Waiting for the green man - am I being unreasonable?

[Moos]

We've been teaching our small son for about a year now about crossing roads - hold the hand of the person you're with, look all ways and listen for traffic and always wait for the green man light at the pedestrian crossing even if the road looks clear.

Trouble is, the safety message is somewhat undermined by the fact that almost every time we cross, someone barrels over in front of us as soon as there's a gap between cars. Now I do appreciate that my son's road crossing skills are not the concern of the general public and that someone in a hurry probably won't be paying attention to the road-crossing lesson going on next to them, but I do sometimes look a bit wistfully especially at parents crossing with prams, or people crossing with older children and wonder whether it would be too much to expect people who are not in a huge rush to stop and wait for the green man to show an example to young children also waiting.

(not that parents can't be in a huge rush or anything - just perhaps expect parents to be more aware than the average bod of other kids around)

Am I overly caught up in my own importance here? I'm starting to think I must be.

[Pickle]

Funny, I've been thinking exactly the same thing. Every time we wait at the lights on Forest Hill Road (which admittedly is a pain as the cycle takes ages!) someone crosses against the lights. I know that not everyone has time to stand and wait, but given that the majority of the time it's other parents it does annoy me too.

Thankfully my son tends to shout out "that naughty man/lady didn't wait for the green man", meaning he knows the rules, and more often than not makes the person in question turn around shamefaced :)

[LoopyMum]

Same thing here - a teenage girl laughed at my children and I as we waited for the green man just last week.

She laughed, barged past wedging a gap between us and scurried across the road. Very rude !

I explained to them how naughty she was of course !

[Belle]

can understand that - on the odd occasion I've been in a rush and needed to dash across, I admit I do feel bad if I notice kids around, like I'm basically exemplyifing 'do as I say, not as I do' - am generally more cautious these days since having a kid though.

[MGolden]

When my children were younger (now aged 8 and 11 so know how to cross the road) I used to make a point of making some disparaging comment about people who crossed the road without waiting for the green man. If they had children it usually included a comment pointing out that they clearly didn't really like their children as they didn't want them to know how to cross the road properly. I shudder now at how I must have sounded, self righteous and smug (at least!!). But I felt passionately that my children should know how to cross roads safely so I suppose I achieved my aim as they are both very sensible at crossing the road now. But, Moos, you did make me remember how hard it can be to try to do what we think is right when other people aren't doing so too!! Just do what is right for you at the time. :)-D

[bawdy-nan]

I have the green man ingrained in my soul so much that I find myself reprimanding colleagues for not adhering to his beamy instruction when stepping out with them at lunchtime ....

[sillywoman]

Yes, It's a right of passage that kind of self-righteous indignation at naughty people crossing on a red man whilst you try to show your child the right way to do it. I've done it too. Now my kids are bigger I'm over it & finding other things to vent my self-righteous indignation on, which I have no doubt I'll grow out of too in due course. You will too Moos & Pickle. In the meantime know that it's not a bad lesson for your DC's to learn - do just what Mummy says & ignore what the others do. In fact I wish my teenagers would take that lesson a bit more to heart.

[Curmudgeon]

Moos Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

> Am I overly caught up in my own importance here?

> I'm starting to think I must be.

ummmmmmm

[Kes]

This reminds me of a something that really annoyed me a couple of years ago, a family (man, woman, 2 small kids)came up to a big road junction, there was nothing coming but I stopped too, not wanting to spoil the wait for the green man thing, the man then turned round to the woman (and me) and in front of the kids yelled "why are you just stood there? are you ****ing stupid? there's nothing ****ing coming etc. etc." Nice.

K

[Moos]

Thanks everyone, the answer seems to be 'yes it would be nice, but don't get your knickers in a twist'.

Apologies to those of you who thought I was being wholly serious. Next time I'll add a smiley.

[snss75]

Moos, my 5 year old is very particular about waiting for the green man and merrily tells strangers who are crossing the road while we're waiting that they are naughty, must come back as it's a red man... :)) I've tried to tell him that what other people do doesn't matter so long as we're waiting for the green man and most of the time people seem to find it funny when he "tells them off". I don't dare to even think about crossing the road if there's no green man in sight when I'm with him :)

[BeccaL]

My daughter does the same loud telling off about people not waiting for the green man, as she does for people not wearing bike helmets. These do, however, get relegated to the level of "very silly" rather than "naughty" as we had to explain to her that it wasn't illegal! She's a stickler for rules...

[dan4courtz]

I have a similar frustration when i am trying to teach my kids to not cross the road in front of cars, when there are no crossings around, and then people see us waiting,(and kindly) stop on the road for us to cross. Then the war of, 'you go, no you go, no we are waiting, please go' begins. It kind of defeats me teaching them to wait until the road is clear...but i can see why people do it (and have been known to do it myself...tsk tsk).

[new mother]

"I have the green man ingrained in my soul so much that I find myself reprimanding colleagues for not adhering to his beamy instruction when stepping out with them at lunchtime ...."

hilarious.

A friend of a friend told a male colleague in a lunchtime meeeting to "eat nicely" ...

Before I had ch, I improved my behaviour at lights for exactly the reason you set out, Moos. Now, tbh, I have a list of things I find worse - using the parent and child parking with impunity, children with no manners being deemed to be "characters" by their parents, parents failing to remove ot making no apology for noisy ch in restaurants....the list goes on.

[bawdy-nan]

I once asked a grown -up friend "did you manage?" on their return from the loo