Redux

When Caroline gets an idea she puts one finger into the air and carols, "Liiiiiiightbulb!" more or less to the tune of the opening bar of Born Free.

I had that reaction a few times as I read the comments on the last post and not just when Cori articulated my own peeve so nicely. To wit: as long as I am obeying the local traffic and parking ordinances by putting my car in a legal spot on the street and crossing at the marked crosswalks why the effing eff do my fellow parents [or more importantly The Rules] care how I reclaim my child? It's not like I am trying to land my helicopter on the basketball court.

To briefly advocate for the angels, however, I should probably note that the pick-up procedure that the school has devised is quite logical based upon the fact that they host a school-within-a-school that pulls kids from the entire district, which is biiiiiig. In fact our district is 50% longer and four times wider than the island of Manhattan - roughly 120 square miles, if you can believe my thumb which is what I used to measure the distances. We live at the southernmmost tip of the district (one of Patrick's friends lives all the way to the north - we did a playdate once and it was a 50 minute drive) and the school is in the approximate middle. I clocked it today and it's 9.9 miles door-to-door, which I think is about average for most families. To further complicate things, budget constraints prohibit the district from offering bussing so - with the exception of the handful of children for whom this would have been their home school anyway - everyone in Patrick's program is driven. They did go to great trouble at the beginning of the year to connect families for carpools (someone in the comments asked how that would work - the carpooling families have all of the last names printed on their windshield cards. It makes them look like the last of the landed gentry; all hyphenated hyphenations: The Wysckoski-Jonsen-Filbert-Jansons) but, you know, 120 square miles. Patrick, for example, is the only kid from our town at this school.

Anyway! The point is that although three-quarters of the school walk or take the bus the remainder are stuck being driven and to that end the carpool lane does seem the most efficient solution. I mean if every one of those people tried to park on the street at the same time there would not be enough parking so... I guess the only reason that I am/was able to do so is because all those other people are willing to sit in the line. And that is why I am ashamed of myself because as much as I want to believe I am justified in bucking the system I'm not, really*.

So my lightbulb moment - or one of them - came when Kristi mentioned that she picks up her child deliberately late. Her daughter gets homework done and they avoid the crush. Since my primary reason for staying out of the line is to give Patrick adequate time to get his act together (a transitional process that can take anywhere from two to twenty times longer than it should depending upon what is going on in his sphere at the moment) it occured to me that a modified version of this could work for us too. Rather than have fifteen cars stuck behind me in line while they attempt to locate a Patrick who has paused outside the school library having just noticed after two years that there is an aquarium there, I could plan on always picking him up ten minutes after dismissal.

And! Another illuminating thought came when... I'm sorry I forget who it was at the moment... someone mentioned that their school makes you go back through the line if your child isn't ready when you are. I think that is brilliant. Talk about a natural consequence. If, say, your child is making snow angels rather than standing at attention then he can just continue to make snow angels for another ten minutes until you work your way back up to the front of the line again. Ha!

As always I thank you for your interesting comments. I found myself not only playing with mapquest as I tried to figure out just how far I drive and why (I put what would be Patrick's home school in as well - it's five miles from here. we're doomed to drive or bus) but as I contemplated all of these apple-cheeked children in charming faraway countries walking to their schools I found myself wondering if there are simply a billion schools elsewhere or if everyone lives very close together and if they do where is the, I dunno, the arable land? That lead to the fascinating rabbithole of food importation and exportation (the only thing we can walk to from my house are working farms and the trout stream) from which I emerged considerably surprised. I really had no idea who grows what and where - go Australia; not only are you people crazyfun, you're practically self-sustained. But to return to my original thought: do kids in the Netherlands or Finland or Switzerland or Spain or whatever walk (or ski!) four or five miles to school or are there more schools or are the populations universally that much more dense? Surely everyone does not live in cities? I have actually been to some of these countries but at the time I just noticed that there were very desirable tavern/pub/cafe-to-person ratios and left it at that. Did I notice schools? Not so much.

