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Do you ever feel like your kids treat you as something of a taxi service? Do you ever wish you actually had a meter installed, so you could at least be earning a bit of extra cash while you drove them around?
That would be cool wouldn’t it?
‘No problem love,’ I’d say to Belle in a cockney accent, ‘I can drive you to dance – it’ll cost you six paaaand.’ (That’s me doing the accent.)
Of course it would never work – teenagers notoriously have no money because they spend it all on frappuccinos and make-up palettes. What they DO have though is TIME (when they’re not watching important videos on Tik-Tok and practicing make-up looks) and ENERGY (if you catch them after a frappuccino.)
And when you have a taxi fare to pay, TIME + ENERGY = CHORES.
That’s the theory behind the ŠKODA Parent Taxi App – start the meter running when you set off, and depending on how far you travel, and how generous you are with the settings, your time and trouble gets repaid to you in the form of chores completed by your grateful teen.
Sounds like a good idea doesn’t it?
A little while ago, ŠKODA invited me and Belle to have a play with the app, and put together a short video of us where I drive about and try to look young and cool and Belle tolerates me. It’s less than a minute and gives you a good overview of what the ŠKODA Parent Taxi App involves:
The theory then is sound – swap car journeys for help around the house and everyone’s a winner. How does it work in practice though? Will Belle be a willing participant, or might the app cause tension between us? Will I be more inclined to drive her into town if I get a cup of tea for my troubles?
To evaluate the ŠKODA Parent Taxi App properly, ŠKODA loaned us a car to play with, and we used the app over the course of two weeks, testing the functionality and noting any issues it raised. It turned out it actually gave me quite a lot to think about in a much broader sense than I was expecting, and made me think a lot about our parent/child dynamic. You can read the follow up post here for some thoughts on teenagers, independence and how on earth you get the right balance.
Check back later this week for an in-depth look at how we got on and in the meantime why not download the ŠKODA Parent Taxi app and give it a try? (There are loads of fun pictures on the site too of me making Belle do chores!)
Do you drive your kids around a lot? Do you think this could work for you?
Do you think I could get away with using this when I’m forever giving my mum and my sister lifts into town and to do their shopping?? ;-)
Author
You could definitely have a go… :-)
My wife doesn’t drive, so I do all of the driving in our family. I can see it could be really useful to use with our teenage girls, although I think I might get short shrift if I tried to turn it on when I was driving my wife somewhere! Haha!
Author
Yeah, good luck with that one Stuart!
What a great idea! I have two boys – 16 and 14 – and sometimes I wonder how I actually manage to get anything done at all between shuttling them around! Also, I could really do with doing less housewrok :-)
Author
Well, summer holidays are coming up, so it’s the perfect time to try it out – I bet you’re going to be giving a LOT of lifts over the next six weeks!
This is genius!!! Then they don’t get another ride until the chores from the first one are done!! xx
Author
Oooh, you’re so strict! I love it!
Haha, never worked on my kids – I’m practising on my grandkids now!!! lol xx
This is such a cracking idea! I love it. We have five kids so I reckon I could definitely benefit from this. Looking forward to reading your follow up post!
Author
Oh yeah, with five you could rake it in! Although there would be the added complication I guess of five of them arguing over who was going to do the chore if they all got a lift at once…
This is hilarious but also very clever. My mum would have got me to do so many chores when I was a teen because we lived in a rural town!
Author
Well THERE’S a long term plan… deliberately move somewhere rural, so you HAVE to drive your kids everywhere and never have to do any housework at all!
Absolute genius. The amount of running around after the kids that I do, I’ll never need to make another cup of tea or wash another pile of laundry ever!
Author
I’m thinking we could even come up with EXTRA clubs for them to join, just to increase the lift requirements and make sure we never have to lift a finger :-)
This is perfect for me right now. Always giving lifts to my older kids and all their friends. Help with chores is always welcome!