It’s kind of crazy when I think about how much things have changed from when I was kid. Take the whole back to school routine. We’ve created a routine in our home that involves getting up way too early, begging my girls to please eat something, getting both kids in the car, and then dropping them off at two different schools. Doesn’t seem that different than when I was a kid at first glance, but it totally is. For example, my kids get into the car, climb into their Britax car seats, and get strapped in. Car seats?! Are you kidding me, I have not one single memory of getting into a car seat. Shoot, I don’t think I even wore a seatbelt until it was mandated by law.
When I was a kid our morning routine went something like this, my mom handed me the car keys, my brother and I went to the car and climbed in, I put the key in the ignition and “warmed up” the car until my mother came out and got in the driver’s seat. Usually, I sat in the passenger’s seat with no seatbelt on and my brother sat on the armrest thing that was between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat. They were barbaric times (I’m kidding, sort of), I know, but it’s not like my mother did it to put us in danger, she was just a product of the times. You know that whole, “when you know better, you do better” thing; there just didn’t seem to be the same awareness back in my youth. Now, we know better so we do better.
What’s your back-to-school morning routine like or what was it like when you were a kid?
Disclosure: As a Britax Latina Blogger/Advisory Board Member (and in partnership with Mami Innovative Media), this post is part of a sponsored outreach. All opinions expressed are my own.
I remember sitting in the foot area below the passenger side where I could more easily play with the 8 track buttons (it was a “typewriter”, thankyouvermuch) and because my parents thought it was “safer” than being on their lap, which- maybe? Yeah, things are a little different…
My parents live 4 houses away and we strap and buckle my son into his (extended rear facing) car seat each and every time. My mom sometimes says that he can ride in the seat, “its just four houses!” But I always say no. I just think that if something happened in between those four houses (that includes an intersection), I honestly could never forgive myself. I’d much rather deal with strapping him in for a 30 second ride than live with that kind of guilt.
From small one I rode in my father’s tractor and drove it 8 years!
I can see you starting up the car and driving off to kindergarten without mama. You seem a bit feisty. We grew up in the country where riding in the back of a pickup was normal. It’s a normal practice in Honduras now, and I get angry when I see kids riding on the sides or hanging on to the back of a truck. Scary stuff.