Legitimate question.

*Unless I hide out in the church parking lot. Which should bother, exactly, no one.

PS AH HA! Public transportation! Clearly I have been out here waaaay too long. I seriously forgot that public transportation is even an option. I, who took the metrobus to school starting in seventh grade (after walking half a mile to the bus stop - uphill.) Criminey. I wish you could see my face right now.

PPS Hmmmmm bicycles. M'yes. I am trying to think of some perfectly reasonable, regional reason why Patrick and I could not hop onto bikes every day and breeze up to school. I'll let you know when I come up with one. 

Comments

[Celeste]

The people who have the time to notice & complain about your pick up routine have way too much time. I once got a similar reprimand for picking up my kids on foot when we are clearly commuters (15 miles including a 3 mile bridge ) but I work 10 blocks from the school. On the rare occasion I decide we should walk back to my office, exactly who are we inconveniencing by leaving our car in its parking spit for an extra half hour? But the parking monitor & crossing guard both act as if I'm committing a crime when I appear without my car. Silly people ;) good luck!

[Eva]

Netherlands -> bikes... most of the kids/people bike (and yes several km/miles are normal).
In Luxembourg most of the schools (especially high schools) are in the capital, so kids come by train/bus/car to their schools (Lux is as big as Rhode Island).
Belgium -> bus/train/bike/walk/car... all depending if you live in a 'big' city or if you live out in the country.
But for all 3 being dropped off/picked up by car exclusively is out of the norm.

Cheers, Eva

[Kristen]

Two things- 1. In today's society where there are killings and kidnappings every second of every day why is the school letting 10yos skip across the street to get in a car? My kid's school won't allow that.
2. I am only 31 but in my day at 10 years old if I didn't have my stuff together and wasn't in the exact spot I was supposed to be on time I would have been in super super big trouble. 10 is kind of too old to not be getting it together in time.
Love you, I just think maybe he's a teensy but coddled, smiley face.

[Yasmina]

Thank you for this post. I was bit worried about if more parents had decided to outsmart the school rules after reading the last one...

[Fidi]

Germany: Same as Netherlands. If you live in the countryside there is probably an elementary school somewhere reachable by bike. When you get older you may have to take public transportation, i.e. the bus or more often the train(!).
I grew up in a suburb and could walk everywhere.

[Chris]

Seriously Kristen? Killings and kidnapping every second? You should take a look at the declining crime rates and maybe read Free Range Kids. What exactly is going to happen to that 10 year old? The riskiest thing is being hit by a car, but there is a crossing guard, so ....?

[Ashlee]

Haha. Love the snark of following up a "How dare you allow your 10 year old to cross the street unescorted!? Don't you know he'll be kidnapped or killed BY THE SECOND!" immediately with a "Omgah you really coddle him too much. Seriously guys, 10 year olds should have their shit together."

[Katie]

Yes, when I studied abroad in Holland, which was in high school, we rode our bikes 22 kilometers to the next town for school. So that's, what, 12-13 miles? This was not an urban environment. (Small towns close to the border with Germany.) It took, in my suburban, American, 15 year old mind, A Long Time. But that's what everyone did and it was the way we got around.

I don't feel like elementary-age children were making the same trek, but my memory is fuzzy, what with that being 20ish years ago.

Note: we also rode our bikes to said town to go to the happening bar and the discoteca. Somehow those took less time.

[Tina]

Switzerland --> Kids are supposed to get to kindy or school independently (from 4 or 5 years old on). It's an important part of our culture. And I have only the nicest memories of these walks with my friends during my own school days.

Most kids walk (a 1.5km long walk 4x a day is seen as acceptable even for the smallest kids). For longer distances, public transport or the bike are the usual options. In rural areas, the governement may in some cases organise school buses.

