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Carpools | pad patter 2.27.17

keepscrappin

keepscrappin

ScrapWithTheWind
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Apr 2, 2010
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It's my week for the elementary school carpool and of course it's snowing like crazy outside! I don't know why but it seems like every time it's my turn to drive, the snow starts to fall. I'm not looking forward to the craziness over in the school parking lot. It's bad enough on good days, but when the snows fall it's a mad house. I can't wait for spring to come. Spring please hurry!

How about you... do you carpool? And do you dread the craziness at the school drop off and pickup? Please tell me I'm not alone. These are the days when I wish I home schooled or my kids got to ride the bus.
 
We homeschool, but that doesn't mean I don't know carpooling. I've carpooled lots with friends to events and brought friends home after events. I have been able to avoid driving much in bad weather though because when that happens we can stay home! :)
 
I wish that we could carpool! We live out of district so I have to drive her every day & there's no one nearby to share driving duties with unfortunately. It takes 45 minutes round trip in the morning & an hour round trip in the afternoon. It's the worst part of my day & it makes me feel awful that my son spends nearly 2 hours in the car every day and gets nothing out of it. She's in a special program at that school that they don't offer in the school district we live in so I put up with the driving.

I can't wait until we can move & either live in-district so it's a shorter drive/she can walk (there are no buses in her district) OR move into a better district that does have buses.
 
michelepixels said:
We homeschool, but that doesn't mean I don't know carpooling. I've carpooled lots with friends to events and brought friends home after events. I have been able to avoid driving much in bad weather though because when that happens we can stay home! :)
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Oh yes, we carpool to other activities too... soccer, tumbling, swim team, play practice, etc. Thank goodness for carpools because it'd be too hard to do it all alone?
 
I think it's kind of fun too. The kids sing, play silly games . . . and I get to eavesdrop on their conversations. :D
 
LeeAndra said:
I wish that we could carpool! We live out of district so I have to drive her every day & there's no one nearby to share driving duties with unfortunately. It takes 45 minutes round trip in the morning & an hour round trip in the afternoon. It's the worst part of my day & it makes me feel awful that my son spends nearly 2 hours in the car every day and gets nothing out of it. She's in a special program at that school that they don't offer in the school district we live in so I put up with the driving.

I can't wait until we can move & either live in-district so it's a shorter drive/she can walk (there are no buses in her district) OR move into a better district that does have buses.
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Oh yes the days of dragging a little one along are hard. Thank goodness they're done for me, but I always felt bad for my girls when they had to spend 2-3 hours in the car when my son did comp soccer. My kids got really good at giving my baby the bottle while we were driving.
 
michelepixels said:
I get to eavesdrop on their conversations
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That's the best part! You get so much more information sometimes when they have a friend to chat with. :-) My husband drove carpool a couple times back when Clara was in 7th grade and they did ballroom dance as a class... they got assigned carpools with a mix of boys and girls. He said those were the best conversations to eavesdrop on!

The only carpool we have now is with another girl who Clara dances with... it's not a set schedule, we just work it out each week according to everyone's schedules. And if everyone is busy, they uber together.
 
My kids have either walked to school or taken the bus, and the stop is just a block away.

I only carpooled once for three years when my son was at a private special-needs school. (We couldn't receive what we felt were appropriate services in our district, and they wouldn't provide anything else other than the law required. sigh.) It was 27 miles away, driving on toll roads in D.C. area rush-hour traffic. Sometimes the round trip took an hour and a half, but on average it was 2 hours every morning and 1 hour in the afternoon. It was a nightmare. Our first year it was just us. The second year it was me and another parent. By year three 3 parents drove; two of us switched every other morning, and the dad (thankfully!) always offered to pick up in the afternoon. I was so happy when he matriculated back into the public school system for high school and could take the bus.

Now I drive my DD to school 3x a week due to early morning skating practice. I hate it, but I don't have a choice. People drive like maniacs, no one follows posted traffic rules, people stop to drop off anywhere but the kiss-and-ride area, which blocks traffic. The high-school aged kids are always running into the street without looking. Traffic gets stopped when the buses need to leave the school lot to go get their next load of kids. If I'm lucky it takes just a few minutes when I'm near the school, otherwise it can take up to 10 minutes just to go around the school to the kiss-and-ride. AAAahhhh!
 
my carpool days have absolutely ended!! praise jesus!!!! seriously!!!

