Rina Pfeiffer wreaked accidental destruction.

I was fortunate to have a wonderful carpool with a woman who was an absolute tzadeikes. One morning, I pulled up to her house to pick up her son — and accidentally accelerated right into the side of her car. The door was destroyed and wouldn’t close anymore.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, calm in the face of my panic. “And you know what? My husband can drive the carpool for you this morning, because today is clearly not your day.”

Faiga Weishaut brought the cab driver to a simchah.

My husband, a rav, was helping a couple with a stressful divorce. As a chesed, he offered to drive one of the kids to yeshivah every day. The boy sat in the back of his car every morning for a year, along with several other boys who also needed that ride. But no one ever explained to him who my husband was. When the boy was bar mitzvahed, we went to the simchah. The boy stared at my husband, then turned to his father and said, “Wow, it was so nice of the taxi driver to come to my bar mitzvah!”

Tamar Y. designed a shalom playlist.

We drive a full van for carpool — six little kids, and many of them are siblings, which makes for interesting dynamics. At the beginning of the year, there was a lot of disagreement over which songs should be played on the 30-minute ride to school. Everyone had their own preferences, plus a lot of passion about the music, so when one kid would make a request, there would be a chorus of dissent:

“That’s not my favorite song!”

“That’s just your favorite song!”

“No, not that one! Anything but that one!”

We knew that if we didn’t find some sort of solution, it was going to be a long year. Somewhat organically, and with the kids’ help, we came up with the idea of creating a carpool playlist. The kids have input on which songs should be added to the playlist, we put it on shuffle and it just plays randomly and now nobody can complain because everyone has their favorite songs on the playlist. The list evolves throughout the year, with some songs being added and others removed.

Gila Solomon nearly called a search party.

Our school doesn’t have busing until after Labor Day, which means a week or two of carpool right from the get-go. The woman who took the boys home on that first day was an unknown — this was her oldest, and she told me that she’d never done a carpool before. School is a seven-minute drive from our house. When my son wasn’t home 20 minutes after dismissal, I figured that she’d just arrived late and gotten caught on the endless carpool line. Rookie mistake.

Another ten minutes passed, then another. Was it rude to text her? Another parent sent an inquiring message out on the carpool chat. No response. I called the mother and it went straight to voicemail. It had been 45 minutes since dismissal. A fourth parent called me in a panic. Where were our boys?

An hour after dismissal, my son appeared at the door, cheerful and unbothered. “Aharon’s mother wanted to stop at the supermarket on the way home.” But it was okay, he told me. She had left them in the car with the air conditioning and the music on, and she had gotten all the boys pizza for the (five-minute) ride home. “It was a great day,” he said happily.

Sara P. watched a negotiation in action.

When I was a preschool teacher, I often manned the carpool line. Some days were worse than others. During one of those days, there was a terrible rainstorm, and we all got soaked pulling kids out of cars and into the building.

When Chayala’s carpool pulled up, I was surprised to see that, for the first time all year, her father was driving. I asked her if her mother was feeling well. Why was her father driving? “Oh,” Chayala said. “Because he doesn’t want to buy Mommy new boots.”

Aleeza Werner managed a pickup across continents.

I was in Eretz Yisrael for the week, and I had left my oldest daughter in charge. One night, my doorbell alert went off on my phone. I glanced down at it and saw my tiny five-year-old in the image, waiting at the door. I realized with sudden alarm that my oldest daughter worked late that night and I had never told the carpool to drop her off at a friend’s house.

I hit the button to talk to her. “Is your carpool still there?” As calmly as I could, I instructed her to get back in the car and ask to be dropped off somewhere else. Fortunately, they were still waiting for her, and she was safely brought where she needed to be.

Mari Loeb was covered in strawberries.

Last year, I drove a friend’s son to kindergarten every morning. Early drop-off started at 8:30, when elementary school began. I had a flexible job, but I was usually in a hurry to get there, so I would pick up the boy early and then sit in front of the school to wait for 8:30. As news spread through the neighborhood that I was a reliable morning ride, parents got used to texting me when their sons overslept and missed the bus. One boy used to stand on the side of the road and flag me down.

One morning, with my car packed with boys, I discovered that our usual route was closed for construction. No problem — I made a left and drove down the street, looking for the turn that would take me to yeshivah. After a minute with no turn and much honking, I realized that I was on the wrong block, and it was a one-way in the opposite direction. With some effort, I turned around and got stuck in more construction.

By now, we were going to be late, and the kids were less than happy. The kindergartner was uncharacteristically silent, and I glanced at him through the rearview mirror just as another boy shrieked, “He’s throwing up!” And suddenly, the entire minivan and half the boys were covered in pink, strawberry vomit.

