Next fall my 5 year old will start Kindergarten. The school is kind of far away and it would be a hassle (though possible) to drive him to and from school everyday.
I have some concerns about him riding the school bus. He will be the littlest guy on it. There could be bigger kids picking on him.
Am I being an overprotective mom, or am I right to be concerned?
I absolutely hated riding the school bus. The drivers were sociopaths, we had to sit three to a seat, and asshole older kids would hassle you. However, if he’s going to public school, he’ll have to get used to dealing with assholes and sociopaths eventually.
Well, from what I remember of my ten years riding public school buses (and believe me, there’s not much I haven’t seen), there are usually some older girls who make it their business to look out for the really little kids. When things get ugly, it’s usually at the junior high school level, and the victims tend to be around the same age as the bullies.
Obviously, you should listen to your kid and take him off the bus if he’s having trouble and the bus driver refuses to deal with it, but there’s no reason why you should anticipate trouble before it starts.
My daughter rode the bus daily through 8th grade. She learned to deal with the idiots early on. Her schools were pretty strict about enforcing discipline on the bus, so it was mostly annoyance rather that serious torment.
I rode the bus from Kindergarten through eighth grade and yeah, the bus sucks. but as has been said, you gotta learn to deal with the assholes sometime. To be honest, the bus is a lot rougher for kids as they get older, I don’t remember many problems when I was really young.
I rode the school bus too, so I’'m not totally unaware of what goes on. But I didn’t start until I was in high school.
What about the littlest kids?
I rode the school bus for 12 of my 13 years of public school. I never remember being picked on as a little kid, but our bus runs were segregated so that the oldest kids that the kindergarteners ever rode with were in 5th grade. And as Fretful Porpentine mentioned, the older kids usually help out the younger ones (I was one of the “bus mothers” for awhile).
My school bus problems didn’t start till I was in middle school and got sexually harassed fairly frequently. I was the quiet shy girl and tried the ignoring tactic, but that didn’t work. So one day I just told them to f*** off and they were so surprised that they stopped. By high school, we sat in the back of the bus and it was a blast. Everyone knows the coolest kids sit in the back. 
I rode the bus. The bus sucked. God, did the bus suck.
Oy, the school bus. God, what a nightmare. One of my most vivid memories comes from my high school days, when a 1st grader called me a “mother f**king, titty-sucking, blue-balled b****” because I wouldn’t let him open the window.
Most 6 year olds don’t have a vocabulary that impressive.
Then there was the bus slut, who liked to give lap dances and blow jobs in the back seats.
There was the time one of the kids had a bucket of minnows with him, for show and tell. He put one in his mouth on a dare. I slapped him hard on the back and he swallowed it.
4th grade was a nightmare. My boobs started growing, and I arrived home off the bus almost every evening in tears because of the teasing, most of it coming from the junior high set.
Smoking in the back seat. Poker games. We’d blow up condoms and play volleyball with them over the seats. I used to sit up front and watch the driver’s knuckles on the steering wheel get whiter and whiter as the miles went by.
The little kids were generally left alone, because it was never cool to pick on little’uns. Anyone who tried would immediately find him or herself faced with half a dozen large, bristling opponents.
All this was in the 80’s, when it was one driver vs. 30-40 screaming hyper-active juveniles. I understand these days most school busses have a driver’s aide, an extra adult who is there specifically to glare at the little delinquents and keep them in line. Remembering the way we used to act, I think they should be armed with Tazers.
None of this is helping, is it? Thinking back, it occurs to me that my mother would have keeled over from shock and horror had she been aware of half the stuff that went on in that bus; no parent wants their child witnessing this kind of behavior, and the first instinct is to start calling people up and demanding some kind of action be taken. You’d be right. The thing to remember is that you’re probably way more shocked and disturbed by this than your kid (barring actual bullying or harrassment). My reaction to most of the incidents I described above was something along the lines of, “Meh. Condom volleyball. Wonder what’s on TV tonight?”
So, short answer (took me a while to get here, didn’t it? Mention school bus to me and the floodgates open up), you may be a little bit over-protective, but you’re a mom, and that’s what we get paid for. Talk to some other parents who have kids on the bus. Better yet, talk to the kids, if you know any. Ask the school how they enforce school bus discipline. And make sure your son knows that if he has problems, you’ll be going to bat for him. You’ll both come through just fine.
What really sucks is having to take your kid to school every school morning for the next 13 years, get him used the idea of riding the bus now.
When my son started kindergarten, he rode the bus. He was also one of the smallest kids (he started school 3 weeks before his 5th birthday!). He really like it. We moved recently and he was disappointed that we live too close to his new school for him to ride the bus. Just keep an eye on the other kids, talk to the bus driver, and talk to your son. I think for now, your son would like it.
