[PhilD]

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We've got two young kids and so my wife is usually in the back with them, sat in the middle. We need the child lock on because when one of my sons first went in the car, he managed to kick the door open button from his place in his car seat. After a bit of faffing, searching through the owner's manual etc I finally found the button to activate and deactivate child lock. All good. Except my wife now can't get out of the car unless I let her out.

I've tried using the voice activation (well, it was one of the things I was trying when I was trying to find how to turn on child lock in the first place to no avail) and there's no feature in the myBMW app to do it. My wife's quite short so reaching over to the front door from the rear seats isn't really possible.

[TXSchnee]

So, don't hate this question, but as a Mom I have never felt the need to sit in the back with my kids. They are 12 and 6 now, but outside of one 1200 mile road trip when my daughter was 6 months old (TX to MN) I have always either been driving or up front. Why doesn't she just sit up front?

[PhilD]

Originally Posted by TXSchnee

So, don't hate this question, but as a Mom I have never felt the need to sit in the back with my kids. They are 12 and 6 now, but outside of one 1200 mile road trip when my daughter was 6 months old (TX to MN) I have always either been driving or up front. Why doesn't she just sit up front?

Our eldest is almost 2 and our youngest is 4 months. Kids that age need settling, snacks, feeding, drinks, etc. They're too young to be able to do that stuff themselves and besides which, it's always nice spending time with them. If we were doing a long distance drive at night when they'd both be sleeping then my wife would likely sit in the front.

Edit: FWIW One the main reasons we switched to the iX from our old car was for more space in the rear, especially in the centre seat (no raised floor section in the iX). Although we have two car seats, we have this spacer thing that moves them out to the side so there's plenty of room in the middle. I can sit there without it feeling tight at all and I'm pretty broad shouldered and tall.

[TXSchnee]

Originally Posted by PhilD

Our eldest is almost 2 and our youngest is 4 months. Kids that age need settling, snacks, feeding, drinks, etc. They're too young to be able to do that stuff themselves and besides which, it's always nice spending time with them. If we were doing a long distance drive at night when they'd both be sleeping then my wife would likely sit in the front.

Edit: FWIW One the main reasons we switched to the iX from our old car was for more space in the rear, especially in the centre seat (no raised floor section in the iX). Although we have two car seats, we have this spacer thing that moves them out to the side so there's plenty of room in the middle. I can sit there without it feeling tight at all and I'm pretty broad shouldered and tall.

I get that. I am a mother, but I never felt the need to sit back there with my kids. Unless you make a lot of far drives it just seems sort of tedious, and they never learn to calm without help if help is always there. It may be that I am older than you, Gen X here, so raised by silent generation and a boomer, they would have never sat in the back seat to calm us when we were little. I believe it is a safety issue that you must disengage the child locks only one way, aka the reverse of setting them, I have never owned a vehicle that allowed a temporary disengagement.

[Sheva_BMW]

Also if there would be possibility to disengage that from back seat, it would be only matter of time when kiddos will figure out how to do it

[saidy]

Imagine asking a technical question and getting parenting advice.

It seems reasonable to me that the app or key ought to allow for an unlock when in the rear. You should send that feedback in through your sales person. They’re usually pretty good at listening.

[Sheva_BMW]

Originally Posted by saidy

Imagine asking a technical question and getting parenting advice.

It seems reasonable to me that the app or key ought to allow for an unlock when in the rear. You should send that feedback in through your sales person. They’re usually pretty good at listening.

Maybe good at listening, but absolutely useless when it comes to technical questions. In 99% of cases you show them features, especially on new cars

[TXSchnee]

Originally Posted by saidy

Imagine asking a technical question and getting parenting advice.

It seems reasonable to me that the app or key ought to allow for an unlock when in the rear. You should send that feedback in through your sales person. They’re usually pretty good at listening.

Eh, relegating the wife to entertain your kids in back is annoying, saying that as a woman and a mom, as it seems a lot of men like to have their wife sit in the back and shut the kids up for them. Also, it is a safety issue that you cannot disengage the child safety lock from anywhere other than the door where you set it. Which I also answered.

[sor]

Does the child lock deactivate the mechanical backup door levers as well? I imagine it does but just curious. Or do the rear doors not have those?

[PhilD]

Originally Posted by TXSchnee

Eh, relegating the wife to entertain your kids in back is annoying, saying that as a woman and a mom, as it seems a lot of men like to have their wife sit in the back and shut the kids up for them. Also, it is a safety issue that you cannot disengage the child safety lock from anywhere other than the door where you set it. Which I also answered.

No hate for you here; I appreciate your reply. I googled it after your reply and I was shocked to see that it was the norm not to sit in the back, maybe 9 out of 10 mums don’t sit in the back with their kids. I couldn’t believe it! I told my wife that this morning and she was shocked too. It had never occurred to us that you wouldn’t want to sit in the back. We’ll probably give it a try now though.

It’s not a matter of wanting to relegate my wife to the back to shut the kids up. We’ve always assumed it was normal to *want* to be in the back with the kids. I usually drive because my wife usually needs to be able to deal with work messages on her phone so when we had our first, she just moved to the back seat with him. When issues with that have come up, we’ve just solved them. It’s one of the main reasons we ended up getting the iX when we did - our older car was a fair bit smaller and didn’t have enough room for both a second car seat and for my wife to sit in the back (she usually sat in the middle seat anyway when we just had one) and we were expecting our second soon. We’d looked at Defenders that have loads of room in the back but then liked the iX because it was spacious too and it felt wrong to buy a new petrol or diesel car in 2022. The final two things that swung us over were how quiet the ride is in the iX so we can talk much easier between first and second row in the car and then also all the driving tech, so I can then turn round and engage with the kids or my wife in the back much easier.

My point is; we were so of the mindset that it was normal to want to be in the back of the car with the kids, that we bought a £120k to solve the issue and then another £500 on Isofix spacers to make it work even better! I was saying to my wife just a week or two ago how ridiculous it was that car manufacturers hadn’t come up with a better solution as it’s like they haven’t even considered how families with two young kids cope. The answer is: they give up and don’t try to fix it and just sit in the front! It’s mad! We’ve been laughing about this all day!

[TXSchnee]

Oh, I completely understand. That reply was to someone else who was being not so nice.

[saidy]

I still believe it's useful to be able to disengage the child lock without requiring a physical feat to reach the button. And it can be made safe. For example, requiring a PIN or FaceId in the app.

And, furthermore, can be made optional such that if you don't want it you don’t need to have it.

In terms of being nice, I value not judging people (assuming relegation of the wife, plus what you just said) and that forums, unlike social media, offer a place for on topic discussion without the usual drag of social political viewpoints. And so, I consider it nice to have supported the feature request and discourage judgement. If you don’t see merit in that, that’s fine.

[CaboM4]

Originally Posted by TXSchnee

Eh, relegating the wife to entertain your kids in back is annoying, saying that as a woman and a mom, as it seems a lot of men like to have their wife sit in the back and shut the kids up for them. Also, it is a safety issue that you cannot disengage the child safety lock from anywhere other than the door where you set it. Which I also answered.

I’m with you. My wife and I never have/will sit in the back with kids. Long trip or not. They need to self soothe. We are both millennials (older end) but do not fit the traditional mold. I make fun of people I see doing that. Probably also the type that provide the breast until age 8 lol