Survive The School Run With These Tips

WORRIED about how your kids will react to traveling to school on a school bus for the first time? Relax! Minister for Education Norma Foley has helpfully announced that due to difficulties in procuring buses and drivers, you’ll be dropping your kids off by yourself! Phew!

Thankfully, parents have been given little to no notice about this in a bid to reduce the amount of time they have to stress about it. But if you’re new to school runs, these facts might be helpful:

1) Nobody has kidnapped a child in Ireland in ages

So don’t be worried about leaving your kids at the school gates hours before they actually open. Your kids, statistically, will be fine. If you have to be at work for 8 and you were counting on a bus that never came, relax. You can simply drop your kids off at half seven with an umbrella and a colouring book and they’ll more than likely be fine.

2) This is far from the worst hardship your kids will endure over the next few years

Yes, the failure of the new school bus scheme is an immense pain in the neck for parents and kids alike. But common wisdom suggests that by the time they leave school in the years to come, they’ll have suffered way worse indignities and failures at the hands of the State.

Particularly if they require any sort of special assistance at school or ever have to use the health system. You’ll be looking back at ‘we applied for a place on a school bus and missed out despite meeting all criteria’ with fondness by the time your kids hit college!

3) You were never going to win, anyway

You’re either a selfish parent driving your kids to school and taking up place on the roads, or you’re a freeloader wanting your kids picked up on the State’s dime. There was never a third option in the eyes of the public. So don’t get overly frustrated about trying to do the right thing.

There was no right thing to do! Except if you wanted your kids to walk to school regardless of hail, rain or snow, which some people have bizarrely fond memories of.

Anyway, just remember that this has nothing to do with the government failing to offer decent terms to bus drivers and private companies, or indeed failing to deliver on promises right on the eve of a return to school. This is your own fault for listening to them! Shame on you!