I am not a driver. I’ve used public transport my whole life and am used to it. My four-year-old is like me in his fondness for busses and trains (my 14-year-old, not so much*). One of the treats of his summer is when I pick him up from camp and we take the bus home. Once on the bus, however, I do need to keep him engaged. I don’t want to give him a screen to watch, but I do want him to be quiet and not disturb the other passengers. And so, we play a little game.
“Do you see a green house?”
“Lemme see!”
And so, he gazes out the window until he finds a house that’s green. We tried several other colors and then it hit me:
“Hey, Ben, can you find the orange house?”
There is no orange house. Twenty minutes of quiet bus. Bliss.
*Although when she was his age, I used to distract her by having her count the pigeons inside the George Washington Bridge bus terminal. We had a meaningless point system and everything.
