8 ways to get your child to walk down a road

Have you ever had difficulty trying to get a small person to walk from A to B? Although most of them have superb perambulation skills when it comes to pursuing their own agendas, when it comes to your’s they can adopt a pace more befitting of a snail. Therefore, parents throughout history have become remarkably adept at the following encouragement techniques. I share mine here, so you too can arrive at your destination at least a few minutes prior to completely losing the will to live!!!

1. Interesting Garden Ornaments

+ 50m

There is a front yard around the corner from us that is so bedecked with gnomes, statuettes and other knick-knacks that I am sure the homeowners must struggle to reach their own front door, not to mention wrestle their wheelie bins out on a weekly basis without taking out a sun bleached, badly eroded miniature fisherman. But I salute you, garden bejazzlers, for you have created a thing of wonder. The curiosity engendered with your frankly naff collection is enough to buy me some distance. Scout around your locality for such hauntingly compelling medleys of tut and keep the coordinates locked down – you never know when they might come in handy.

2. Walls

+ 10m, depending on wall length

The joy a child feels when walking on a wall is not to be underestimated, offering a new and exciting perspective on the world. It can be known to take their mind off the fact that they are actually getting closer to where you want them to be. A mere foot in extra height can allow you to achieve this simple distraction technique.

This works best with municipal walls – car park, library, etc. When attempting this method on domestic walls, do be aware of the Golden Ratio, which states that the wall must be at least 4 m from the windows of the property it boundaries. Anything closer is just rude. Failure to adhere to this means you run the risk of looking like your toddler is trying to get a better view in over the nets, scoping the joint for one of their dastardly plans or schemes.

The long unwinding road

3. Buttons!

+ 10m per button

If I ever become a crazy millionaire philanthropist, I will fritter away some of my money installing random buttons along pavements countrywide to encourage small people on their merry way. Until this happens, we will all just have to make do with the ones provided for us at road crossings. The Green Man Summoners seem to hold such delight for our children. The promise of a button to press has been known to delay a whinge of “Are we nearly there yet?” by up to 30 seconds, although if you are travelling with more than one child you may need Kofi Annan with you to negotiate the complex arrangements over whose turn it is next.

Image from news.bbc.co.uk

4. Tell Them A Story

+ 100m, more if you can string it out

Still quite a way from your journey’s end? Whip out a classic fairytale to get them one step further (if you’re lucky you will manage to achieve more than one step!). Intersperse your narration with mum-isms such as “put that stick down” and “don’t do that to your sister” to really help the story flow.Walls. They are everywhere.

5. The Wall Game

+ 50m

Following on from actually walking on walls, this game involves your child asking you the same question again and again, and boy, do they love doing that! The question this time is “Can I walk on that wall?” and the game is that you have to come up with a reason why not for each barrier they demand to scale. The true answer is that you just can’t walk on people’s front garden walls when they are mere feet from their front windows, due to an abstract construct called politeness that most children are yet to grasp. That said, take this as a good opportunity to baffle your child with new vocabulary they don’t know the meaning of, you will have bamboozled them along before you know it. An example:

Child: “Can I walk on that wall?”

You: “No, it’s too precipitous.”

Child: “Can I walk on that wall?”

You: “No, it’s too crenelated.”

Child: “Can I walk on that wall?”

You: “No, it’s too diminutive.”

Too ornate

Too herbaceous

Too curvilinear

Well, I find it entertaining anyway. And my son asks to play it, so he obviously gets something out of it too! And shhh! Don’t tell them, but we are even closer to where we are going!

6. Sing A Happy Tune

+ 50m per song

I like to propel my small people along with a bit of a sing song. Pick one with animal noises for maximum fun/embarrassment. Sometimes this is tolerated, sometimes I am asked to “stop singing, please”. Try to avoid anyone asking the question, “if The Wheels on the Bus do go round and round with such unerring regularity, why didn’t we just hop on the 192?”

Image from londonbuses.co.uk

7. Don’t Walk

+ 150m

Walking can be a bit samey. Enjoy coming up with interesting ways of travelling to task your child with, motivating them gently along by the power of variety. For inspiration, look to the animal kingdom or a favourite film/tv character and they will be trotting, zooming, wiggling or bouncing to the next tree before you can think of another idea.

8. Look for Numbers

+ 100m, but not in a Usain Bolt way

Read the numbers in the environment. This may slow your pace considerably when your three year old wants to read every the three digit door number “by myself” as you walk down a very long terraced street, but at least some movement can be maintained. Also, watch out for arm yankage when an abrupt stop must be made to check what the number is on each lamp post (yes, lamp posts are numbered – who knew?). I’ll be honest, you’ll probably wish you’d never started this one.

Disclaimers:

It may be necessary to combine these steps, changing it up for maximum effect. You may alarm fellow passers by with the accuracy of your lion impression. There may be a few disgruntled motorists waiting at a red light because you’ve pushed a button at a pedestrian crossing when you didn’t even need to cross the road. You may start to think of wall words that you aren’t convinced exist. You’ve probably realised (too late) that you don’t know what sound a giraffe makes. And that story you started telling them? You can’t remember how it ends. But yay! You have reached your destination.