The Stay at Home Mother

So with the first two weeks of school under my belt with my son and his kindergarten class, you would think that I would be getting used to the "newness" of it, right? Wrong. If anything, I am more disturbed than ever.

In addition, I have discovered that although we are only a block away - the problem now lies in the busy street that we must cross over each day that has me seeing red....

You would think that if there is a crosswalk that is near to a school that motorists would slow down just in case there was someone in the crosswalk, however, what I have found is that some actually refuse to slow down. It scares me to envision any child crossing the busy street by themselves.

And to make matters worse, is that motorists seem oblivious to the fact that when there is a pedestrian actually IN the crosswalk, that they must wait until the pedestrian has cleared BOTH lanes, and not just the one the motorist is in. My son has stopped a couple of times to pick something up and had a motorist drive around us while we were still in the crosswalk.

Feeling a car go by you only inches away from you and your child is terrifying - to say the least.

Did you know that BC ranks the highest in Canada for the province with the most speeders in residential areas? And that 32% of the ones who were caught speeding admitted to being parents! What!? Yep. It's true.

I've also found parents parking infront of the elementary school ON the crosswalk - thus making it dangerous for little ones to see oncoming traffic - I mean, come on!

So how are you adapting to school with your little ones? Do you have any wisdom to share with other moms who are facing a new school or back to school routine? If so - leave a comment.

And if you have a problem with a crosswalk in your area (or lack of one) let me know too. I wrote an article on it which you can check out in my "Mom at Home" column under the "Archives" tab.