Bus Bullies

Call the school and the bus company. I was a bus driver and had a similar situation. With notice, we are told to watch certain kids with problems. Assigned seating helps to split kids up. Don't do nothing. Make that call.

Contact the school. Many of the buses have cameras and they can review the video or ask the bus driver if need be. I would first have the school handle the child. Most schools have Zero Tolerance to this tyoe of behavior on the buses.

I had a similar situation when my son was younger. Do NOT call the parents, this only causes arguments between the adults. I would suggest that you call the school or his teacher and tell them of the situation. The school/teacher will share this with the staff that is meeting the bus. If its happens again, have him go immediately to any teacher meeting the bus and tell them what happened. At that time, the child bothering him may still be around and he can point him/her out and the problem can then be handled at the school level.

I'm with everyone else who says to call the school administrators ASAP. They should take care of it. Best of Luck!

yOU CAN REPORT IT TO THE BUS DRIVER AND TEACHER. ALSO, TEACH YOUR SON TO TURN THE OTHER CHEEK. HE'LL NEED TO IN ORDER TO GET ALONG WITH ALL TYPES OF PEOPLE IN LIFE.

In my district, parents either call each other and try to settle it or they call the principal. The bus can be a very unsupervised place where many bad behaviors come out of even some of the best kids. Whatever you do, do it very soon. Perhaps there is assigned seating and the boys can simply be separated.

A.

I would talk to the bus driver and mention it to him/her because I know that there is a bus code of conduct. Check in your school hand book. If the bus driver doesn't do anything you can contact bus barn and talk to the head person there.
bulling is not tolerated at school and on the bus.
Hope this helps.

Call your school and they will talk with the bus driver. The driver can watch for the bully and they will handle it. This happened to my son and the school was great. The child who is the bully will probably be told he will not be albe to ride the bus if he doesn't straighten up....the parents won't want to drive him all the time so they will come down on their kid. I really felt supported by our school when we had to deal with this. I was afraid the kid would bully my son more if I told but then the teachers knew to watch for any bullying at school too.

Last year, there were two older kids that picked on my son and his seat-mate. At first, I thought they were just being silly, because I knew the other boys and they weren't really troublemakers. It probably did start out that way, but then they probably egged eacher other on and nothing that my son or his friend did seemed to work and the situation seemed to escalate. I wrote a note to my son's teacher and she had the principal speak with the bus driver. I didn't want the other boys see me talking to the bus driver and give them more ammunition and start calling him a mama's boy or tattle tale. Anyway, I'm not sure how they handled it (nowadays with privacy laws, they don't tell you anything just that they are addressing the mattter), but it stopped after that.

Good luck!

Talk to the bus driver as your first line of defense. She/He should be able to move the children apart so that they have no contact. If that doesn't work, go to the school principal. They control the bus drivers. If that doesn't work, call the social worker, case managers, principal, bus driver and the head of the transportation and request a meeting with them and the other child's parents. The more you push the faster things get resolved. I am a teacher and the squeaky wheel gets fixed much faster!!

Good luck!

Talk to the bus driver to find out what is really happening. A friend of mine was recently dealing with this and when she spoke to the bus driver and the adult monitor it turned out her daughter was the bully. Be open minded when you talk to them because you may hear something you didnt expect, or like! Also talk to the school (teacher/principal) about bully policies and help on alleviating these situations. They have a lot of material on the subject and may be able to give you a different perspective. Plus...these are young boys, If you find out who he is, you may be able to find out why he is this way, and the boys could easily end up best friends. Happens a lot.

Contact the school and the bus company. It is the schools and bus companies responsiblities. Once your child leaves the door they are property.

I tell my son to tell an adult. My son got beat up on the way to the bus every day last year. The kids finally got caught by a teacher. My son complained for weeks and so did I.

If they do not solve it call the school board and the administrators

My friend had the same situation and talked with the bus driver. The driver ended up assigning seats, and that helped take care of the problem. If the bus driver doesn't want to help talk to the principal and find out what else you can do to help. Most of the time the bus drivers are more than willing to help out!

Talk to his teacher, talk to the principal. See what they say or recommend. Tell you son that no matter how mad he gets, he cannot hit or kick people.

My daughter was bullied on the bus. She talked to her teacher and principal. They took care of it. I only found out because the principal called me to tell me about it.

That is fantastic that your son is able to tell you that this is happening on the bus. As a counselor I would work with kids who were dealing with bullying but teaching them how to stand up for themselves. If this remains taunting and does not become more dangerous or physical I would work on teaching your son how to respond verbally to the bully taking the bullies power away. One of the things I have learned through reading up on bullying is that bullying is not about jealousy or anything else we like to think it's about. Bullying is about power and in this case it sounds like the bully is trying to make others laugh. If your son can learn how to respond in a way that is funny and will make the bully realize that picking on your son doesn't get him the result he wants he will stop. Teach him some come backs, if the kid says the same thing every day your son can prepare 3 or 4 responses to use for example; that's because my brain is in my head unlike yours. See what your son can come up with.

