Timing gave me a chance to watch a young and rather small mother work through a morning school bus ritual with her son. He was about 8 years old. I ended up thinking she was courageous.
When the school bus stopped on the other side of the road, I was almost face to face with the driver. She turned on the blinking red lights and put out the stop sign. The narrow Everett street was lined with parked cars.
The mother began pulling her son by his hand, slowly moving toward the bus. He did what he could to avoid going. He dropped his weight, pulled back, yelled "no" and forced his face into an angry glare.
Undeterred, she grabbed his arms with both hands and, with all of her might, pulled him toward the open door of the bus.
When she got him there, she tried to get behind him so she could push him up the steps inside the bus.
As she did, he jerked out of her grasp and took a couple quick steps back to their starting point.
She started all over, pulling him toward the bus. There were things he did not do. He didn’t run away when he broke free. He only returned to the starting point.
He didn’t fall down on the ground, which may have made it impossible for her to actually move him. Certainly she would not have gotten him through the door and up the stairs.
He didn’t strike out at her, which would have caused her to protect herself.
The bus driver sat in her seat, calm and patient from all I could tell. It looked like she and the mother exchanged some signals, a few words of coordination or support.
Neither the driver nor the mother seemed the least bit concerned that someone was sitting close by, watching. Both were focused on their tasks. The mother’s face was frozen into a sort of grimace that hinted at some combination of determination and frustration. She revealed no doubt that she would get this difficult task done.
She got him through the door, and for a few moments I couldn’t see him at all through the bus windows. Then, he sort of popped up. He was in the seat behind and to the right of the driver, where she would be able to see him if she glanced over her shoulder or looked in the rear view mirror.
The mother went down the stairs and out; the boy threw his backpack out the door at her. She picked it up, took one step up the stairs, and handed it to the bus driver.
The bus driver pulled in her stop sign, turned off her blinking red lights, glanced in all of her mirrors, and drove off. It looked through the window like the youngster, so upset a moment ago, was now sitting quietly.
The mother took her daughter’s hand. I realized just then that the younger child had stood patiently, quietly, while her mother went through the whole episode. The four of them — the boy and his mother, her little girl and the bus driver — had been through this before, together.
I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with this family. Perhaps he was school phobic. It would look like he is afraid of school but he may be more afraid of what happens at home when he is gone.
Perhaps, his father is missing from home, and he blames his mother for that. Perhaps turmoil in his home blocks him from getting childhood needs met. Maybe he lacks sleep, or doesn’t get breakfast, or has to take care of his little sister rather than play.
Perhaps he has a learning disability that makes school like a nightmare for him. Perhaps his days are filled with both real and felt failures at school and with peers.
What I know, though, is that that morning it took almost every ounce of physical strength and emotional courage the mother had to make it work, to get him on the bus on off to school.
Hopefully, she has the support and advice of a counselor with her son. But, when it came down to it that morning, it was up to her.
Being a parent is like that. Sometimes nobody else gets your child up in the morning and helps him do school work at night, or sits for hours in an emergency room, or goes to just one more conference.
Everyday, parents in our community carry out those little-noticed acts of heroism.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. He is on the Snohomish County Child Death Review Committee, and the Advisory Board for the Tulalip Children’s Advocacy Center. You can send e-mail to bsjf@gte.net.
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