Transport by the parents has NEVER been an acceptable option in the past. It would have been very embarassing for a kid to be seen with the parents. However times are changing and the many (highly-educated) immigrants from US/UK/Germany/etc are slowly changing our Swiss habits. Transport by car is still not normal, but it happens more often.

Lately the schools have started to inform parents that bringing kids to school in car is not recommended because the additional vehicles around the schools are a safety problem for all the other kids which walk.

[NZSarah]

I live in rural New Zealand and busing or being dropped off by your parents is the standard option.

We are moving in a few months and I have plans to bike to school with the kids. We'll see how those work out! I also am within walking distance of several farms and a couple of streams, the difference being my closest major city is hundreds of miles north on a different island.

I do live close to Queenstown though, so it's not a bad trade off (even if the entire country is imaginary).

[Heather]

My husband is stuck with daily pick up. My own shame is not following the rules for daily drop off. Students at my 8 yr old kids school MUST NOT per policy be dropped off before 8:50 (I assume this is a liability thing), but I regularly have meetings at 9 (NOT 9:01!!!, says the boss) and work 15 minutes away. So I alternate between getting the evil eye for dropping off 5 minutes early, or dropping them off a block and five minutes away. They are responsible kids, but I still worry they might get into GREAT BIG TROUBLE during that block walk, either from a stranger or more likely their own mischief. No one else dares to do such things, and I feel immense guilt every time I do either. I asked the school if there was anything to be done and they suggested the before school program at $50 a day. For five minutes, no way!

[Courtney]

Carpool lines would make me nuts! I live in the outer ring of Amsterdam and bike my son 3km (almost 2 miles) to school each day. Actually my husband does the mornings, I pick him up in the afternoon in our bakfiets. There are closer schools that he could walk to (we live in the outer ring where everyone lives in pretty big apartment buildings) but we send him to an international, English-speaking school.

I've lived in Greece, Israel, Amsterdam (and of course the US, I'm American) and in general Europeans live much more densely than Americans. In Greece (Crete) rural people lived in villages and walked out to their farmland - the farms weren't typical American farms where people lived on them. Due to rural depopulation though there often weren't village schools and people still had to drive their kids quite a ways.

[Kathy]

As another person living in the Netherlands - at least here it's much more densely populated. We can bike to school in 10 minutes (we picked a school that is farther away than our "local" school) and if we go completely out of town to another town, it's a half hour by bike. Everyone here bikes and roads and traffic are built around it so it's very safe. Don't know if I would feel as comfortable biking as my main form in transportation in the US. I love biking though, I feel good and with the proper rain gear even weather isn't too much of an issue (except sleet and hail, that just hurts the face!). I love your writing and this community!

[Sanne]

I live in Denmark, where children walk or bike to school from quite an early age, but I think more and more children are dropped off and picked up by car, of course this depends on the distance to school.

Your post reminded me of something, I read a little while back and stuck with me: A country school in Australia which has a pony paddock for kids that arrive on their ponies. How sweet is that :)

Long time lurker, never commented before, but this reminded me of the sweet Aussie story, so I had to come clean :)

[illahee]

in japan, most elementary children are required to walk to school. my 8 year old walks about 2.7 kilometers to school (and home again!) every day. well, except when it rains, because younger brother broke older's umbrella and so i take him or pick him up on rainy days (we are also lucky because there are only about 100 kids in the whole school, so there really isn't a lot of traffic around the school at those times). i live in a rural area, but i have heard that kids in big cities like tokyo take public transportation, even as young as 6 years old. probably not 'alone', even here the kids meet up in neighborhoods and walk to school together, but most likely without an adult.

in junior high my kids will probably ride bikes, unless they go to schools in another city/town, and then it will likely be public transportation.

[Carie]

I think European countries are just a lot more population dense - welcome to Britain, a tiny island with a lot of people. Even in fairly rural areas here most villages have their own school so you walk to primary school or bike/take the school bus if it's the next village over. For secondary school it's often more of a journey but where public transport doesn't cut it, the local authorities are pretty big on school buses - car pools and pick up lines etc are a bit of an alien concept to me.

