Starting school

[lisa270988]

Hi
My little boy is starting school this September he will be 5 in December. We oringal choose a school just down the road but changed our minds last minute due to it being very a large school and he hates busy places and crowds ect. He now has a place at a lovely small school but it's a 20 minute walk away and he isn't a very good with walking. He was born 10 weeks early and very small for his age so this doesn't help.
I'm really worried he won't manage the walk each day! He still uses a buggy a lot! I have tried with a scooter and bike but he can't seem to get the hang of it!
Has anyone got any thoughts on this would it look bad if I took the buggy?

Can you not cycle with him? I would find a bike trailer. It probably won't matter but you never know what goes behind close doors in school and what if the other kids would tease him for that and he won't tell you

In locations where people walk distances some use buggies, others cycle

I can't ride a bike unfortunately due to physical medical problems with my legs

I think.most of the children will be close

Spend the summer practicing with the scooter

It would be unusual to have him in a buggy. I’ve certainly never seen it beyond school nursery age and that’s living in London where driving to school is less common. Get a 3 wheeled micro mini scooter, they’re light and well made, even 2YOs can usually manage them, you have a few weeks to practice before school starts and get the pull strap so you can easily pull him along if/when he gets tired.

20 minutes is not a long walk to school. Use a scooter and bring snacks at the end of the day to prevent tired/hungry meltdowns on the way home. A buggy for a school aged child (assuming no SEN - being prem isn’t an SEN) isn’t appropriate and his peers will notice.

As above. Does he struggle with other motor skills? Get him practising on a scooter and also get him practising the walk. Do not use a buggy as an option and id be stopping using that buggy with him now. When he goes on a school trip he’d be expected to walk around all day so building up his stamina now is a good idea.

Keep working on walking a scooting you have three weeks left. We stopped the buggy from my small DDs' 4th birthdays so they still used them aged 3 but never to arrive or depart pre-school as plenty of their friends had been put of buggies for two years and saw buggies as for their baby siblings. I've only seen one school-age kid arrive in a buggy at their school and they had a disability. Plenty of reception kids arrived on buggy-boards but due to a big age gap that wasn't an option for us.

See i honestly don't see the difference between a child sitting or standing on a buggy board and using a buggy

I think it would look bad if you used the pushchair yes (and I'm not one of the ones on here who stopped using pushchair really early)

I would just set off really early to give time and gradually he'll get better and better

Yes he struggles with gross motor skills cause of his size. He is only 90cm and weighs 13kg

I'm going against the grain here - lots of reception aged kids from my kids' school get picked up with a buggy. I don't see an issue with it personally. There's also a huge number of reception aged kids with dummies too. At 4-5, they're too busy being self centered (age appropriate!!) to really realise, or care, about what other people are doing. I would work on the scooter/bike for year 1 but for reception, I wouldn't bat an eyelid

We're in the same situation, I think we will get him to walk to school ok but the way home is going to be the tricky bit! We do have a scooter but he refuses to practice until it's time for school... I think DS may be hypermobile which makes walking more tiring, but the buggy is on its way out over the next month (still need it for the walk to nursery at the moment or we would never make it to work in time as it's twice as far as school will be).

I have seen the occasional buggy pick up for F2 (with no SEN). Where we are, the walk home is all uphill. It was someone with approx a 15 min walk. Little legs/ bodies can be tired at the end of the day, especially in the 1st term. No one said anything to my knowledge.

I recall that my cousin's wife used to take their son to primary in a buggy. (He was premature. He's a big strapping man now.)

I'd try again with the three wheeled scooter – if he can crack that, it's an option for a good couple of years. If he wears a rucksack, you can get a good grip of both straps at the back (at the top, where they come together) and use that to push/brake very effectively and also steer reasonably effectively. The pull strap you need them to brake and steer, but the rucksack trick is manageable basically as long as they're cooperative about standing there, bonus points for some steering.

I would use a buggy, he could always get out near the school and walk the last bit , if he wanted too.

The point isn't if there's a difference but how it looks to other children. Please do not put him in a position where other kids can ridicule him from the very start. Some kids are not nice.

He may have been premature but he's still lot older than those who turned 4 in July and August. I think he should have been walking more rather than using the buggy for quite a while now, but since you haven't, here is the chance. The microscooter mentioned above is great. Stop using the buggy and do some longer walks maybe somewhere nice like a country park with ice cream at the end. And practise 20 min local walks to the shops or even walking round the supermarket fire half an hour (not sitting in the trolley). You must get his stamina up.

I was going to comment no to the buggy but that is really small for a 4.5yo. That is the average height and weight for a 2.5yo boy. Are these measurements up to date? Are there particular concerns about his health?

My understanding is that by 4yo, even premature babies are on their final percentile barring any particular issues. Are you and your dh very short?

No pne would bat an eyelid if you used the motorised metal buggy called a car.

Kids are extremely tolerant if their parents are.

My ds is 90cm and 13.5kg and he's only 2y8m, and he's shorter than average according to the charts. I'm wondering if those are the figures you remember from your ds's last checkup but it was a while ago.

They’re the measurements of my toddler who isn’t even 2 yet. So I think you need to do what works for you & him rather than what is typical for age. That said, my little one can walk up to about a mile/ 1.5 miles comfortably.

I would suggest slowly trying to build stamina between now & then but at his pace

I agree that just prematurity isn’t the issue (2x early babies here!). The rule of thumb is that they should have caught up by 2 unless there are other issues at play. I’d really encourage you to get that checked!

Assuming he’s physically capable, do get him scooting / biking / walking as much as you can. Use a buggy at the start of reception if you really want to, but it’s better for him to be physically active.

Especially for small kids (again, speaking from experience here) it’s really important not to baby them, and to treat them as the age they are not the age they look.

I work with 4 year olds. They do spot and comment on differences, especially babies versus big boys/girls. It's nothing to do with parents. Parents may help to stop it but kids this age will notice. A kinder kid will be told not to do it and won't continue, other kids will call him a baby. Not everyone is brought up to be considerate or kind.