Obnoxious bus rides

One huge issue that we’ve had to deal with since we moved here, is the long rides that the kids have to get to school.  The kids drive with other embassy kids.  It’s only 9 miles away, but it takes no less than 45 minutes on a GOOD day because of the traffic congestion.  The problem is that there aren’t very many “good” days.  A few days ago it took the kids 2 hours to get home from school, and the day after that it took an hour and 15 minutes.  As I sit here writing, I have no idea when I can expect them home or in what condition I can expect them to be in.  What's funny is that I'm thinking back to when we lived in Las Vegas.  At one point, Briant and I threw around the idea (along with some friends) of him working in Las Vegas while actually living in St. George, Utah.  It would have been about a 1 1/2 hour commute, traveling 120 miles.  We decided that the quality of life doing that "miserable commute" every morning and evening would be too much for him, especially day after day.  And here we are now in Angola, asking our children to do it!  What kid likes to be cooped up in a van with 7 or 8 other kids (all between the ages of 10 and 5, having different likes, dislikes and idiosyncrasies) after a long day of school for at least an hour drive home?  Oh, and then they have to wake up the next morning and do it again, going to school and then coming home.  And one more thing—they have to do homework when they get home because the bus ride is too bumpy for them to do it on the way home and they all complain about being carsick.  :)

Needless to say, the commute to school is not my childrens' favorite part of their day and their weaknesses have come out a bit during the long drives—of course it’s ridiculous to expect perfection or even close to it with this issue at their age.  The noise of all the children cumulatively is too loud and the drivers have complained about that, fearing an accident caused by distractions.  They’ve also complained about bickering and “fighting” between the kids on the bus.  And every day the kids come home and I get to hear all about it.  After a few months of us parents talking with each other to try and understand the issues on the bus (“She said she hates me,” or “She won’t share her DS,” etc.), we reached our exhaustion point with lecturing our kids and hoping things would be better the next day.  After talking, most of the parents agreed that the technology brought by some of the kids was causing a lot of the issues and that it would probably help to prohibit tech stuff on the bus.  There are just too many kids without adult help to work through the fighting.  So feeling somewhat helpless, we decided to start by eliminating the technology.  The second thing we did was get all of the families together for a little "pow wow" and have the kids come up with their own “vision statement” and commitments on how they would behave appropriately on the bus.  This “activity” went well as we all designated Amy as the parent leader.  She used material from Covey’s “Seven Habits for Happy Kids/The leader in Me” program.  The kids each shared their goals and then one of the moms went home and created a visual with these goals to post up in the bus for the kids to remember what we talked about. 

 “Pete the Peacemaker” is the adorable superhero character she created (I wish I had a pic of it!).  After a week we reconvened and discussed how the kids thought they did.  We had treats for them and made it like a party to celebrate the good behavior.  As parents, we were all very pleased with how the week went because we didn’t hear any complaining from our own kids about any other children!  We will keep up the weekly pow wows if we have to for a few more weeks to keep them focused on their vision of a peace-filled bus.

These kids have my complete empathy.  I know I couldn’t handle that drive twice a day, five days a week!  I dislike that drive A LOT and avoid going that direction as much as I can.  So we are trying to be understanding of how much we are asking of our children (besides the fact that we're asking them to live in Angola), but do hope that these issues with continue to improve!