Share your tips on teaching kids about road safety with Churchill Insurance. Win a £300 Love2Shop voucher! NOW CLOSED

[PoppyMumsnet]

Roads can be an intimidating place for children and a worrying place for parents, especially on the school run. Churchill Insurance wants to introduce extra lollipop men and women across Great Britain to help keep our children safe. Churchill would like to know how you teach your children about road safety. Which rules do you pass on about roads and cars? Do you have any fun and creative techniques to make them stick? How old were your children when you started teaching them – and how long did it take for things to sink in?

Lucy Brooksbank, Head of Marketing at Churchill, added: "Lollipoppers are the stalwarts of our communities, national treasures who bring fun and joy to everyone’s school run, as well as importantly keeping children safe. Churchill looks out for customer's best interests, so what better way to demonstrate that than by supporting our Lollipoppers and taking action to keep them on our streets? With child pedestrian casualties during the school run still an issue in the UK, we want to put 50 Lollipoppers on school crossings. We want people from across the UK, whether they are a parent or just concerned about a local crossing to nominate their schools and help to keep children safe during the school run.”

Please share your ideas about teaching road safety with Churchill Insurance below.
Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win a £300 Love2Shop voucher.

Make sure your school has a chance of receiving Lollipopper funding by nominating at www.churchill.com/lollipoppers

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Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

The best tip is to commence road safety as early as possible with toddlers. Stop, look & listen. Look to the left, look to the right, look to the left again & if the road is clear, walk straight across the road, is learnt & said. Holding an adults hand is required. Traffic training is acted out at local nurseries, complete with traffic lights, zebra crossings, & of course vehicles & the children love it. Behaviour breeds behaviour, so always getting it correct means children emulate correctly.

always use crossings and get them to watch the green cross code man on you tube re-emphases what you say in a fun way

My DDs are 3 & 5 so I insist they hold hands and always stand back from the edge of the pavement. I always make sure that we find a safe place to cross, and get them to look both ways before and during the road crossing.

My child loved Pippin (Come outside) The song was look up look down look all around up in the air and on the ground etc. So from such a young age I changed the words. Look left Look right look all around. It stuck and my child stills remembers

Get them to be Road safety monitor, they check everyone is doing what they should and say when it's safe to cross. Big up the role and how important it is, and that they need to be very sensible and careful.

Power is a big thing to kids and will make them take it seriously and remember

I don't make it 'fun'. Crossing the road is not funny and the consequences of not taking it seriously are very dire.

Mine are still relatively small so they still hold my hands whilst crossing. We cross busy roads on our way to school so if I don't have 100% concentration we can't cross safely so silly songs etc are out anyway. We do however practice on quieter roads and I ask one of them to take charge and tell us when to cross, I do the same with zebra crossings at school when the gates are shut (ie no cars) when I am sure there are no cars I don't actually say anything to them to see how they react, the first time ds1 just carried on walking without looking so we had a good chat about it and stressed the importance of never stepping off the kerb without looking, whether they are with me or not. They're both quite proficient at it now.

I also practice getting my children to stop on command so if they are approaching danger I can shout stop and they must stop immediately.

Always cross at crossings and wait for the green man and they have to hold my hand. Becomes second nature if you do it all the time.

Make up your own green cross code as a memorable rhyme

I say teach them young! Most of the time i take my children to school walking and my daughter (eldest 4 years) is always observing what i do and asking me questions. I always tell her what we are going to do when we get to the road and teaching her about all the crossing we pass. She thoroughly enjoys it.

Every time we cross a road we go through the kerb drill, whether or not there is any traffic. Make it a quiz on the different stages of what we must and must not do before crossing and keep repeating everything and go through the drill with them, Reverse roles and let them take responsibility for getting you across the road safely. Lots of Praise when they manage to cross safely with what you have taught them and keep it up all the time.

Make sure the child knows to cross at crossings, wait for the green man and not follow the crowd. Never cross from behind parked vehicles like vans etc. I think most of us have a cautionary tale that we can tell - someone in my family was hit on a crossing when they didn't wait for the green man, and although it's a scary story it's an important one to tell!

