next to time.

They know its illegal as whenever tge Police turn up to monitor it... no one pars there. They use the safe legal parking 5 minutes away!

What? That’s shocking and really sad. I’m imagining lonely, unemployed and poor - they don’t want to go home as it’s not very nice, but they can’t afford to go anywhere else…

I live on the same road as a primary school, we have several families who literally drive from the next road along and park illegally on the zigzags and double yellows. It just take longer to load the kids in and out of the car than it would do to walk.

If they are parking illegally report then if not it is not anyone's business why are people worrying about the walking abilities of other peoples children? It's no different to judging kids who use pads or take their children to McDonald's

This faux concern thing is odd

They park on the bloody zig-zags where I am. And on the yellow lines that were put in to stop them parking. And across my driveway.

This drives me crazy. My youngest dc school is literally a street away from us so it’s not exactly walking miles it’s less than 2 minutes but still there are parents from our street that will drive down park outside the gates drop kids off and drive back home. I’m faster walking to and from the school

There could be a club or volunteering thing you're not aware of. Loads of parents seem to hang around our school for hours but a lot do things like helping out with reading or with class trips etc.

They do it by us and it’s a very narrow street with permit parking. The dangerous parking at times is off the scale. To make it worse there’s a group who park up early then block the road chatting until sometimes 9:15
funny enough two local supermarkets within a 5 min walk say they can use the car park. Whilst I get that some parents may have other drop offs to do, I really can’t see why a others can’t park up and get to drop off at a good time to then walk back to car park and be away before the doors of the school have even shut. It gets pretty aggressive here when it’s busy and lots of reviving if they don’t get their way
(fortunately it doesn’t put me off living here…I love it. I won’t attempt to get off our road before 9:00 though. I’m often baffled as to how it clears at all 😆)