I carpooled for speech and debate and cheer because the schools didn't have the money for buses for traveling to competitions and games.

For school, we didn't carpool past my son in first grade. He ran late so much that it wasn't right for people to wait. For my daughter I didn't because 1) I was out of practice and 2) She ran early and it would have been too much stress for her to have to wait for someone like my son. I did do a carpool for her for a couple years when he had an early/late split schedule and the kids were on different drop off schedules.
 
Not too much carpooling here except for sports or school events. My kids walk and take the bus to school at the moment, and for the next few years too!
 
I am getting near the end of carpooling days (thankfully) ... but we don't carpool to get to/from school, my kids take the bus. I will drive to the stop only if it is really bad weather. It is more all the after school activities and such. There are buses everyday for after school activities but the kids' schedules do not always match the late bus time. And then depending on the sport ... there might only be a bus one way. Nothing is close enough for my kids to walk to.
 
I was fortunate that no matter where we lived in the world, incl Maryland, all my children took a bus to school and back except for one 6 month period when they all walked to and from elementary school together. btw, that was close to a 1 mile walk. I've never had to carpool.

The only time it was anything other than simple was when we returned to the US for two years and I had one in hs, one in middle school and one in elementary (by then she had failed two grades). The staggered bus schedules were a bit weird for all of us, the hs going the earliest and the elementary one going the latest with about 3 hours in between those two bookends.
 
I loathed taking my son to school because a lot of the parents were rude! We always left with plenty of time for me to drop my son off and then I would head to work from there. We had two lanes, the left lane if you were going to park in the lot or the right lane if you were dropping off (which was in the back of the school). Almost invariably, there would always be at least one car that would get in the wrong lane on purpose and then try to squeeze in. I refused to let those people in, because they could be like me and wait in line with the rest of us, and I also felt they were being a terrible example to their children, building up that sense of entitlement that's bad enough. My only exception was for drivers that were coming in from the opposite direction, who didn't have a choice but to squeeze in. Anyway, that lasted one year - Kindergarten. Then we found out that, even though we were less than two miles from the school, every child had the chance to ride the bus because the majority of the kids would have to cross a very busy, 6-lane street. That was so much easier and virtually no stress! Our stop was two houses down from our house, and I made friends with the mom of one of the other kids.

I've never carpooled for anything, though. I've never really cared for it, because I didn't need the stress of making sure my son was ready right on time and vice versa whenever it would be my turn. When he had early morning band (he had to be at school at 6:30 every school day during 9th and 10th grade), we still didn't carpool for that reason.
 
The only thing I do is drop off my daughter and little brother at the jr high/high school campus. I am generally yelling at every other parent. They speed thru the school zone which drives me completely crazy. I will drive the speed limit (25mph) and they will speed up to pass me. Slow down people!! Also, I had another parent yell at me the other day. She pulled thru the pull thru lane and stopped two cars behind the car in front of her causing a traffic jam behind her. So, I went around and pulled into the separation that she left and apparently it made her mad. So, I yelled back. Not that either of us could hear one another since our windows were down. LOL! But, seriously, stop living in your own little world.
 
and then the parents on their phones ... grrr!!

I teach kindergarten usually once or twice a week and we have to man the pick up line and get the kiddos in the cars. It can get really frustrating!
 
enjoyyourpix said:
and then the parents on their phones ... grrr!!

I teach kindergarten usually once or twice a week and we have to man the pick up line and get the kiddos in the cars. It can get really frustrating!
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oh yes! I can't believe people talk on their phones while dropping off and picking up kids. If your car is moving and/or you're in the school zone or school lot, GET OFF YOUR PHONE AND PAY ATTENTION! I've seen way too many close calls. Somebody is going to get hurt or killed... it's ridiculous how stupid some people can be!
 
PHONES!!! Another one of my irritants. There is a community college right across the street from the jr high/high school campus and those drivers scare me the most. They speed, talk on their phones and just generally don't pay attention. I've even seen them blow thru stop signs. Grrrrrrrrrrr....
 
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