Share your stories of disastrous school runs in the car with Direct Line - £300 voucher prize draw!NOW CLOSED

[MichelleMumsnet]

Direct Line have asked us to find out Mumsnetters’ stories from the school run.

Here’s what they say: “We recently found a fifth of drivers didn’t know if their motor insurance policy entitled them to a hire or courtesy car following an accident or theft. Yet 77 per cent said one was either critical or important to them.”

We know that the school run can be a pretty stressful part of the day and with this in mind, we’d like you to share your most horrific or funny stories from your school run with your family. What kinds of things have happened to you whilst on the school run? Maybe you’ve been in an accident on the way to school? What happened and how did you continue your journey? Or you might have driven off with your handbag on the roof, perhaps you've even forgotten to bring a child home?! Whatever your stories are we’d love to hear them!

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win a £300 Love2Shop voucher!

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

breaking down in the middle of the school run, heavily pregnant and in the middle of nowhere, we abandoned the car and started looking for some help when the heavens opened. When we finally came to civilisation we looked like drowned rats!

The secret to avoiding disastrous school runs in the car is to go by bike or on foot. Simple.

We are a car-free London family so never go by car but walk half an hour each way every day. Journey time is guaranteed and scarcely varies by more than a minute.

BUT in a recent torrential downpour, DW and DD did accept a lift off a friend - they got stuck in traffic for nearly an hour so DD was 40 mins late for school . First time any of our DCs have ever had a 'late' mark in the register .

IMHO two legs good, four wheels bad!

We don't own a car and the school in only 10 minutes walk from home. My children complain sometimes when we walk somewhere far and wish we had a car but I prefer not having one.

I recently went off on the school run and got as far as the gate before realising that I still had my slippers on! My daughter thought it was hilariously funny. The only other footwear I had in the car was my wellies. I looked rather peculiar on a warm sunny day!

I am new to the school run this year. We have only been at it a couple of weeks, in my first week I drove to school, parked, collected my daughter and then walked home.

When we got home and found the drive empty we promotly had to turn around, walk back and collect the car! I have no idea what I was thinking!

Thankfully we don't rely on the car to get to school - but on one of the few times we did take the car (due to bad weather) I rushed DD1 into the car and completely forgot that she was in her wellies and I hadn't packed her school shoes She ended up spending the day in her PE plimsoles - thank goodness they'd been left at school!

An old family friend, now in her nineties, is the mother of triplets- three boys. In the time before seat belts or door locks in the car, one school run her children were being boistrous and noisy in the back . Until all went quiet and one of the triplets piped up: Mum !Andrew's fallen out of the car... ! All was well as she had been driving very slowly and he had not injured himself

The worst was when DD got a sudden attack of diahhorea in the car. She got no warning of it poor thing. The mess to clean up after was dire, I worried the smell would never go away.

I drove down the hill towards school and went through what I thought was a shallowish puddle. Turned out to be quite deep and flooded the engine on the car, so there I was, stranded in it, with two screaming kids in the back... Best bit was, I was in my DH's car that day - so had to ring him from the 'puddle' and tell him, I needed rescuing! He was not best pleased!!

Getting stuck at the bottom of our hill whenever it snows

I once drove my son to school and realised 'd left his lunch box on the roof I dropped him off then drove around trying to find it, but found myself caught behind the recycling lorry doing its rounds, eventually I did find the lunchbox but it had been run over so then I had to rush to the supermarket to by a replacement and refill it before returning to school to drop it off.

I once got to school to realise that the baby was strapped into the car seat but the seat wasn't strapped into the car. Oops!

Doing the school run with a new baby and breastfeeding is not very compatible. On day 1 I thought dd had drama after school so failed to pick her up and only got a call at the end of the day to say she had been left! Not ideal when you have your boob out feeding and have to leave straight away. Day two I ended up doing the school run with nursing bra in clipped where I left in a hurry. Hopefully not everyone noticed my wonky boob issue. I am definitely the slummy mummy!!

Worst school run.... Was when I forgot to do the school run

Cue frantic drive to school an hour later full of shame to see the DC sitting there like Paddington bear all forlorn and forgotten about

First day of ds1 starting reception of brand new school as he had gone to nursery at a different school. Also had a toddler and brand new baby to wrangle into the car. So quite upset and stressed. Ds1 was a bit upset and not wanting to go. So we are a little late. Traffic cued into the school. Little did I realise there was a crossing inside the school and I was already half in tears that I ended up nearly running over one of Ds1 classmates.

