My daughter is 30 and has Down syndrome. She wears shoe splints for extremely flat feet and hates to walk although she is a gold medalist in many special Olympics sports. Once she outgrew a stroller every time we went to the parks it was an endless day of cajoling, pleading, yelling etc at her to hurry up, keep up, stop complaining. I don't believe in threatening without follow through so she and I left early many times when she wouldn't stop. Finally after a few years of this, I convinced my husband to rent her a wheel chair although he wanted her to toughen up. We don't go to parks all that much anymore and tend to do the highlights at several parks in one day. We rent a chair first thing and then can get chairs at orher parks for no additional cost. It has made our lives and hers much more pleasurable. My point? While on the surface a stroller for a 8 year old sounds like you are babying her we don't live with her so if it makes all of your times more pleasureable that's only something you can decide. I will note that with reg kids, although it didn't work with mine, following through just once on the threat to leave the parks unless the whining stops might do the trick. My daughter has missed a few things when she wouldn't stop whatever behsviour was causing a problem which means I have too. But it's all about the follow through or its just allowing bad behavior with no consequences.
