When my oldest kid turned four years old I packed away the stroller. Well, I put away the sit and stand-type stroller and moved his toddler sister into a Maclaren, anyway. At the same time, we moved around the corner, just a couple blocks further away from everything.
It doesn’t take too many foot-dragging, 45-minute ordeals with a stroller full of groceries and a whiny preschooler before you just start driving. We’d walk to the local park and to the school bus stop and take the wagon every once in a while, but for the most part I started driving places I used to walk to. The twenty minute walk to my parents house? With a four year old? Make that an hour long walk and forget about it.
Then last summer I was massively and painfully pregnant. My pelvis seemed to just kind of fall apart one day about halfway through my second trimester and that was the end of walking for me. I mean, I was still mobile, but I had to be slow and deliberate and not overdo it. I was driving everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I basically had to.
And I’m sick of it. Spring weather has finally arrived and I’m still packing an extra 25 pounds worth of baby weight. I wanna walk!
This is how, just days shy of his sixth birthday, two years after our final stroller farewells, I wound up pushing my son to school. And I don’t care what people think … or say or post to their Tumblrs. We already missed the bus, so I put the baby in the carrier, the three year old at the front of the sit and stand-style stroller and my son stood on the step as I hauled ass to the school. It was actually awesome.
Hey, if having three kids is a pretty good way to put on some extra weight, then maybe pushing them all around will be a good way to lose some of it. And if taking along a baby carrier to make a spare seat (or step) for a six year old means I get to walk around my city again, then I’m all for it.
Because explain to me again how driving my kid from place to place makes him less lazy than if he walks one way and then hops on the stroller on the way back? Hell, forget about him. My kid is too big for his stroller so my ass won’t be too big for my jeans.
What do you think? Should there be a cut off age for strollers? What age should it be?
About Rebecca
Age is a stupid way to judge whether or not a kid is done with a stroller. We have a bit of a conundrum right now – my kids are 4 and (in two weeks) 7. But the nearly 7 year old weighs 35 lbs! She’s TINY. She mainly wants to walk, but she’s TINY. She gets tired on a long walk. So we take the bike trailer, sans bike, or the wagon instead. Both kids still fit and I don’t have to worry about the stigma of pushing a kid in grade one in a stroller. And when we were in Florida a couple of months ago, we rented a double stroller at the theme parks. That kind of thing probably won’t end anytime soon.
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It’s funny, right? I think we all do the wagon or the bike trailer just because it looks better. And letting my 6yo hitch a ride on the back of the sit-and-stand is one thing, but having him climb into a full-on proper stroller would be another. But it’s all the same in the end.
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I am not a fan of older children being put in strollers unnecessarily – as many are. But there is a time and place for strollers for older children, especially for long times / distances. Exhausting a child does no-one any favours.
My 2.5 year old is using her stroller less and less, but I will take it with us if she is approaching nap time, has had an energetic morning, is under the weather or I expect to be laden with items (and unable to safely manage both her and the items).
That tumblr hate-blog is feral. I took great delight in reporting the associated Facebook page for being hateful towards people with disabilities (some of the children pictured are obviously in custom made strollers designed for children with mobility issues – I don’t think the creator really cares to differentiate. Mocking disabled children really isn’t that much of a leap from mocking children I guess). I only hope that Facebook is as diligent at removing this page as they are at removing breastfeeding pictures (now that’s a rant for another day).