Good Morning M.,

I am a school bus driver and have been since 1995, we see things like this all the time and can do nothing to help unless the parent or child let us know what is going on. We try to watch and observe the kids on our bus, but some kids are a bit more sneaky, get away with more, and have had lots of practice doing it in public and at home.

Our buses may hold up to 78 kids at a time and even though we have experience with our own children and all of your children, watching, disciplining, and driving becomes quite the juggling act for us. It is a bit more difficult than in a classroom setting and even teachers miss this behavior in classrooms. The the seats are higher in the bus, there may be 3 kids to a seat, and smaller kids are hidden (which is why most of us keep the younger kids to the front of the bus).

First thing I would have you do is to be at the bus stop in the afternoon or morning and let the bus driver be aware of the problem. Have your child point out the child that is harrassing him. At that point, I would pull both children aside and speak to them to find out what is going on, there may also be a write up involved to inform the school and parents. When a bully is confronted, they will do one of two things, back off or get worse. I has been my experience that when confronted they usually back off on the bus because they know they are being watched. If it gets worse, we can put cameras on our buses to video the bully and have him/her removed from the bus, the school may and usually do also take action of their own.

The second thing I would do is to make sure that the 5 yr old is sitting closer to the front. Normally we place all K - 1st grade kids up front and the older kids in the back so they are not tormented by the older kids.

You also have the option of contacting your child's school and in that case the teacher or principal will meet our bus and have the child pointed out and they will speak to the child and give them warning or discipline according to the the severity.

And you can call transportation office, give them your child's bus route and name. They will inform the driver and action will be taken.

Please help us to make your child's bus riding experience a good one. And if that bully is picking on your child, he/she will continue to do so until caught or stopped.

Hope this information helps you.

God Bless and good luck
M.

Even though this is happening on the bus you can also bring the children's teacher and principal into it, if you think it warrants that. My child was teased quite a bit off and on; certain kids targeted him and I tried to teach him that giving them power over your feelings is the worst thing you can do. But my kid is the kind that can't hide a thing or pretend to be other than what he is, and he found it nearly impossible not to let on how much it bugged him. When I called parents and tried to address it in a nice and constructive way I was met with extreme resistance and denial, (my kid isn't like that etc.)so that didn't work. I even had one parent tell the kid about my calling etc. and the bullying escalated.
The thing that was the most helpful was the teacher started devoting class time to the idea of bullying and what's wrong with it, respecting your classmates and all of that. Create a peer situation in which bullying is not okay. It isn't easy but schools are more open to this now. However, none of this was implemented until the bullying became physical.
Good luck, but be aware that kids will give your son more of a hard time if they perceive he is "tattling" on them. So be discreet.

Hi M.,

Well, bully kids can be a problem. I agree in the fact that just because someone else is mean gives us the right to be mean back, (you know the saying, "two wrongs don't make a right"). Yes, it was good that your son defended himself this time. They do need to learn that also. If this worked, then great, but you should let your son know that you can't just jump up and fight back all the time. Give the "bully" a chance to stop. You as the mom may have to go to the school and speak with the principal over this issue too if it does not stop. It should be handled then. Bullies need to know that people will not let them get by with that type of behavior.
Good luck,
J. J.

I work at a school and hae been told that bussing is the most stressful part of the whole school function if you can believe that. Think about it-- one driver-- whose attention must be on the road-- and loooots of kids behind him who he can't see.

Talk to the bus driver and call the school. Maybe your child can sit at a different part of the bus or something. Can he sit right behind the bus driver?

Drop a note to the bus driver. They can change seats or give the child a warning. If you don't see results in a day or two, then call the Principal. Schools want to resolve this stuff. How much older are kids on his bus? Just curious.

I just read an article about children/vs/bullying. It's great to call schools "zero-tolerance for bullies" but bullies come in different forms. Unless we help our child to address these bullies effectively, the cycle won't stop. And, according to this article - kids shouldn't tolerate bad behavior (especially that age - the bus driver should intervene!) but arming our kids with the knowledge that a "bullies goal" is to make us feel bad - when we feel bad/they win. "Every time someone hurts our feelings, we will fix it" - doesn't benefit our children. In some instances you can ignore "bullies" but at the point that they won't stop, you can teach your kids to address them by using their wit (not their fists). By trying to reverse the bully conversation, we can sometimes end the "bully encounter". Role-playing with our kids becomes so important because, throughout their lives they will encounter bullies (i.e. as neighbors or in the workplace...) and if they don't learn as a kid to have people stop "hurting their feelings" the cycle will continue. I think this is where a good school counselor becomes so effective.

