American Planning Association Offers Advice for Parents of Students

According to the American Planning Association in a recent press release, there are many options for both mothers and fathers in order to ensure safety as their children make their way back to school.

While everyone knows that many students have to either walk or ride a bike in the morning to school or their bus stop, American Planning Association continues to stress some important tips in order to make sure your children stay safe on their way to school. Though there are several benefits of letting your kids walk to their school or bus stop such as less traffic congestion, improved air quality, as well as allowing your children to get to know the area better, there are also many things to worry about. Allowing your children to walk alone provides them with more independence and responsibility, and though you may have the smartest and most trusting children, parents always have to watch out for the dangers out there, sadly even in their own neighborhoods.

Before school starts, try to map out a best walking area for you child. Tell them exactly what streets and what sides they should stay on. This should pertain to traffic, as well as sidewalks, the amount of distance one can see ahead do to shrubs and gates, houses to avoid because of crazy neighbors or dogs, or even narrow sidewalks that are too close to the street that they might put you're your child in danger. Try to find out what streets others are using by contacting school administrators. Find out where the bus stops are in order to help coordinate where exactly your child should be going and if the bus stop is in an area that you are comfortable with and feel is safe.

Other thing you can do is organize a walking group where a bunch of students in the neighborhood walk to school together. This will put the children less at risk because they will be all together. It might even be a good idea to get one parent to walk with all of the children each day. Set up a schedule with parents in the neighborhood. This will take the stress off of all of the parents because now you will not have to worry about getting your child safely to school every days because other parents will be willing to help.

Try to get local police, school officials, and other parents/ teachers in on walking to school and keeping an eye out for children who walk to school each day. Hope this helps.

SOURCE

PRnewswire