Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Simplify Your Routine with these Carpooling Tips
Now that the school year is here, are you wondering how you’re going to get your children to school, making the trip twice a day, five days a week? Or maybe it’s driving to soccer practice every afternoon that has you wondering how in the world you’ll get everything done.
You want your kids to be safe, but that extra hour or two of driving can really add stress to your already busy schedule. Have you thought about carpooling? Or maybe you’ve carpooled in the past but for some reason your team has fallen apart. How can you organize another one?
Since the safety of your children is #1, this is not something you leave to chance. One of the first places to check for carpooling programs is at the school or the local PTA. If they don’t offer any, and you have to organize your own here are some tips:
Talk to parents in your neighborhood who have children that attend the same school and have the same activities. Look for those who are safety conscious and who are reliable. Getting someone who is always late, cancels at the last minute, or takes risks with the lives of your children is not a good match for your carpool.
Set a schedule in writing. After discussing what works for everyone, assign each parent driver their shift, both the getting to school and getting home schedule. The first weeks of school may require a number of adjustments until its runs smoothly.
Create and give everyone an emergency contact list. It’s essential to keep this up-to-date.
Proper child passenger behavior includes:
• Don’t distract the driver. Screaming, throwing things, arguing isn’t allowed.
• Don’t fight over seating. Take turns and base it on who gets out first.
• Treat each other kindly and patiently.
• Respect other’s property, including the car.
Proper parent driver behavior includes:
• Drive responsibly – don’t talk on the cell phone or text message while driving.
• Make sure each child is buckled into approved seating before driving.
• Load and unload in the designated school areas.
• Don’t cancel at the last minute needlessly.
• Make sure there’s someone home when you drop off a child. If not, keep the child with you until the parent arrives.
Be on time. It’s only common courtesy and is very important for the children to be ready on time and the driver to arrive on time. It’s not acceptable to keep anyone waiting or make everyone late for school.
For your child’s safety, remind them each morning who will pick them up. Because so many different people will be picking them up, you need to keep them alert to whose car they can get into. You don’t want them trusting someone they shouldn’t.
Give the school a list of the drivers and their contact information, so your children are kept safe.
Carpooling frees up time that you need to spend elsewhere. And if you live in the Silicon Valley remember to contact us, as a home concierge company we can help Simplify your busy schedule further still.
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