Vol. 154 - Get on the (Nice) Bus
On kindness. And meanness.
Hey.
It’s been a minute. Sorry. Shit’s crazy. Halloween, plus prepping for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Plus the two college classes I teach winding down, therefore, my students’ big, final projects ramping up, requiring more of my attention. Plus all of the work I do that makes me money. Plus getting ready for a huge work trip I’m taking in a few weeks (if anyone has any tips on what to check out in Vilnius, Lithuania, holler). Plus being a good husband. Plus taking care of myself.
Anyway, we’re back with a rare moment of downtime. And rather than plop my tired ass on the couch for an hour and watch whatever shows it is that I’m watching at the moment (Boots on Netflix and Down Cemetery Road on Apple TV… highly recommend both), I figured to take this time and catch up on this neglected newsletter.
Ever since he was in kindergarten, my son has been taking the school bus. Despite the fact that he’s the first to be picked up and the last to be dropped off (making his door-to-door school day run from 6:30am to around 3:15pm), he’s long loved his time on the bus, owing in large part to the fact that a lot of the older kids have phones or tablets that they take to and from school.
As he knows he’s nowhere near his parents buying him a phone or tablet, he’s sees the bus as essential screentime that he wouldn’t otherwise get at home.
And, for the first two-and-a-half years he’s been in school, the bus has proved generally seamless; a great time that our son enjoys every day and one that I see as part of the overall experience of going to school. Most days, he wakes up excited to get dressed and ready, to wait at our corner in the dark of early morning. Most days, he bounds off the bus at the end of the day, a big smile smeared across his face, after spending the previous hour playing this game or that on some older kid’s tablet.
Lately, however, he’s been climbing down from the bus’s steps with a more dour attitude, a more sullen look.
And, after some digging on mine and Emily’s part, he tells us that some of the older kids have been mean to him on the bus lately.
I ask if anyone makes fun of his appearance or his style (he’s a very expressive dresser and a kid who is known to come to school with nail polish on occasion). He says no. I ask if there’s every any physicality; any hitting or wresting that might cross the line. He says no. I ask if someone is calling him names or picking on him specifically. He says no.
Eventually, after a bit more prodding, we learn the meanness is likely little more than those older kids denying our son a chance to play with their phones or their tablets.
And while they’re well within their rights to say and do as much, while my son isn’t entitled to play with anyone else’s belongings, and while it sounds to me like the kids aren’t being mean so much as just setting boundaries, it still stings to see my son hurting this way.
It’s something I’m especially attuned to because I was a little kid once and I still remember how little kids can be the meanest sonsofbitches on Earth (myself included).
And even though I’ve noticed how much nicer kids these days are, they’re still going to hurt each other’s feelings. They’re still going hurt my son’s feelings. And, seeing as I’m not completely blinded by fatherly love, I know he’s still going to hurt other kids’ feelings.
The best way that Emily and I try to combat this is to sit our son down, to let him dwell in his feelings, his sadness, and his hurt, to recognize his sadness and tell him how sorry we are that he’s feeling this way. Then we remind him to really take stock of how bad it feels and to understand that, when and if he’s not kind to other kids, this is how he might be making them feel.
Kids are always going to be unkind to each other. Yes, even our sweet, precious, mischief-averse little boy (heavy sarcasm here). But we can do our best to try and make sure he recognizes what it feels like to be on the losing end, that he might be the kid that rises above all that bullshit sooner rather than later.