My kids ride the bus everyday. I would prefer to drive them, but school is about 20 miles away and it would cost too much on gas.
The driver is a bit of psycho and I’ve had to call the transportation director many times about him.
The older kids have never picked on any of the smaller ones, they seem to stick to their own ages. However I have had some awful things I’ve had to explain to my kids because of things they overhear. I had to go through the no Santa, no Easter bunny, and no tooth fairy thing. When my son was in the first grade he asked me if I spit or swallowed because of a conversation on the bus.
Hell, you could change that to “…if he’s going to live in the real world”…etc.
The one thing I remember from the school bus in elementary school (K through 4 on the same bus) is that the bus driver insisted the Kindergarteners sat in the first rows where he/she could keep an eye on them the first few weeks of school. I think this made everyone feel safer and you might see if you can arrange something like this for your son, autz. Like others have said, though, I don’t really remember older kids harrassing the really little ones. Even at that age it was considered very uncool.
Speaking as a public school employee, I can say that most larger districts split the pickups for the different schools, so a bus going to an elementary school will only have k-4 kids on it, middleschool bus would have 5-7, etc.
All our buses are equiped with video monitoring systems, the bus drivers have the authority to write office referrals, and an office referral can result in any trouble maker being refused transportation by the district. I’m certain that there are still incidents of teasing and general snobbery, but any serious harrassment or bullying is taken very seriously and dealt with in a serious manner. Never be afraid to call the administration and voice your concerns.
FaerieBeth
when i first started school, i was in germany. the american kids that lived off base were bussed to the closest DODs school. busses were usually contracted with the local german transportation system. that was sometimes scary. the driver normally spoke no english and every grade was on the bus.
when i came back to the states the busses were mild. tennessee started having the middle and high schoolers go to school an hour earlier to avoid having to pay for extra drivers and busses.
the drivers that i did have normally had assigned seating, girls on one side, boys on the other. the lower grades sat the closest.
if you’re really worried talk to the bus driver. they could tell you how they run things. or you can find an older kid that is open about what occurs and have them tell you. i know that’s harder to find, but it does exist.
also if he’s kind of antsy about starting school i’d take him for the first couple of days. too much shock of having him do things on his own could make him hate school if he’s not used to that sort of thing.
You could try the bus out for a little while and see how it is.
I believe one of the positive benefits of the bus is that it can encourage kids to be on time about things, and establishes a ritual in which they are partially in control (getting to/from the bus).
However I didn’t take the bus until 7th grade. Everyone was their sweet self under the watchful eyes of Mr. Busdriver-who-barely-speaks-english but once people got off at a stop all hell broke loose. I was harassed not on the bus, but after I got off at my stop on the way to my house. I got in the habit of just sprinting home to avoid it or opted out of the bus altogether by walking. YMMV.
Here’s what you do; talk with other parents and see what they have to say. If that checks out, find out who his driver will be and have a talk with him/her. Do the whole concerned parent thing and see if you can ride along one day (not with your child, that’ll peg him as a baby). Some districts don’t allow this, but it’s worth a try. If that goes well, let him ride the bus, but sitting right behind the driver, where discipline is usually best. Then check back with your child every couple of weeks to make sure things are still going well. Oh, try to be at the bus stop as often as possible, and always have a cheerful wave for the driver. Good luck to you both!
I started riding the bus in first grade. The only problem I ever had was the time I was daydreaming and missed my stop. When I realized it, I ran up the aisle, almost in tears, my head filled with terrible visions of the bus driver telling me I was S.O.L. and stranding me in a cornfield. Funny how such minor things can seem so earth-shattering to a kid. The driver drove the two blocks back to my stop and everything was fine.
Even though I was unpopular and frequently picked-on, the bus wasn’t a major site of torment. We didn’t have an aide, either. Just one driver was enough to keep all the punks in line. Then again, substitute teachers often said my school had the most well-behaved students they’d ever seen*, so my experiences may have been a statistical anomoly.
*Though it didn’t seem that way the several dozen times that I got pine bark shoved down my underpants while simultaneously receiving a wedgie. Ah, the pine bark wedgie. [Bill McNeal]Good times, good times![/Bill McNeal]
When I started riding the bus in Kindergarten, we were assigned seats. For some odd reason, my seat-partner was a couple of grades older than me, and psycho. He’d say “Look, a deer,” and I’d look out the window and he’d slam my head into the glass, among other nasty tricks. I’d come off the bus crying. Needless to say, my Mommie Dearest talked to someone and fixed the problem pretty quickly, so I wasn’t scarred for life.
What I’m trying to say is that the transportation system isn’t without it’s problems, but most of them can be cured by an attentive, nagging parent.
Ummmm…
OK, now I’m really nervous.
Homeschooling is sounding better by the minute.
I’ll drive him until he is 21.