Middle school kids incapable of using the bus?

[Anonymous]

I find catching buses quite stressful and eventually figured out it's because my eyesight isn't that great. Seems like I never really know which bus I need until it's quite close to me. My spouse can see like a hawk and doesn't find it stressful at all.

[Anonymous]

My middle schooler takes the bus now, but I had to do a dry run to and from the bus stop before school started so she would know how to get home and which stop to get off. For some reason drop off is two blocks away from pick up, so she would have missed getting off if I hadn't done the walk through with her. It's also a pretty long walk and she usually doesn't walk to that part of the neighborhood. I think the mom should do a walk through with her kids, but I can see not wanting to spring this on her DC who has never done this before the day of.

[Anonymous]

Presumably the kid made it home today. I hope that next on the list is getting the kids bus worthy. Going to school should be easy enough - adult puts kid on bus. Coming home, have the child pair up with another kid in the neighborhood and have the neighbor help him get on the right bus going home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can’t you just help her out without judging? Maybe her child has been bullied on the bus before. If you don’t want to help her, just decline.

This. Don't understand why you are so bent out of shape. I know several kids who don't ever take the bus. One girl is very sensitive to noise and it makes her very upset to be in a place so loud. Another has been bullied and another child has special needs that are not obvious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think what annoys me about this is not the issue of whether or not the kid takes the bus. It’s the issue of the mom having to ask an acquaintance to do a 60 min round trip favor. The mom needs to get out of her bind and get into her car. OR she needs to have a plan B for times she cannot make it to school for pickup.

How do you know that asking OP was not the plan B or that it was not verbally agreed upon?

My kid had to be driven 10 minutes to catch a bus for a special program. I was the only SAHM at the busstop and the rest were WOH parents. We all had each other's phone numbers and in the event the parents were unable to pick up their kids on time from a very isolated bus stop., I would drive their kid along with my own child back to my house and parents would then pick them from my house, It was not a hardship for me and none of the parents abused my offer. Parents need to help each other out if they can, but if they can't then there is no reason to bitch about them here. I am sure that the mom wanted to pick her own kid from the school and it was hard for her not to be there.

[Anonymous]

Is your bus system free? I’m in a different part of the country and I’d have to pay $900 for my 2 kids to ride. Getting single passes is not easy either - have to go to central office and pay something like $75 for a pack and you only get a certain number for the year or you have to pay thu full fee. Not easy to arrange in a day unless you can take the day off to do that last minute.

Additionally, every day I need to pick them up to get to a lesson or go Home with a friend, I would need to fill out a special “transportation change” form.

There are lots of reasons parents have for making the decisions they make. In this case, the decision is not the same as yours

This just asked you once, right? This isn’t a weekly ask?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can’t you just help her out without judging? Maybe her child has been bullied on the bus before. If you don’t want to help her, just decline.

DCUM is so predictable.

[Anonymous]

People who pay for full bus service often don’t realize you have to have a pre-paid buspass s for a single day ride. Just having a student ID does not get you a ride home.

[Anonymous]

My middle schooler has never taken the bus because we do not want her to. My husband and I take and pick her up from school the way we have since kinder. It's our prerogative. And, she will never take a bus in all of her formative years. The end.

[Anonymous]

I have travelled in the MCPS school bus as a chaperone for a field trip. They are extremely uncomfortable. I think parents need to sit in the bus and ride it one time to see if it is something that they would want their kids to be sitting in. Anyways, we decided that it is not worth it for our kids to take the bus and we drop them at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have travelled in the MCPS school bus as a chaperone for a field trip. They are extremely uncomfortable. I think parents need to sit in the bus and ride it one time to see if it is something that they would want their kids to be sitting in. Anyways, we decided that it is not worth it for our kids to take the bus and we drop them at school.

But are your kids capable of taking the bus in an emergency? Do they know how? No one is saying the kid should always ride the bus, but that they should know how to do it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I live in a major city and my DD takes buses all over the place no problem.

But when I was a child living in the suburbs, I had NO IDEA which bus to get on after middle school ended. I knew the bus stop near my house, but getting on the right bus to get home was a huge problem. I couldn't figure out how other kids knew. To this day I still don't know. I basically loitered near the buses until I saw someone who lived near me, and then stalked them onto the right bus to get home each day.

The buses display bus numbers. And generally line up in the same order. This was true even in the days of the Late Pleistocene North American megafauna, when I went to middle school/high school.

Unless you were there the first week of school when they explained it, it looks chaotic and scary. I took the Paris metro as a kid. The suburban school buses feel more complex to me

"Your bus number is 2996." If you can take the Paris Metro, you can figure this out. Really.

You're right, but not in one day.

The sign is tiny, so you have to peer at every single bus. There are lots of buses, and you have to push past a ton of kids (all bigger than you, if you're short like me) and the bus can be parked on the side of the school, and by the time you get there, it's gone.

My kids, who are short, were somehow able to do this - including for different buses. I guess I can send them to New York City on their own now to figure out the subway. Hooray!

You probably could send them.

But are you saying that your kids rode the bus for the first time on an afternoon in the middle of the year?

My kid rode the bus on the orientation day when things were way slower and there were only sixth graders and less crowds. Then he rode in on the first day of school. So when he was looking for the bus in the chaos of the first afternoon (when it was slower than mid year) he knew where the bus parked and what some of the other kids looked like.

If he hadn’t had that, I think it would have been much harder, which is why I had him ride the bus every day that first week, even though later he often chose to walk or ride his bike.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People who pay for full bus service often don’t realize you have to have a pre-paid buspass s for a single day ride. Just having a student ID does not get you a ride home.

None of the jurisdictions in this area require payment to ride the school bus.

[Anonymous]

It is not appropriate for her to ask this of you and I would simply say "no." I do not judge anyone who chooses to drive their kid and it's none of my business why. It is however my right to decline a request to pick up a kid who could just take the bus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have travelled in the MCPS school bus as a chaperone for a field trip. They are extremely uncomfortable. I think parents need to sit in the bus and ride it one time to see if it is something that they would want their kids to be sitting in. Anyways, we decided that it is not worth it for our kids to take the bus and we drop them at school.

But are your kids capable of taking the bus in an emergency? Do they know how? No one is saying the kid should always ride the bus, but that they should know how to do it.

Yes, they are. I think that is the crux of the issue here. If you are providing transportation to your child for school, or they are riding the bus, or you are carpooling with a neighbor, or they are taking Uber...they need to know what the process is and use the available mode of transportation. Of course they should be safe and secure and keep you informed (thus a cell phone is important) through it all. Our MCPS bus has broken down several times last year. Kids were left stranded for up to an hour on the side of the road. Thankfully, some of the parents were on a Whatsapp group and one of them was able to go and retrieve the students.

I think parents whose students are going to special programs do a better job of being organized because of the long distance of their students commute. However, with most school systems with an aging bus fleet, it is smart if parents keep each other phone numbers handy and help each other out if need be.