[Caroline M]

Imagine that you're in the pick up line, totally confident that Patrick will be ready. You get to the front, he hops in and off you go. In that scenario would you still be finding an alternative to the line?

If you would then parking and walking is clearly the answer, if some children live close enough to walk (and if they don't then why is there a crossing patrol?) then another one makes no difference. If not then the issue is not about home to school transport at all but about getting a ten year old to focus long enough to get out of the door on time with everything he came to school with.

[jennifer]

A local school here had the kids work on ways to improve the car pool pickup for either science or math class. The plan the kids came up with is so good that it is being studied by transportation experts. I think it involved staggered pickups...

(Our school doesn't do anything nearly so inventive but everyone has a car pool number and the staff comes out 5 minutes before school ends to write down the order we are lined up in. This is posted on a screen in the main gathering space and kids load in order that way. I'm not explaining it well but it works...)

But really I'm advocating the school get the smart students to help figure it out.

[Laura]

In London, our twins walk the 2 km to school and back unless it's raining hard in which case we all park or double-park quite lawlessly outside the school, shoo the girls through the gates at double-quick speed and just hope we don't collide with each other on driving fast from the scene in order to avoid the parking wardens who represent our greatest fear with their vicious £60 fines.
This may not be the time or place, but please please may I refer you back to my request on January 1, mainly because I want you to know how deeply you are appreciated.

[aab]

About the arable land: I live in southern Germany and with the relatively high population density, there would be no arable land if they allowed much sprawl. There is strict zoning that forces everyone to live in fairly densely populated towns/cities, which makes it possible to have surprisingly large amounts of farmland and parks nearby. I live in a small town (5000 people) and can walk from the closest (teeny) train station to the local elementary to a field outside town with grazing sheep in about fifteen minutes.

[JG]

we really don't need to be judging Julia on Patrick's preparedness to leave school at the exact second required. Obviously he is wildly intelligent, has many talents, and will succeed in life whether he is ready to get in the car within 5 minutes or 8 or 12 or 20. She does what works for her, and does it out of a sense of kindness and thoughtfulness toward others. Anyone who sees this as otherwise is welcome to get off his or her high horse anytime. Raise your own kids with your own ideas. She will raise hers. And mighty well, it seems to me.

Plus, honestly, what is so bad about allowing your child - who has been stuck inside most of the day - to spend time outside making snow angels if the whim strikes him? If she has the time then it is actually a really lovely gift she is giving him.

[JG]

Ps I refuse to use the pickup line for my child because it's horribly wasteful to leave your car running for that long. And we don't walk or ride because our city wasn't planned very well for walking or biking with small kids. We would either have to ride / walk on a small two lane road (40 mph speed limit) with no shoulder, or would have to cut through people's back yards to get to school. A bummer but we love where we live (Michigan)... bus is an option but my young 5 year old is working up to the stamina required to do so. It takes an extra 40-45 minutes after school to ride the bus, versus less than 5 minutes by car.

My long-winded point is that urban/suburban planning plays a huge role in the discussion of how kids can get safely to school.

[Lb]

In Canada, at least in the provinces where I have had school experiences, kids mostly get bussed if they are too far to walk. Rural kids certainly get bussed. In my kid's gifted program, the kids who are off the beaten school bus path get picked up in a school board van! In general your bussing eligibility changes with age and distance to schools. So in my city, lots of elementary and middle school students get the yellow bus, but by high school, they are all finding their own way unless they really live on the outskirts.

On a societal level it makes sense to bus kids. Think about the time-cost of all those working adults sitting in the car pool line, and the environmental cost of all the vehicles.

[Kristi]

Yay, glad I could help. :) haha - I'm thrilled to be mentioned. Hope it works for you!