We have always walked the children as much as possible. They are now 6 and 4, and getting better. We hold hands, talk as we walk making them aware of their surroundings : cars coming, timing of buses, features of the road : pavement, crossings, lights etc.
We always cross at lights (if possible) waiting for the green man (cannot abide those who cross on red). No messing on the roads, walk while listening all the time. We look at the end of roads marked for the blind and elderly.
They are allowed to play outside at the front on bikes and scooters, we set boundaries from one tree to a telephone post, but we stay there.
They wear helmets for bikes and comment if bike riders do not wear theirs.
Even when in the car, we look at road signs, speed limits and the work of the police, explaining how the police are their to check.
When we got the first bike from the shop the manager was superb on safety as well and the correct size helmet was part of the deal.
Keep them aware

Use crossings and look both ways even at crossings! Once they know the rules ask them to help you cross the road so you can check they're confident about doing it correctly and keep re-enforcing the techniques.

I've never had an issue, I always taught my daughter from a young age to look both ways and always hold an adults hand when crossing the road. Always try and find a crossing first.

When I was a child, I was a member of the Tufty club until I was 16! I also remember the Green cross code for crossing the road so would teach that to my children

I taught my children from a young age the dangers of the road.When they where little they used to hold my hand.Now they are older they know to look left and right and wait for the green man.I never cross beforehand I have to set a good example.

We don't make it fun! We take our time, stop, look and listen. I usually have all four children with me so we have to make sure we are all in line and that no one runs or misbehaves. Tricky but we had a chat with them about being sensible crossing the road and they seem to understand

I got my son to stand with the lollipop man every so often and get him to tell him when it was clear for him to stand out in the road to stop the traffic. He felt important and also encouraged others to get involved

We cross with the green man, at zebra crossings and don't look at what other people are doing. For side roads without crossings we hold hands and 'stop, look and listen'.

I talk them through it whenever we cross and also from a very young age.
I don't have any fun songs. I just keep telling them to check and check again.

Near our school there are some light where drivers fail to stop. It's badly positioned as drivers need to concentrate on turning a corner and changing lanes. I've seen a few close shaves here and witnessed an accident. So, I tell my children to double check even when the green man is on.

We let the kids lead us on familiar routes. It encourages them to think about looking before they cross and crossing in safe places all within the safety of having us there...just in case!

Agree lead by example. No mobile phone talking or texting whilst crossing road. Be aware of your surroundings not distracted!

Our school has been without a crossing patrol for nearly a year due to sickness. I have made a point of crossing where the crossing patrol would normally be situated. It gives the best vision of a really poor road. However many parents, despite newsletters asking them, cross all over the place. Bends with cars parked on them. Poor vision areas. We've had several near misses and one incident.

My children moan about crossing where we do but I explain its my job to keep you safe. If other people want to take risks that's up to them. It's the same with car seats. So many children aren't strapped in properly or use seats and my 8 year old feels babyish. I just say they don't know what mummy knows so we do it this way.

When I think of the area I used to walk with my sister when I was younger it's clear my son doesn't have the same freedom. However I don't recall crossing roads being like they are now. Fewer cars on road. People expected to see children out. These days seeing children out on pavements playing is less common. We expect it less.

Walking with them regularly. It's all very well telling them about road safety, but it's the constant repetition over years of childhood that reinforces it.

Many of the children in my sons year two class can tell you about road safety, but taking some of them out shows they can't replicate it in real life.

Children need to be walking places, even if they need a car for the school run parents could park a 20 min walk away to get children used to crossing roads.

When they were small (pre-school age), there was a huge out of town carpark which had lots of little zebra crossings on it. Whenever we went there (it had soft play and McDonalds there!) we would practice stopping at the edge on ever single possible crossing. The carpark wasn't busy so it was a safe environment in which to drum into them how to safely cross roads.

As they got older, we would discuss whether pace X Y or Z was a safe place to cross as part of any walk we did.

From as soon as he could walk, we got ds to share in the decision making as to when to cross the road.

As we live on a long, straight and wide road, albeit a quiet one, this meant a lot of patience until he was old enough to judge speed, as if he saw a car at the other end of the road, he would wait until it was past especially as it was a 20s plenty zone and there were 3 sets of speed bumps between the car and us . But it was important to give him the "responsibility".

Walked to school every day. 10-15 minutes walk - our quiet road to cross, one busier road to cross with a lollipop man, another road which could probably have done with a lollipop man as some cars didn't always look properly as they swung into it (from the busier road) and the road outside the school which was narrower and had traffic calming measures built in but suffered from selfish twats some parents double parking outside the school and causing a danger due to their selfishness.