road safety - or total lack of!

[georgealmighty]

My ds is 2.2and a super active "would be outdoors all day" type. Which is fine as we have a dog to walk. However, we have a major battle in hand holding and running off. He has no concept of cars being dangerous or why he has to hold hands because he chooses not to and despite reinforcing regularly throughout the day i feel like i'm getting nowhere. In john lewis last week i gave him an ultimatum of "if you run off one more time you are going in the buggy". True to my word I struggled with a friend to fasten him in with lots of screams, and, i'm sure, stares from horrified mums who's darling kids were never like that or maybe they found a better solution.
It's not that he doesn't get loads of exercise with freedom as we live in the countryside and he has walks every day but being in shops and out on roads is anightmare.
Thinking about getting some toddler road safety books - can anyone recommend any or have any hints? Thanks for reading and any replies!

have zero tolerance.... he either holds your hand when asked, (in a park, or footpath with no traffic YOU can decide he doesnt have to if your happy with that)

when he has to hold your hand, thats it, end of.
YOU HOLD HIS hand,
if he cant do it nicely then straight into buggy.

either he can walk safely or not at all

he WILL soon get the message

Are you me?! I could have written that post, right down to the John Lewis incident (a shop assistant had to chase my DS (laughing his head off all the way) pretty much the entire length of the floor!).

I am now resolved to just take a firm line, and am using a monkey backpack with a tail to hold onto or a wrist strap when we are out if he won't go in the buggy (hand holding alone doesn't seem to work for us - he can still get free and run off). He hates both, but obviously safety has to come first, and I am heavily pregnant so simply cannot keep up with him if he runs away!

I'm also planning to take him into the local town one day and spend a good hour or so talking about the cars and practising crossing the road safely - we're also in the country so traffic is just not an issue at home and it's not really surprising that he hasn't a clue.

That's funny, yet another similarity is the shark backpack i tried but alas to no avail. As soon as he had it on it was lie down kicking and screaming until i took it off. I might dig it out again for another go... does yours also laugh their head off when you try the naughty step!?

Thanks for the support though both of you, i will resolutely be more firm tomorrow. And I agree, we're in the sticks where he can leg it around and understandably doesn't quite get the safety angle in towns and shops. Tmorrow's another day.

Oh and good luck with the baby!