Thirty-nine-year-old Sneha Kadam, a resident of Vashi has been waking up early inspite of the late night working hours. She prepares an extra tiffin for her son who heads for tennis practise after school hours. But, she need not worry about picking up her son from school after the practise as she only needs to do it twice in a month. Like Kadam, there are other working parents as well within Navi Mumbai, who car pool their kids from extra activity and sports classes.
This emerging trend started by working parents in taking turns to drop or pick up the children will help many to save time and also fuel. Children are also glad that they get to learn or attend their favourite sessions henceforth.The WhatsApp groups also makes it easier for parents to communicate and interact with other parents.
"This is a convenient way as we cannot always skip work so that children can be a part of other activities. Instead, we all decided to help each other and formed a group. We interact through WhatsApp and ensure that every child reaches home safely after class. In a group of 15 students for tennis workshop, we appoint different days to every parent to pick the children. As these extra classes happen after school, there are no school buses, so car pooling makes it easier," says Kadam.
Just like her, there are other working parents as well from different areas in Navi Mumbai who have formed groups and ensure that the children are safe and also do not miss out on any activity. "My daughter goes for jazz classes in evening and it is not possible for me to reach home early everyday to drop her for the classes. Since last one year, she has been showing keen interest in learning jazz, but I just could not find it suitable to drop her everyday. After my child kept missing out on classes just because neither of us could reach home on time to drop her for the session, the instructor suggested that I speak to one of the other parents. When I started interacting with them, I realised there are many others who face the same problem. We then made area-wise groups to ensure that every child comes to class regularly and even parents need not come everyday to drop the kids," says Sushmita Dey, resident of Nerul and a HR executive at a private firm.
Apart from them, there are many single parents as well who find it hard to juggle time for their kids, "The difficult part of it is when we have to say no to children just because we cannot dedicate enough time for them. They spend their free time in the house doing nothing and hence, this is a very feasible and safe way to ensure that children are not deprived of all the learning that is possible at this age. Even if they just send a vehicle with the driver, it is a convenient option as children and even the rest of us save our time," says Vaishnavi Merchant, a resident of Seawoods.
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