[Carrie]

When I lived in Sweden it was always such a surprise to me to see all these little kids riding the city bus. And when they had field trips? Just have the whole school walk to a city bus stop and hope for the best! I thought it was sort of crazy.

[Jenny F. Scientist, PhD]

The reason not to bike? Because six months of the year up here it is WINTER. And the roads are icy and it gets dark at OMG-thirty! I live in one of the most bike-commuter-heavy cities in the Midwest and even here most people don't bike in winter, because it is for temperate climates. Also 20 miles a day is a hearty ride, really, especially for small people!

[Ellie]

My son's school used to let parents walk to collect the kids, but this year the principal banned it, poured a lot of concrete to block off two car-line routes, and put but about 10 new street signs. The result is an extra 10-15 minutes in line, and that's if you get there 20-30 minutes before school is out. Her reasoning was that kids "could" get hurt walking to their cars (with parents and a crossing guard), and/or parents were doing "too much talking". So much for fostering a sense of community!

The line still has problems. I think I will pass along the idea of having the kids work on the problem, I bet they would come up with something we haven't thought of yet.

[Candy]

Our school has street parking alongside of the playground so I purposely pick my kids up 10 minutes late each day. They like to play on the playground after school and I can pull right up. The first rush of cars has already left. Once I discovered that there was no reason for me to be on time for pick-up it made my life a whole lot easier.

[Mary Anne Mohanraj]

In Oak Park, all the public school kids are bussed, which is awesome. Our young five-year-old likes the bus just fine, even though we're at the tail end of the route, and she has a 30 minute ride each way. She gets to chat with her friends, so it's fun, restful time for her.

If there weren't buses, we'd probably walk her in nice weather (1.5 miles), if we had time, and drive in bad weather (parking a block or two away and walking her in and out.) There's no car line, but I suppose one would develop if there were no buses, since there'd be a much bigger concentration of cars at drop-off and pick-up times. Ugh.

One thing I like is that early in the fall, all the Oak Park public schools do an 'everybody walk' day, where the buses don't run, and the kids get a stamp for walking to school. I'm sure some parents still drive them in, but we're concentrated enough here that unless a kid/parent has a disability or bad work schedule or some such, it should be totally feasible for everyone to walk in. I don't think anyone in Oak Park is more than 3 miles from their school. The school also has safe walking routes for the kids on their website, so you know which routes have the least traffic, the most actual stoplights, and are lightly patrolled by village police who keep an eye on the kids.

[Kate]

More of the comments have been geared toward foreign schools, but I live in suburban Maryland and one thing that always amazes me is the density of elementary schools here. I just did some google map research and found that there are six public elementary schools within 3 miles of my house. More, if you include private schools. I'm not sure if it is just that densely populated here or if elementary schools are larger elsewhere? Here it seems like all elementaries are capped at about 550 students. Middle schools are obviously much more dispersed with larger student populations.

[Jody]

When we lived in Scotland, the primary kids all walked. And they built a lot of schools -- most of them only had one or two classes per grade (P1-P7) -- so that no one had more than a 20-minute walk. And then in secondary school, kids rode public buses or walked if they lived close enough to the school.

Seriously, the schools were just much smaller. Every small village had its school, pretty much. Although in the ultra-rural areas, kid rode buses for a long time. Or lived in town all week, out in the western isles.

[Sharon]

In our school district, in a US college town, the rule is that elementary school kids who live within 1 mile of their school walk. For HS I think it's 2 miles (not sure about MS). So our kids walk 3/4 mile, escorted, to school every day. Some parents choose to drive instead, but my kids need the physical activity to be calm at school. There are some bigger kids (4th/5th grade?) who walk or bike in packs without parents, but we're not there yet. It is a neighborhood school so although some kids are bussed, I like the feel of seeing other parents at drop off and pick up. More social than all sitting in line in cars. In fact, if you pick up by car, you're SUPPOSED to park and wait by the door.

