Parents who believe they’ve got until their children’s teenage years before they have to ferry them everywhere will be shocked to find out how much they should expect to taxi their little ones about.
According to a recent study, mums and dads drive a whopping 3,084 miles a year taking them to school or nursery, parties, extracurricular clubs and playdates, the Daily Mail reported.
In fact, 673 of these miles are spent on school runs, 367 miles are to and from after-school clubs, and 484 miles are going to friends’ houses and back every year.
This means they spend, on average, 52 hours a month in the car, which is more than two whole days.
For some parents, ferrying their kids around has taken over their lives so much, they admitted feeling like a taxi driver the majority of the time.
More than half (55 per cent) believe they have to drive their children around more than their parents did with them.
While little ones aren’t able to travel alone and require the taxi of mum and dad to get to their sports and music clubs, school or parties, parents are still transporting their kids when they are teenagers.
This is when tensions often rise during those car trips, it seems. In fact, 22 per cent of mums and dads even claimed their cheeky children complain about their car not being good enough and more than a quarter have something negative to say about their driving skills.
So, parents of little ones can expect demand for their driving services to soar as their kids get older, and many aren’t particularly happy about this. Nearly half (45 per cent) of parents said they have had to stay up later at weekends to pick their youngsters up from a party, while a fifth of drivers have pulled over in an argument to tell their kids to walk instead.
This serves as a reminder for relatively new parents to make the most of their children being young and less hormonally charged. You can still enjoy getting your youngster dressed up in beautiful girls’ boutique dresses and taking them to a fancy party for a couple of hours without getting criticised from the back of the car.
Or you can enjoy them excitedly getting ready for football matches and hear the pride and thrill in their voices all the way home as they recall the game.
Of course, it isn’t just the aggravation endured or the time spent behind the wheel that becomes a challenge for parents, it’s the cost of all this ferrying about too. For a car with a petrol engine between 1401 to 2000cc, it costs £524.28 a year just to drive kids about.
Parents with larger petrol cars can expect to pay as much as £801.84 every 12 months, and this is before adding on the expense of the clubs, classes, playdates, and day trips as well.