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

With my daughter who is now 11 my husband use to warn her that she would go to hospital if she wouldn't be careful crossing the road and she also did a course at school and learnt the 3 steps, stop, watch and listen rules. We have never had problems. My son is 6 and is now starting crossing the road on his own. He is always been very sensible stopping and waiting for us before crossing and now looks left and right before going.

We have always put a big effort in teaching our children on how to cross the road safely..

I'm quite blunt, DC know if they mess about on a road they'll be squished by a car! Teaching them is an ongoing thing tho which started as young toddlers in pram-telling them about crossing, looking, waiting for green man etc. As they started walking more, they were taught they must hold hand near roads. It becomes habit.
To be honest though, I don't like lollipop people/crossings at schools. At our school anyway, either the children are with parents, are older and road savvy or don't care and run across anyway ignoring the lollipop person, so I feel they are a bit reduntant standing there. I do the school run everyday though so I may feel differently if I didn't.

I think it depends on the road asuwere.

Even though roughly 90% of the kids on my crossing have parents with them, it's just impossible to cross, because the traffic simply won't stop. On top of that, the buses and lorries that queue in the traffic to your left, block your view of the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road, so parents (mostly pushing prams) have to edge out slowly before they can even be seen.

My colleague has a more dangerous crossing, because he has to get the kids/parents to the traffic island in the middle of the road, and then see them across 2 more lanes of traffic to the other side.

Yet if this council has its way, there will be no more lollipop people by this time next year

Oh and I meant to add. My local once tiny Primary school, now has 950 pupils because the council/government keep on at them to build more classrooms and take more pupils.

So 950 kids, along with parents and siblings, all leaving the school at 3pm causes traffic chaos if you don't have someone there to supervise.

Start when they are very young. Talk about crossing the road when you do it - stop, look, listen. Be a good example - always cross at a crossing and never walk across unless the green light is showing. I always insisted on holding hands near roads when the children were very small.

With so many younger children now having phones teach them never to use them when trying to cross a road. With older children discourage the use of earphones to listen to music when walking near roads and to stop still on the pavement if texting or reading a text.

We always hold hands near roads and crossing the road. We always look both ways before crossing, and we always stop and do this even if it appears to be clear. It's something I worry about a lot!

We try to talk about crossing the road safely every time we have to cross one, so stopping to look for traffic and so on. It's easier on quieter roads - on busier ones we'd've lost the gap by the time the small girl had assessed it!

I taught my sons the basic Green Cross Code as soon as they they could toddle across the road holding my hand ( I learnt it as a child of the seventies myself).

But by far my greatest fear is for my older independent dcs nowadays walking with headphones in, texting as they go and believing they are invincible. Or walking and chatting with a gang of mates totally oblivious to traffic. Or on their bikes weaving in and out of along the road.

Road safety is a whole new very dangerous ball game for dcs as they become independent.

I am terrified of the children crossing the roads one day without me. All I can do is model good road crossing behaviours....use crossings, dont take chances, concentrate, all the Tufty stuff. DP on other hand is much more cavalier: look at car traffic lights for info too, kind of thing. Makes me nervous.

My 2 yo already knows that if we are near a road or cars she has to hold somebody's hand. I even heard her telling her teddy he had to hold hands in the car park the other day! She also knows about waiting for the green man too. Definitely drum it into them young I think.

while teaching kids road saftey always always keep hold of their hands or with a harness/strap as at 3 yr old my daughter who up till the day had been really good never left my side decided to run off straight into an oncoming car.

I think the most important thing is practice what you preach. Stood waiting ages today at a clear crossing for the green man, because if we had gone (even though I knew it was safe) it would be teaching DD you don't always have to wait for the green man.

Always waiting for the green man and holding hands at crossings, looking and listening

Unfortunately our area is one place they are wanting to get rid of lollipop people! Even on the main road but they're the people that help parents feel a little more at ease on the school run.

We always try to use crossings and use the look left, look right, look left again rule. The boys get to 'practice' on our estate roads as they're quiet and the roads are long and clear. Let them take the lead sometimes.

There are a couple of horrible junctions on the school run. I teach DC to walk a bit further down the side road and cross there, because it is easier to see which cars are going there. So my tip would be to walk the route with them and talk about each crossing.

Give all advice and instructions in the positive eg Stay on the pavement, Hold Mummy's hand, Stay with Mummy....rather than, Don't go on the road, Don't run off etc.

I have despaired trying to get my three year old to understand the dangers of running into the road. Our nursery recently gave us a pack produced by TFL with a book full of stories and stickers to add at the summary page listing out the lessons for each story. Going through each story seems to have finally got the message through - not just hearing it from Mummy and Daddy seems to have helped.

We have pointed out to our son as soon as we could to look for the green man before crossing. He also knows to hold our hand across the road and to not run into the road. I think you need to lead by example. So far he is really good with road safety.

We always try to lead by example e.g. Waiting for the green man even if it's clear, not running across the road etc.

We always use a crossing if available or choose as safe place as possible. Holding hands is compulsory as is waiting for green man. DD is only 2 but talk through it all with her to make her aware slowly.

We always follow the Greencross code when with my daughter. We talk about why we do it and why its important to be safe. We also use it as a prompt to talk about other areas of safely, stranger danger, internet safety, school and friends and responsibility to help keep others safe.

make sure you and your partner ALWAYS set a good example

To stop them running too far ahead we try and mke a game of walking, we say ok run to the next lampost for exqmple and stop there, counting the cars until i get there etc....

When they were younger we practised good road safety on our walk to school. I think my girls were more aware than others as we were once pinned against a hedge when a woman got too close (it's a weird corner and as they look right they mount the pavement) the look of horror on the womens face was priceless as she realised I was using the bookbags to pin the kids back. Now my youngest has to cross a busy road on her way home from school where parents pull up to pick kids up making it difficult for her to see. I tell her that I don't care how long she stands there, just make sure it's clear before crossing. A child was knocked down there last year and parent's are campaigning for a crossing or speed camera!

As they get older, put them in charge of saying when it is safe to cross the road so that you see their decision making process before you start letting them cross on their own