Start a “school Pleasure Bus” in Your Area
At nine, my son and his friends most often crave two things: more independence and more time to hang out. We are also halfway between our home and his school – we live too close to be eligible for a school bus, but too far for me to feel comfortable with him walking the route alone. So, a few other parents and I have come to a decision: we are opening a district “pleasure school bus”.
Here’s how it would work: One parent (who does not live next door) throws his two children in the farthest house on the way to work. The children, who are now only four, will leave and head a few blocks east to my house, where they will “take” my son; then they will all follow a predetermined route to school. Safety will be in quantity and they will get a little extra physical activity, as well as independence satisfaction and extra time.
We thought we were completely innovative here, but when I started looking for this topic, I found entire tutorials dedicated to this idea . Some communities organize pleasure school buses on a much larger scale, with dozens of students and a couple of parents taking pseudo-rides every day.
In its downloadable PDF, the National Center for Safe Routes to School says that when you choose a walking school bus route, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do they have a place to walk? Are there sidewalks and paths? Too Much Traffic?
- Is it easy to cross the street?
- Are the drivers behaving well? Do they lend themselves to walkers? Are they accelerating?
- Does the environment seem safe? Are there dogs free? Is there any criminal activity?
Your pleasure school bus can be as simple as ours, starting with kids from two or three families and texting so the next parent knows the kids are on their way. Or it could be more structured with a fixed timetable, bus stop locations and a rotating group of adult pedestrian volunteers.
If the children are very young or for some reason cannot walk unaccompanied – or if you are dealing with a large group of children – parental escorts are likely to be the key to successfully launching a school pleasure bus. But for older children in small groups like my son, the right age to allow them to walk alone depends more on their maturity.
In the University of British Columbia documentary Run Free: Free Mobility for Children , one expert talks about when children should be given the freedom to go to school and other places on their own.
“When is the child old enough to be able to look left, right, and left again, for example when crossing a road?” asks Guy Faulkner, Chair of the Department of Applied Public Health at the Canadian Institute for Health Research and Public Health Canada (CIHR-PHAC).
“I don’t think there should be an age at which independent mobility is automatically passed on to a child,” he continues in the documentary. “I think it is very important for every child when he will feel comfortable being able to travel and move independently in his area and his city.”
Faulkner also notes that this type of independent mobility can start with walking to and from school, but it can go beyond that.
“It’s about getting to anywhere in your area, whether it’s shopping or walking to the park,” he says. “And I think that if you go to the park, you go to the park to be physically active. We definitely know from research that when children are in the park, they are much more physically active when they are alone and playing with other children than when a parent is watching them … [and] restricting them. “