Stop with the pram-shaming already.

Who says there is really a magic age when your kid just has to get out and walk?

I used to shake my head and tut at mothers like me.

Back in those luxurious days of having just one easy-to-transport newborn, I’d look at those mothers with bigger children in prams and think, “that child could walk”.

I’d look at the sturdy legs and fingers sticky with juice from a pear given not for hunger but to keep them quiet and I would wonder how the mother could do that to their child.

Didn’t they realise how ridiculous the child looked – all grown up and being pushed around like a newborn?

Didn’t they see what they were missing out on? Stop and smell the flowers. Ra ra ra ra.

And then I met with reality.

It was quite a shock jumping down off that high horse. Dealing with one, two, then three children. Working as well. Trying to juggle the school drop-off, the preschool pick-up, the playgroups, soccer. The conflicting schedules. The pressure to get shopping done before the bell goes. And I found myself hanging onto my pram for dear life.

I found myself lost when I was without it (where do you put the shopping?)

And I firmly joined the camp of pro-pram.

So now here I am, the focus of the sideways glances and infinitesimally small shakes of the head by passerby’s. Even The Daily Mail is judging us – calling it “a rather unsettling scenario”, though they do acquiesce saying it is “understandable for any parent of a headstrong toddler when time is pressing.”

It seems I am not alone.

On the other side of the world Laura Cornwall told The Daily Mail that she takes four-year-old son Oscar out in his pram because he simply can’t walk very far.

“Competitive mothers at the local children’s centre would make comments about how their preschoolers were walking everywhere already,” she said. “If he wants to sit in the buggy because he’s tired, I’m not going to drag him kicking and screaming, which I think is far worse. This is the less stressful option.”

Like Laura my kids too often won’t walk. We live at the top of a steep hill and I would have to leave half-an-hour earlier for school pick up if I let my three-year old walk every day.

Her big brother, who has now just turned five, often hitches a ride as well perching himself in the basket area of the pram turning my old single pram into a double.

Psychologist Sally Goddard Blythe has warned that over-using prams can jeopardise brain and speech development.

“Social interaction also helps physical development - for example, eye contact, singing and talking. That is not happening if a child is in a forward-facing buggy.” She told The Daily Mail.

She is joined by an educational psychologist, an obesity expert and a consultant paediatrician who all condemn mothers like me who are damaging our children by forcing them to get places quickly and on time. Dr Alastair Sutcliffe, a consultant paediatrician at the University College London, told The Daily Mail that, “excessive and prolonged buggy use not only risks spoiling a child but can bring dangers later in life.”

“The notion that a healthy child of four needs to go around in a buggy is poppycock," he says. "Children need to experience life to the full and not live in some mollycoddled, risk-averse environment. If buggies are used with otherwise developmentally normal four-year-olds, there is a potential for them becoming spoilt.”

I take that poppycock and throw it right back at him.

I’m sorry Dr Sutcliffe, I gracefully respect your opinion and tell you to take a look at the real world.

If you would like to fly out to Australia and try and make my younger children walk up a steep hill on a hot day in time to pick up their seven-year-old brother before 3.15pm then I will happily trail behind (you know, because stranger danger and all that). But I wish you the best of luck because no amount of degrees or experts can make a tired preschooler do what they don’t wish to.

My kids get plenty of exercise on their bikes and scooters when we aren’t on a deadline.

They get plenty of conversation and interaction when we get home.

So once again let's just quit the sniping, these kids will be out of the pram soon enough and we will fondly remember the days when we could keep track of where they were.

What age were your kids when they (finally) jumped out the pram?

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