TIME TO TAKE BACK YOUR WEEKEND

Most Australian kids are driven around all day. About 60 per cent are driven to school, and even more are ferried around to all their after school activities. An average family spends 5.6 hours every week just driving their kids to sports activities.

This increases to 16 hours a week when time spent watching and helping are included.

No wonder our roads are clogged. No wonder families are feeling stressed.

But there is a way to cut back.

Look for local solutions and use your village to share the load. That could mean signing your kids up for local teams where you know other parents and can share the driving load.

To stay sane, connect with your local clubs and try to group your kids’ school activities rather than spread them across days. I find one busy day followed by one “rest’’ day better than having commitments most days. For example, if your kids are in swimming lessons can you get the lessons at the same time or right after each other?

Once you’ve got your schedule sorted find some like-minded people you trust to share the load with. It makes no sense for each parent to walk or drive only their kid to an activity. Go out of your way to connect with parents whose kids do the same activities. This is a lot easier to do if you are both locals and likely to have some sort of connection. If you don’t know anyone then introduce yourself.

To get beyond just being a social connection do something practical to kickstart sharing the load. Reach out and make an offer of help to others.

By sharing transport not only will you have to spend less time in traffic, your child will have the opportunity to forge friendships and see parents model the sort of community behaviour we expect our kids to demonstrate.

In addition to the above there are lots of apps/other tools that can help.