[Sarah]

We're midwestern and rural suburban and there's a lot of bussing. But I have spent time actively being jealous that you have some degree of school choice. We did when we lived in the city, but the suburbs are all, "you get what you get." And really, I have to move if I don't like the school? That makes me head ache.

That's just preamble to say, I had wished we had a carpool lane until I read your post and realized how miserable it would be. We have many kids on buses, lots of walkers, and then pickup kids. And that's a freeforall. It's so annoying that if my kid has a doctor appointment after school, we live 1.2 miles from school, this bus ride home is ~40 minutes. So I have to pick him up for after school appointments and that means either walking 2 blocks to get parking or getting there 20 minutes early to get a closer spot. It all sucks up my time and makes me grumpy. {the most subversive I get is to send a note saying I am picking him up 5-10 minutes early and then I park mostly illegally and endure the outrage of the waiting parents.]

[Emily]

I've had schools that did the pick up line, and schools that did park and walk up to the building. I strongly prefer the walking option. And after my daughter held up the line enough times the school did too lol, everyone else in the line, my daughter waked in to the office for drop off. That school didn't have enough parking, but they gave me a permit for the employee lot. You could ask, then you wouldn't be breaking the rules.

[Stephanie]

To your question about "where's the arable land?" I think the short answer is, there is arable land but the country made decisions about infrastructure and urban planning, and the U.S. at a certain point decided to subsidize roads and car travel a lot more heavily than it is in other countries. So a lot more families can choose to live the in rural areas, not just farmers. Gas is cheaper, there are tons of roads and infrastructure to support non-urban development. The trade-offs are that city infrastructure and public transit are less heavily subsidized, in favor of the automobile and suburban living. I am making a sweeping generalization here but I think it's fair to say a lot of decision-making in the US is car-focused, in a way it isn't in other countries.

[Jill]

To everyone who says Patrick should have his sh*t together:

Have you ever raised a wildly gifted child who has attention/focus issues?

No?

Then let's back away from that statement please.

I am raising a child very like Patrick. He's tested wildly gifted, goes to a school for gifted kids...and has ADHD. Getting his stuff together is a monumental challenge for him. Sure, he can do algebra at age 9. It's easy for him. But remembering his lunch box, snow clothes, homework, water bottle, jacket and backpack takes him longer. If it took him longer to do age-appropriate math, and we allowed him that time, would you say we were coddling him? Or would you say we were meeting his needs, meeting him where he is?

I'm sorry if I sound snippy, but I get this stupid line all the time. Just because you cannot *see* focus/attention problems as a visible disability, doesn't mean thay aren't *real*.

Julia, you're awesome. I love the church parking lot solution and/or picking him up late on purpose. You are a great mom. Thanks for writing so much lately. You serioulsy brighten my day.

[Gina]

Mine are city kids and we walk the 10 blocks to school most days. They complain and ask to take the bus but why would I spend $7.50 for the three of us to take a bus 6 blocks? Once the kids are in 4th grade they're allowed to walk home by themselves. They're only kidnapped every now and again but it is a pain to track them down and the ransom can get quite expensive ;)

[elsimom]

Skiing to school - my cousins had an exchange student from Finland. When they visited recently (he's a grown up now) the learned that his children ski to school in winter (cross country) and walk or bike the rest of the time. I think it's about 5 miles!

When we visited Italy, we observed that older grade school children and junior high and high school all rode public transportation (bus or train) - it was kind of fun to be out and about at certain times when they all came streaming onto the bus, chatting like crazy. Not sure about smaller children there - we really never saw any small children...

Our school is walkable, but we have no sidewalks. After much discussion, we did start letting our children (grades 3 and 5) walk to the playground program this summer, and walk to school together, or with the neighbor children (same ages) unsupervised. Our biggest concern was the way adults and teenagers drive through the neighborhood - so we have chosen the lowest traffic route for the kids, that avoids the street all the car-pool parents come barreling down with a minute to spare, to get their children to school.