As I got out the child's Dad was irate. I tried apologise as I wrangle the kids out the car (post baby hormones not helping). It was only after I burst into tears at the reception classroom door after being berated and apologising for 5 minutes that he final walked away. Of course all of the reception parents saw and the teacher, and they all knew each other as they had attended preschool together.

it was horrible for the first few weeks as I got those looks. Honestly three years later I don't think I ever got over the intro to the school

We don't use the car for school as it's in walking distance and we think it's good for the children to get exercise. But we once had to pick our eldest Granddaughter up from nursery, which at the time was a 15/20 minute drive away. We went to start the car and the battery had 'died'. This was the first time we had ever picked her up and the first time the car had ever let us down. Typical

The worst school run for me was hitting the kerb on the way to collect the kids, parking, coming back five minutes later to a totally flat tyre with an irate baby and two not very pleased children. Too far to walk home, no buggy and an argument with an architect about the position of the kitchen in our new apartment which had to be sorted out there and then. All a tiny bit stressful. Fortunately I was rescued by a lovely friend who drove past and took the two older children and the AA who came and changed my tyre as rather pathetically I haven't the wherewithal to do it myself!

Things flying off the roof is a regular occurrence also. One day I drove to school, drove to the playground, drove home and found I had lost my house keys and was therefore locked out of the house. After frantically searching the car / every crevice of my handbag, revisiting all the places, asking people if they had found keys, leaving phone numbers in cafes in case they were handed in (again with a lot of grumpy children in tow) drove home to await my husband's return with keys only to walk around the back of the car and discover my keys lodged on the rear windscreen wiper! How they stayed there through my rather frenzied drive I have absolutely no idea. Least still how they got there. I can only assume I put them on the roof and they slid off and got stuck! Very happy to find them!

Mine isn't as bad as some of these, but I'll tell it anyway.

I was massively pregnant and suffering with really bad sickness and SPD so I used to drive to the kids school with a coat slung over my pyjamas and arrive about half hour early to read a book or nap in the car while toddler DS3 was napping (don't judge me, it was a case of getting through each day!)
Anyway, I pulled up in a free space and the kids came out of school and got in the car, we had a chat about their day and off I went to drive home, only to find the car was stuck, very deeply in the mud.
I panicked and tried driving backwards and forwards but mud was getting splattered everywhere and it was getting more and more stuck. In the end o had to go and ask at the school office for some help, my hormones got the better of me and I sobbed in my mud covered coat that had fallen open to reveal my pyjamas. The kids teacher and a few Dads came and pushed me out after getting themselves filthy. All was well, I was very embarrassed but after some red faced thanks and apologies for taking up their time I drove home.

A couple of days later i was driving too school and a car came towards me at speed meaning I had to drive into the same space as before and yup, got myself stuck again!!!

I had to once again carry toddler DS3 (in his pjs this time, I was dressed) and go back to the office and the same teacher had to come and rescue me again.
Luckily he was very good humoured about it and quipped that he was going to have to start charging me a rescue fee but since I'd managed to visit my wardrobe before venturing out this time he'd let me off.

By that afternoon I noticed they'd coned the muddy bit off and it was quickly sorted and paved over.

Having to shufflein playground in gym kit (I amv unfit) feeling rather self conscious... only to glance downat my knee length leggings to see I hadn't shaved my milk white hefty legs and had v obvious hairy man legs onshow for all theuber mums to see

I looked a complete state.

I had my son in the back of the car, clean, smart and ready for school - drove off happily, listening to the radio. Son was a bit quiet which should have warned me but didn't. Got to school, turned around and he had found my make-up bag which had fallen out of my overnight bag and smeared foundation all over his face, his hands, his uniform, his chair - the lot! I didn't realise how much foundation was in those little bottles - A LOT!

oh lovely lovely direct line...

the most disasterous school run was when some plonk ran into the back of me and wrote off the car. the children and I spent the evening in hospital getting checked out.

thanks for the lovely call centre staff who dealt with the first call telling them all about it.

First week of reception and DD1 ended up missing most of the days, as we discovered she's prone to car sickness first thing in the morning!

one morning i took AGES to find my car keys. once i found them i parked on the school hill only to find i had a flat tyre! i couldnt help but think i should have walked!!!

I used to drive a colleague to work, and then drop off two children at primary school. I was driving (old, low slung car) and it had been raining heavily. I was going a bit too fast but still only about 20. What looked like a clear road ahead was actually an enormous puddle - about a foot deep - which immediately stalled the engine. Behind me was a council van (luckily) who towed the car into a layby. Behind that was another colleague. We were all carried out of the car (piggy back) by the council workers and decanted into the other colleague's car and went on our way merrily to school / work, leaving the car there to deal with later.

When DH came along the same road about an hour later, the flood had drained, the car just looked abandoned (and started first time) and he was entirely bewildered as to where we had all gone. I did have a mobile phone but I didn't think to let him know as I had just assumed we would all pick up the car on the way home.

I can still remember the feeling of "oh dear" as the car ploughed into the enormous puddle!

When I was being driven to school by my mum along some nasty snowy icy roads one winter when we were about 8-9 years old, the car went down a hill and started to slip and slide all over the place - so dsis and I were sliding around on the backseat of the car - it was back in the days before car seats .

Apparently I turned to my sister and said 'Hold on tight, then you scream, I'll shout and Mum can carry on driving, then we'll be OK'. And we were! Since then I still get reminded of the 'you scream, I'll shout' whenever there's something scary and even DH says it to me now