Help Your Children Learn Road Safety

A huge fear for any parent is the safety of their children on or near roads. Even a slow moving car can fatally injure a small child if they run out in front of it.

One piece of advice I was given when Rian was small was to play the Stop/Go game with him a lot – get him to run (in a safe place) and yell STOP at him – the aim being that he stops as quickly as possible as a part of the game. Playing this a lot apparently can ingrain in their minds that if they hear you shout STOP, they will stop. This was not something to ever rely on of course – I kept him in his pushchair or on reigns until he was out of the legging it stage!

Once they are older and marginally more sensible, you can speak to them about the danger of cars, and they will probably get to watch those horrific videos at school of the boy who gets knocked off his skateboard (did you see that one? When he bleeds from his ear at the end? Did the trick for me!) and obviously keep drilling in good habits when you are out with them.

As another method of teaching road safety, I’ve been asked to share this game you can also play online with your kids, that just reinforces the safety rules you want them to remember. When to cross, what to remember at crossings. I went through it with Rian, and while it’s a little bit beyond him at the moment and more for older solo walkers, it still made me feel better going over it with him. It’s definitely worth a play, you really can’t remind them enough, especially when they are entering the head-up-bottoms teenage years!