I won't let my kids suffer the one thing I hated most about school

"I despised the same time every day - it was horrifying to watch."

When I say I hated catching the bus as a kid, it’s an understatement. Despised might be a better word.

I had to catch the school bus twice a day throughout my school life, and there was nothing I could do about it. As a kid, I promised myself that my own kids wouldn’t have to have to catch the bus to school.

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"It changed when I hit high school"

My primary school was only 4 km away from my home, and we had a small school bus that was quiet and well-organised. We finished school at 3 pm and by 3.30 pm I was back at home with my mum enjoying a snack while watching Sons and Daughters after a calm and easy drive.

If that had been my only school bus experience, it would have been a fairly pleasant memory.

It all changed when I hit high school. My high school was 20 km and this time it involved a packed double decker bus that went in circles all around the villages.

There was so much to dislike. It was noisy and chaotic. There were kids running around and climbing over seats while the bus was driving without any sort of order. I’ll never forget some kids throwing a boys’ shoes out of the bus window, or another time when someone chucked their old sandwiches across the bus and they landed, butter-side open, in my friend’s long, curly hair.

Then there was the time I sat in chewing gum and it went all over my skirt. Actually, that happened more than once.

As an introvert, I was ready for some quiet time when the school day ended. Instead, it was so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think. Many of the kids went wild the second the bus doors closed, and while I wasn’t bullied on there myself, I saw plenty of fights and there was always a lot of bullying as to who could be the biggest personality.

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"Made things worse, not better on the bus"

Once, a younger boy (who was actually a bit cheeky himself, if I recall) reported the chaos of the bus journeys to the school and he went on the local news to talk about how awful the experience of catching the school bus every day was. Although his identity was protected, everyone knew who he was and it only made things worse, not better.

Putting a bunch of kids on a double decker bus with no adult supervision after a long day of school wasn’t really the best idea. The bus drivers weren’t paid to supervise or discipline anyone, and most of the time they let the kids do whatever they wanted. It was only occasionally we’d get a driver who would stop and tell everyone to sit and calm down.

It wasn’t only the unruly nature of the bus that I hated. When I hit high school, we finished school half an hour later than I’d finished in primary school. Add on the extra long bus journey home as it weaved its way around the endless stream of tiny village roads and I found myself losing one and a quatre hours more of my evening.

Plus, when we did finally get home there was lots of homework to do. I felt like the bus took a chunk of my life away from me and I really struggled with that (as you do when you’re a kid and every hour feels like it lasts a lifetime). It also ate into my night times too – I had to go to bed earlier than my friends who lived in walking distance of school as I had to be out to catch the bus before they’d even woken up and poured their Cornflakes.

I felt like I was losing out in all areas.

Karen and her family. Source: supplied

"The school bus was my only option"

Catching a bus twice a day was my only option as my parents both worked. There was never an alternative so there was nothing I could do other than suck it up and get on with it.

I’m sure the school buses now aren’t as unruly and chaotic as they were when I was young in the UK, but catching the bus to school would still involve my kids spending big chunk of time on the bus every day instead of 12 minutes in a car.

I’m self-employed and work from home, so I know that I’m privileged to be able to work whatever hours I choose. I do my best to make sure my kids don’t have to catch the bus. The flip side is that now I am the one losing time out of my day dropping them off and picking them but I actually welcome the break and we have some great conversations on the way there and back that I’d miss if they caught the bus.

They CAN catch the bus if we need them to. If they did, it would open up more time for me to work more hours and it would give me more freedom. For now, at least, I’m happy how things are going with my husband and I sharing the school runs between us. The school years are flying by and I know I’ll blink and they’ll be over with anyway.

If I worked in the city or in a job with set hours, they’d have no choice but to catch the bus more often and they probably wouldn’t hate it anywhere near as much as I did.

But I will always remember how much I hated my school bus journeys and how I made that pact with myself as a teenager to do whatever I could to make sure my own kids had a positive experience of travelling to and from school.

Did you have a terrible experience on the school bus? Do your kids hate it? Tell us in the comments on Facebook.

Originally published as I won't let my kids suffer the one thing I hated most about school