Due to a medical issue, my oldest does carry a cell phone, just in case, but I was frankly MUCH more concerned initially that one of them would get mad at the other, and then just sit down on the curb, creating a big quandary about leaving them there, etc., so to some degree, the phone was in case of unsolveable sibling squabble - ha!

As for the comments about kidnappings etc. - ridiculous. Crime is lower than it ever has been. Someone mentioned "Free Range Kids" and while I don't agree with Lenore on everything - she has some great, calming info about the ACTUAL risk to kids of being a victim of a stranger (miniscule). If fear of kidnapping is the reason that every child must be picked up at the front door of the school in a clearly labeled vehicle, well......that's just silly - and someone should call it silly out loud.

[sarah k]

Once again, my jaw drops at the snarky things people will say when they are looking at a computer screen and not at your face. Other people have had some great comebacks so I won't try to add to those--but seriously, a 10-year-old is still a child, still learning to focus on tasks, and shouldn't be expected to operate with military efficiency. And Patrick is clearly wonderful, and YOU know what's best for him. So I hope you can kind of let that nonsense roll off your back. They do not know of what they speak.

On a completely different topic: the comments in this post were an education in themselves. I love how varied and wide-flung your readership is! I've lived in the Midwest my whole life except for the year I attended first grade in Berlin (we walked or biked, escorted because my American parents weren't as comfortable with letting me go alone as the German parents were). We live a whole block from my son's school so we walk (thank God) but I think that the ubiquity of car pick-up lines in the suburbs reflects some interesting things about our culture--like our willingness to waste gas and pollute the environment and run our car engines, and the fact that our cities are planned in such a way that it's sometimes impossible to avoid that. Vicious cycle.

[Lindsay]

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-08-27/news/orl_1_sutherin-clermont-ridge-high-school

This happened in my town. Just saying, apparently there are no consequences for use of a helicopter to avoid the line.

[Kristin]

What bugs me about carpool lines are the environmental impacts. All those cars idling in line, at every school in America, every morning and every afternoon. I don't know what the solution is, but there has to be a way other than forcing people to sit in carpool lines and making them social pariahs if they don't want to. Our school has an agreement with the church across the street, so parents are allowed to park there and walk in without fear of retribution.

[Suzanne V]

And another Dutch reaction: In our small (pop. 25.000) town in the Netherlands, there are 9 primary schools withing walking or biking distance (10 mins max by bike). I suppose everything is on a smaller scale, being the miniature country that we are.

Nevertheless, our eldest (11 yrs) attends a special program for gifted children in a nearby city as well and we drive her there and back every day. 20 mile round trip. We do get to meet the other parents at the schoolgate though ;-)

By the way, our eldest also needs lots of time getting her stuff together. Acceptance (and knowing she will probably learn to conform to 'the norm' eventually) makes our life much nicer at this point. Instead of apologizing to other people, I explain if asked and that is that.

[Kathy]

bakfiets seem to be really cool frieght bicycles
http://bakfiets.nl/eng/

[JP]

These comments are so interesting to me. It is fascinating to see how differently this is handled in different cultures/cities/countries.
We live in a rural area of a suburb. The school Tot will attend is about 2.5 miles from our house.He will be a car rider/day care van rider through elementary. Even if it were a bit closer, our area is unsafe for walking because there are no sidewalks or even shoulders on the roads. I already hear pick up line horror stories, so I guess it's good that the current plan is for daycare to pick him up from school. In middle school, he will most likely be bused to and from school, with some car drop offs to school.

[Anne]

My son's school is a little over a mile from our house, with a giant hill in the way. I would love, love, love to bike with him to school, but it's barely conceivable that an adult would ride a bike up the hill, never mind a 6 year old who is afraid to take off the training wheels. And we could definitely walk, but I'm rushing to work in the morning or rushing to pick him up on time in the afternoon, so it just doesn't seem to work.

As an aside, I rejected a possible school for him because I could tell that drop-off and pick-up was going to be a nightmare. Not sure what that says about me...

