Parenting manual missing chapters: Shotgun

Photo by flow khorrami on Unsplash

There are any number of books which tell you how to be a good parent. They cover things like the importance of discipline, routine and how to deal with difficult behaviour blah blah blah. What they don’t tell you is how to deal with some of the important areas of potential conflict. So to help you out, here’s what you need to know about shotgun.

It’s actually pretty simple. You need good rules that everyone keeps to, and then things will go well. So here are the definitive shotgun rules:

1. You can only call shotgun when you can see the car (or other vehicle) with your own eyes with nothing in the way (apart from glasses).
2. In the event of two people calling shotgun simultaneously the car driver will arbitrate as to who said it first. Their decision is final, with no recourse to appeal.
3. If you forget something and go back in the house or building where you came from, so you lose sight of the car with your own eyes, then you lose the right to shotgun. Anyone else can call it after that within the bounds of rule 1.
4. If the driver or other responsible adult asks you to go back into the house or building then you retain the shotgun right, even if you also get something you wanted. If you come out and then forget something then rule 3 applies.
5. In the case of an elderly or infirm passenger needing to sit in the front passenger seat then shotgun is void and the other passengers will have to sit in the back.
6. The shotgun rules do not cover any other seats in the car apart from the front passenger seat. Car seats, babies, toddlers etc. — it’s all far too complicated to come up with rules for everyone.

Look out for more missing chapters coming soon!