Walking - how to encourage a three year old to do it!

[curlygal]

DS is three (and a half actually) and is a total buggy addict.

Our lifestyle is such that I don;t see this as a huge issue at the moment (I know that some people do, so please refrain from telling me how your three year old walks five miles a day without complaint, thanks!)

I don;t have a car and I tend to walk everywhere, taking the bus when necessary. DS still naps most afternoons and I find the buggy useful for shopping.

However, I am feeling a lot of pressure to get him out of the buggy. Friends have made comments as have the nursery staff.

How can I encourage DS to walk a bit more? At the moment if I ever go out without the buggy (as I had to on Thursday when one of the wheels came off the buggy) he just whines and moans and asks to be carried so I end up carrying him, plus our bags all the way which I find hard as he is pretty heavy and we each have a fairly heavy bag with our lunch etc in. As a result I rarely go out without the buggy as I cannot cope with the moaning and the carrying.

I would be grateful for some tips, or some reassurance that he is not the only 3.5 year old who uses a buggy!

starbear, your 10.40 post re fitness comes over as slightly judgey imo. My DD is glued to her buggy just now, but she gets plenty of exercise, just not when we need to get somewhere - it takes me 15mins to powerwalk to DDs nursery - when i walked with her it took 45 mins of encouraging, cajoling and generally ended up in be being very stressed, muttering come ON! as she stopped to look at something else or wanted to be picked up - she is heavy and i have enormous boobs, it doesn't add up well.

DD does ballet, football and is always running around with our dog.

Curlygal I hate to say this but my dd is still age 6 nearly 7 rubbish at walking at any speed that doesn't drive others to distraction. I think its just a personality thing, we rarely drive, and as I have a joint problem I couldn't carry her past about the age of 2, so she had to walk, no options (we're not on a metalled road and I didn't have an off-road buggy so I carried her in a sling til then).
My solution is a bike with tagalong (she likes riding her own bike, but is equally painfully slow) and then get off and walk when we have time to go at 2 hours a mile .

Starbear - walking for an enjoyable pastime is very different to walking through necessity. When you need to get things done and there is no car in the car park waiting for you its a whole different ball game.

techpep I do both have no car will be walking in the snow tomorrow out of necessity and do it for a job. Just giving some tips trolley & figuring out who is the parent. I am and it's good for them to walk. If I need to get some where on time I leave early! I know the pace of my kid & nephews when they were little. Sis didn't have a car either. Not having a kid of my be lazy.

I would say don't worry. I was still using the buggy for ds until he was 4 and a bit. Like you I got comments from people who'd given up their buggies much earlier but most of them had cars and didn't need to walk very long distances with their dc.

We had a walk of about a mile to get to his pre-school. He'd often walk there but coming home was another matter (it was also uphill) and the buggy was a godsend tbh, especially for loading up with shopping

He's now 6 and both he and dd (9) are very good walkers compared to many of their friends.

curlygal Sorry to vent on your thread. I don't know you or your circumstances. We have a friend who wheels their kid to school and they only live around the corner from it!
DH and myself live in a very small house, we decided to stay here as we can walk to town to shops and get the train to any where else instead of a house with more rooms.
I realise other people aren't so lucky. I used to live in a village where the local bus only ran once a day! Always in the opposite direct to my needs. I had to walk two miles just to the bus stop! So as a townie I forget that its not so easy for some.

what about introducing him to a scooter? its getting him out the buggy and trying something new.

ds1 got one when he was 3 but did tire quickly so i had a strap round the pole bit so i could pull him when tired.

your nursery may be thinking that he is missing out on exploration if he's not walking along....or possibly road safety?? ie waiting on the the pavement etc.....my two have always been a bit anti buggy and prefer to look at every blade of grass/snail/cat on a wall and sometimes you just have to go out on an aimless wander to look at things with no purpose at the end...a bit boring at times but good for learning about the world outside

We cured our DDs perpetual 'carry me' cries by telling her that we couldn't contemplate taking her to EuroDisney till she could walk round for hours without complaining.

And then when it came to it she wasn't keen on going there anyway so that worked out well

As already identified, boredom is a large part of the problem of getting kids to walk.
We once managed to get DD to walk much further than usual along the canal towpath by doing competitive dog turd count .

DS2 will ride home in double buggy from school later. He got very cold going in this morning (he did walk), and he already has a chronic cough and tummy ache complaints. I don't want him to get iller, and I have to take some kind of buggy anyway as I have a baby, too.

My only regret is I wish I had had the sense to stuff DS2 into the buggy for going into school this morning.

(Neener neener: we need a tongue sticking out emoticon, don't we? )

My DD was pretty good about walking from an early age, but I admit to using a buggy on holiday when she was 5, so we could race around quickly without waiting for her and she could snooze in the afternoon and then stay up for dinner (and bar) with us in the evening. I did get some strange looks, but who cares.

I must confess I am pleased that we have got DS walking, but if we had to walk everywhere, it would be a lot harder. (I also used a sling so it was easier because I could carry the sling but not let on I had it, whereas you can't really do that with a buggy).

What I did was gradually introduce regular routes that were walking only and at first they were very short routes. Are there any short walks you do that you could do this with?

To encourage, we did singing, walking in funny ways, jumping etc., rhymes that you had to walk faster, slower, stop etc. and imaginary traffic lights, e.g. "Oh there's a traffic light on that lampost, is it going to be RED?" (Always was) then trill gaily "Amber AND GREEEN!" and this will carry you forward a few more yards (before your DC decides there's another traffic light approx. 1 step further on)

It was incredibly frustrating and tiring at the time but I'm glad we did it as it suits our lifestyle better to have a walking DS.

For long trips I still do either bike trailer (a thought for your falling asleep on bike problem??) or trike, and I do have the option of car too. But once a journey becomes "walking only" it stays that way.

I do think though if your DS is still napping (partially at this!) you would be hard pressed to ditch the buggy and go cold turkey or anything drastic like that.

Thanks everyone. Perhaps I just need to chill out a bit for a while re the walking.

I try to get him out of the buggy for a bit each day so will do that a bit more - ie getting him to walk with the safety net of the buggy.

Will go cold turkey on the carrying though....

I am keen to encourage him to live an active lifestyle but getting him to walk now is more about being embaressed by other people's comments rather than his fitness as he is pretty active. I am worried about my fitness once he is out of the buggy though as I walk about 5 miles a day most days and I won;t expect him to do that so will end up taking the bus more.

It's a pretty long walk from our house to anything interesting like the park, shops or a cafe (ie at least a mile and most of it up hill) so I don;t think that DS could make that just yet, but perhaps a trip to the post box on the corner....

When he's a bit older I am going to get him a tow along bike but I think not till he starts school next year.

The wheel fell off our buggy last week (five year old second hand maclaren whcih has probably done approx 5000 miles) when the buggy shop said they wouldn;t be able to fix it for a week I panic bought a new buggy as I couldn;t imagine how I;d cope for a week with no buggy and a stroppy DS.

So in essence I don;t think we are ready to give up on the buggy and I just need to hold my head high as I stride out with DS in the buggy.

BUGGY USER AND PROUD!

Thanks for all of the tips

You're right Curlygal re maternal fitness once the DCs start walking - I get virtually no exercise off the bike these days, so there's a definite downside.