[Karen]

Our school district is large but everyone has a neighborhood school they can walk to. In order to more fully integrate the students in our large urban district, there is a magnet program, where any child in the district can attend any magnet school they want, provided they apply and get accepted. One friend's daughter attends a middle school that is exactly one diameter of the interstate's loop away from her home (about 12 miles as the crow flies, but probably closer to 20 if she drives it). The way our city manages this is to provide bussing to all of the magnet schools from your HOME school. My friend's daughter goes to her local middle school at dawn:30 and takes a bus to her magnet school. Same after school, too.

[monica]

We live a few miles outside of Boston and have 8 elementary schools in the district. There are no buses - most people walk and some drop off. I am echoing a previous poster by saying how great the drop off and pick up times are for parents to get to know each other. Even if you don't know names of parents of kids in grades different than you own, you get to know faces. This makes for a nice sense of community in the town - you recognize people at the grocery store and can say hi etc. There is only one Middle and one High School and many Middle School and High School kids walk or take the city bus. I love this because even though my middle schooler walks (less than a mile) to middle school, he still takes the bus with his pals to do stuff around town after school, which gives him the experience and confidence to travel about.

We only live about a 1/4 mile from the elementary school. My 3rd grader and I walk by a house each day that is less than one block from the school and the otherwise pretty normal family that lives there insists on dropping their kids off with the car. Sometimes they have to get into the drop line even as they pull out of their driveway. Every now and then they are pulling out of their driveway when we walk by and I see them with 10-12 cars to go in the drop off line as I am walking home. They literally could walk the kids to school and get home to the car FASTER than they can drop the kids off! Go figure!

[Jan]

The math geek in me simply can't help but point out that if you live at the southern tip and the school is in the middle, the distance you drive can't really be average for all families, unless the gifted children in your district are all pressed up against the outer boundaries.

There's my meaningful contribution to the discussion, yes it is. You're welcome.

[Heather G]

In New Zealand my son walks scoots or bikes around 2 miles to school and back. He started this when he was about 6 and a half. Before that we dropped him off about 5 minutes walk away to avoid the conjestion. We are in a suburb though. He has the most beautiful walk to school along the beachfront. On the way home he and his friends walk on the rocks and take ages. The most dangerous thing is the sun at that time of day. In rural areas kids bus (school buses) or if they're really remote they do correspondance school (homeschooling I guess).

My parents never had a car so I always walked (but it was short) until I was 13 when I did public transport (a bus then a train).

[Alexicographer]

@Anne, I think it says that you are a sensible parent who considers the effects that your child's commitments are going to have on your sanity and well-being.

Julia it is *so* interesting to read these comments and says to me -- well, I know we have all been clamoring for a book written by you and for good reason, but it seems another avenue you can pursue is "Parenting: Cross-cultural perspectives," with insights from your readers. These are great.

I'll agree with many others that a lot of what we see in the US reflects a lack of attention, or even an anti-attention (if you will) to design friendly to, or accepting of, modes of transport other than the car. @Stephanie says that "[in the US] a lot more families can choose to live in the arable land..." but I think it goes way beyond that: my reasonably extensive observation of many different European countries is that even those living in and working the arable land often live in what would in the US qualify as small towns, rather than in the arable land itself. That is, the farmers live in the village/town and the farms surround the village/town but aren't residential in the way US farms are.

(I will note that in my crunchy US town, there is a *very* good afterschool program that sends staff each day to collect the young elementary school students it serves and then loads the whole crew onto the city bus and thereby conveys them to the facility where it operates (from which the parents subsequently pick the kids up, by whatever mechanism they choose, which might in this context reasonably include bus, car, bike, or foot. So use of public transport in an organized way for school children isn't completely unheard of. I myself rode the same buses from about the age of 8 unaccompanied to go to my piano lessons, though my mother did take flack for the perceived dangers she was exposing me to.).