To the mom of that one kid on my bus who was both adorable as heck and also the bane of my existence as a bus monitor because he would refuse to behave,
I see you. I wasn’t allowed to actually SAY anything the other day, give you a hug, etc. Because I am just supposed to help your kiddo get off the bus and then get the heck out of there so we can do what we need to do. But oh my sweet baby Jesus lawd, I wanted to hug you the other day and say, “Girl, you got this shit. You can do this.”
So there is (or was, since I got reassigned yesterday) an 8 (maybe? Hard to tell, really) year old Down’s kid on my bus. He’s a very cute, sweet kiddo (usually) but this week he was REALLY pushing ALL the buttons.
He would push his feet his feet into the seat back in front of him and refuse to stop when I asked.
He howled, loudly, in his wolfiest wolf fashion, and then got mad when I asked him to stop.
He sang “My butthole, my butthole. Where I go, he goes. My butthole, my butthole. My butthole and meee…”, which made me both want to laugh (because I remember the My Buddy commercial and changing the words of the song to ‘my booger’ as a kid) and shake my head. He insisted on knowing WHY he wasn’t allowed to sing that song and wasn’t satisfied that “butthole” is not a word we use on the bus, especially when there are several OTHER kids who would pick it up and sing it until their parents screamed for mercy (because echolalia).
Wednesday, he ended up on my bus for an extra HOUR because his mom had to go to his older brother’s school and deal with a huge mess her other son had gotten himself into that involved a trip to the vice principal’s office and a meeting with the school counselor since they tend to take “I’m going to KILL MYSELF BECAUSE REASONS!” very seriously (as they should).Down’s Kid had really been misbehaving all afternoon and I felt like such a shit for having to inform her that while she was dealing with her older son’s shennanigans, her younger son was getting in trouble too.
Yesterday was the absolute limit. Down’s Kid had multiple meltdowns because he couldn’t get his way. It ended up with his deliberately spitting on the inside of his cloth mask, throwing it across the bus, getting mad because I refused to give it back and then spitting all over the back of the seat in front of him, all over the seat he was sitting on, all over the floor and spitting on his arms and shirt then rubbing it in. And then trying to spit on me.
His mom looked like she wanted to cry when we dropped him off. This has not been a kind week to her, clearly.
I wanted to hug the shit out of her and reassure her it was probably going to be OK, she just needed to hang in there.
But I’m not allowed to. I’m supposed to help the kids off the bus, tell the parents anything I need to tell them in as brief a way as possible and GTFO.
I know she’ll probably never see this, and that’s OK. I don’t even know her name. only her kid’s name.
But I see you, girl. You hang the fuck in there. Parenting is shitty more often than you’d think. You got this.