Preparing Your Child For Walking To Secondary School

Bean is nearly ten years old now, and next year she'll be heading to secondary school. One of my biggest fears about her going to secondary school is that she will have to get there herself on public transport. That seems huge to me, because at the moment she doesn't go anywhere without me, not even to the corner shop.

I know that to prepare her for travelling on her own I am going to have to start letting her venture out for small distances. We'll start with letting her play in the park over the road where I can see her, then let her go to the shop and back. Perhaps then the park around the corner. Honestly, I feel a little bit sick about it but it's best to prepare her before she needs to travel a huge distance on her own.

Part of preparing her for travelling on her own is to teach her about road safety. At 9 years old she knows to stop, look and listen, but she doesn't always do it. She is so used to walking with me, and me doing that for her. I've noticed that she ambles across the road without much of a second glance most times. It isn't all about crossing a road safely either, it's knowing all sorts of other things, like what to do if there is no pavement, and how to cross the road after getting off a bus.

Accident Advice Helpline has a great online road safety game which we have been using to teach her what to do in these situations. As it is a game she doesn't mind playing it and it has taught her some valuable information about being safe when she is out on her own. It asks questions about what you should do in certain situations and gives your child multiple choice answers to choose from.

It will then tell you if you got the right or wrong answer - in a positive way so that finding out the answer is a learning experience. We went through it together and had a chat about each question and answer.

I was quite impressed at how well she did playing the game, now we just have to put it into practice! I'll need to be braver than her I imagine but I know that by preparing ourselves little by little over the coming year, we'll be in a better place to do this next year, and she'll be as prepared as she can be, and hopefully well used to putting road safety into practice.

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