Stress For Beginners

Nathan has had a lot on his plate lately. Not only did he start kindergarten three weeks ago, but he has been in glasses for only six weeks and his eye patch for less than two. His glasses got broken during a bully incident the day before we started patching him and to top it all off, he is having bus trauma.

Apparently there are kids riding the bus who shouldn't be, resulting in an overcrowded bus. So the school has started issuing bus passes to those students who are actually supposed to ride. All others are not allowed on the bus. Two weeks ago the bus driver started telling the students they needed a bus pass. Daniel got all frustrated by that because he had no idea what a bus pass was. So I called the school and they told me all about it and informed me that they were in the process of issuing all the bus passes. Several days later, the bus driver told the boys that they wouldn't be able to ride the bus anymore without a pass. So I called the school again and was told that attaching the passes to every students' backpack was taking longer than they thought it would and not to worry. So the next morning I sent the boys to the bus with a note telling the bus driver what the school had told me. That afternoon Daniel came home with a blank bus application (I had already filled out one for each boy), so I filled it out, leaving only the name and grade blank and included a note for the office to use the form for whichever boy still needed one. Daniel came home with his bus pass two days later.

Fast forward two weeks: Yesterday morning Nathan was awake when I went to get the boys up for school. Apparently he had been awake for a good long time. He complained that his tummy hurt, was listless and not eating, so I sent him back to bed. Twenty minutes later, just as Daniel was getting ready to walk out the door to the bus, Nathan came out acting completely normal. I got Daniel out the door, fed Nathan breakfast and since he was feeling just fine, I drove him to school. He came home telling me that he had a great day. (Note: A different bus driver brings him home at noon.) I didn't think much about this strange occurrence until we sat down to dinner last night and Nathan said something about me driving him to school again this morning. Then the light went on in my head and I asked him if there was something about riding the bus that was worrying him. At that point he finally told me that the bus driver has been telling him every single day that he needed a bus pass.

Poor kid was so stressed out about not having his bus pass and having the driver tell him he needed one every day that he wasn't sleeping and was getting stomach pains! So this morning I drove him to school and we walked into the office together to get the problem resolved. The bus passes for his entire class were sitting on the secretary's desk. She admitted she hadn't been on the ball and gave Nathan his bus pass on the spot. Nathan gave me his eyebrows raised, super grinning happy face and then ran off to class.

Sigh. He's way too young to be having that kind of stress. I didn't start getting stress-induced stomachaches until college.