I'm a firm believer in notifying the school when there is repeated bad behavior, however, just last year, my child informed me of a bullying situation that happened with one of their friends and the situation continued, unresolved for a couple weeks. I finally picked up the phone and contacted the school. The principal was shocked and said they had received ZERO phone calls from parents and the problem was quickly resolved (I felt bad it took me so long to call-but as a parent, I, too, worry about my child and the bullying being reciprocated!) So if the schools are really boasting zero-tolerance for bullies - the parents need to step up. Even calling anonymously helps our children. Best of luck to you.

Call the vice principal of the school and report it immediately. It is his or her job to handle bus issues and believe me, a school does not want to have bus discipline problems. It will be addressed from that end. Only call the parent if you already have a relationship with her. Try to teach your son strategies for deflecting the bully. Trudy Ludwig has done a great deal of researching and consulting on elementary bullying. I'm pretty sure her website is trudyludwig.com but you can do a search for her or find her and many, many other terrific bullying resources at the Ophelia Project website which is www.opheliaproject.org

I would start by talking with the busdriver...maybe he or she can offer some suggestions. If it continues and things get worse, you may have to contact the principal of your school.

I don't know what school district you are in, but our district has some pretty strict bus rules, plus, most of the buses have cameras. I would suggest you put a call into the school and express your concerns. See if there are any changes made, then follow up again. Our district is pretty quick to issue bus conducts and make parents drive their kids to school!

I tell my children to pray for them. walk away- I read bully books. That being said I realize my son at times is a bully- he has spikes in his fontal brian that affects his behavior- we see a neurologist and a psychologist etc.. my son is getting better and his self esteem is not as low as it was but realize that this child probably has a low self esteem and he may come from a great home. I always feel the need to explain my son- we have routine, go to church etc... so if you do find out this childs name- approach the family with a tender heart.

hi M.,

I also have a 5 yo riding the bus this year for first time. So far so good, but I would be concerned too.

You might not be able to hand the bus driver a note (I know it is in the rules for our school), and if the bully sees you talking to the bus driver it could make matters worse.

I would tell my child to tell the bus driver so that he can point the child out to the driver.

I would then call his teacher and the principle right away, also call the bus company if you don't get through quickly enough. They will likely have a routine in place for this kind of thing. It used to be that bullies were handled well by a good swift kick but these days it's just not the right thing to do - your son could get in a lot of trouble for kicking, even if the other child is bullying him.

My daughter's bus buddy is a fifth-grade girl who lives next door (we even gave her a little gift for looking out for our daughter on the bus) - is there anyone like that from your neighborhood or your caregiver's neighborhood who might look out for him?

Thing is, at this age they will likely be great friends in a couple of days. :-)

best of luck,

W

I would start with the bus driver and discuss it there first. Also, do talk with his teacher and most certainly the principal. You need to get to the bottom of what is going on quickly. He is only 5 so he needs help right away. Also, monitor the situation daily, and talk to the appropriate people daily as well. Do not let it go until your son has peace on the bus or it will get out of hand. He is learning bad lessons on the bus and this situation needs to be resolved for him quickly.

First of all, DO NOT contact the parents. Contact the school.
It is the schools job to make sure children are in a safe and friendly
environment, even if it's on the bus. They can help you. If you do not
have access to a year book, the school should have one. Your son can pick out the child
picking on him and the school can take care of it. There may be other solutions they have for problems like this. Please talk to your son's teacher or the school principal.
The school needs to know. Your son may not be the only one being picked on.

If for some reason, the school is not reponding to your request, I would then take it to the
bus company. Good Luck!!!!

S

Hi M.- I now have 3 kids riding the bus to school. If I were in this situation I think I would go to the corner with my son and after the kids load on try to mention your concern to the driver. See if he can address the problem by having your son sit closer to the front (as most K riders should). If this doesn't alliviate the proble I would call transportation and tell them the route and concerns and the driver may be able to make an "all bus" announcement about behavior.
Hope these ideas help.
Beth

Where is the bus driver while all this is happening? I would have a hard time not cheering for your son if no one else seems to be taking care of the situation on the bus (such as the bus driver). Just tell him it is not acceptable to hurt others, and then call the bus garage, and let the bus driver become aware of the situation.
I guess I'm a little nervous about this, as my son rides the bus for the first time tomorrow... Wish him luck!

The school and the bus driver need to know. I thought some schools (especially with young children riding the bus) have "assistants" on the bus so the bus driver isn't distracted. If not, I would ask the driver and get the child's name. It will not only help your son, but nipping this bully's bad behavior at a young age will help him and countless others too. Also, you don't want your son in trouble because he feels he has no other choice but to fight back. You want it on record that this is a problem.