We turned around as soon as we could. How many strawberries had he eaten? I wondered. The answer, as it turns out, was a perplexing four. It didn’t explain the magnitude of the vomit or why it was all so pink. But at least the car didn’t smell.

Rachel L. brought her insurance card.

When I got to the school one day for carpool, there was about an inch of fresh, wet snow on the road, which made everything pretty slippery. The school I sent to was off of a long, hilly road, and with a car full of six-year-old boys, plus my younger son, I was feeling very tense. I stopped at the stop sign at the end of the school’s driveway, looked both ways, and started to cautiously turn left. As I turned, I saw a car coming down the hill, and because of how fast he was going and how slow I was going, he ran right into me.

Baruch Hashem, no one was hurt, but my van was smashed in on the driver’s side and the mirror was now totally gone. The boys were yelling and agitated and I was feeling disoriented. I had never been in an accident before (and never since, either) and I didn’t know what to do. A teacher told me not to call the police, so I just exchanged insurance information with the driver.

As it got later and later, parents started calling me, asking, “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“No! No, it’s not all right! I just got into an accident!” I exclaimed incredulously. It took me about two hours to get home. By the time I dropped all the boys off, they had forgotten their initial fear from the accident and were chattering about it excitedly.

When I called my auto insurance company to report the accident, they thought it was suspicious that I was driving so many kids. I drove a Dodge Caravan at the time and our carpool was only five or six boys in the carpool, a very normal amount for the Jewish world. The insurance agent called all the parents that I carpooled with to verify that I wasn’t running an unauthorized taxi service!

CARPOOL CONUNDRUMS

By Bashie Lisker

WE

enter a social contract when we drive a carpool, one in which we trust others with our children and they trust us with theirs.

The first thing to keep in mind is that most parents are reasonable and want to maintain positive relationships with their neighbors. “We have a large volume of carpools a day and few issues,” says Rabbi Avraham Bender, a menahel at Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, New York. “And I find that parents are usually receptive when issues are brought up.”

Those issues span the gamut. Sometimes it’s a parent unexpectedly dropping out of a carpool after committing to it. Rabbi Bender points out that if the parent doesn’t provide a replacement this might require consulting with a rav. “This isn’t just about rescheduling; it’s also a question of time and money. Without that parent in the rotation, it puts a greater burden on the other parents, who will have to drive more times.”

If your child is sick on your carpool day? “Hashkafically, it’s the right thing to cover the carpool regardless. It’s menschlichkeit.”

What happens when a child is consistently late? Rabbi Bender notes that this isn’t only about the child who isn’t coming outside on time. “It’s not just about that one boy. There are other boys in the car who are going to be late for Shacharis if you wait for more than a few minutes. And every extra minute means more busses on the road, more carpools on the road, and more traffic. If you wait a few minutes by each house, the same trip can be a half hour longer.”

Rabbi Bender recommends discussing this with the child’s parents. In the event that nothing changes, it’s best to speak directly to the school to be sure that the children aren’t penalized because of a parent’s actions.

In the car, though, there are times when the driver has to make a snap decision based on a child’s unpredictable behavior. Rabbi Bender strongly feels that no child should have to be in the car with someone who torments them, though he cautions not to jump to conclusions about who is the aggressor and who is the victim. “These things sometimes start at school and continue into the carpool without context.” The best tactic to deal with this is to speak to both sets of parents and get more information from the children. But if a child in the carpool is consistently suffering because of another, then it might be grounds to remove the other child from the carpool.

Similar is Rabbi Bender’s take on children who use inappropriate language or discuss inappropriate things in the car, especially nowadays, when there’s such a danger of exposure. “Sometimes parents are so worried about ruining relationships with neighbors or friends that they’ll be forgiving on their child’s cheshbon.” Again, removing that family from the carpool rotation might be the only option to protect the other children in the car.

Removing a child from a carpool should only happen once everything else has been tried. Rabbi Bender encourages parents to sit down at the beginning of the year and set ground rules about what is acceptable in their car. If the problems persist, then other measures can be taken. More than chastisement or going on the offensive, positive reinforcement can do plenty to change the dynamic in the car. Treat the kids in the backseat the way that you’d want your children to be treated in others’ carpools: with compassion and a willingness to listen.

What about when a child treats the driver without derech eretz? “Before anything else, speak to the parents. In most cases, they’ll sit down with the child. If they’re not willing to listen, then you might want to turn to your rav or the school.” In the moment, though, before you speak to a parent or get in touch with your rav, what’s the best move? “I would avoid a conversation or a debate. If a kid is talking like that, then nothing you say is going to change his behavior. Better to bring him home without discussion.”

In all cases, the same message stands strong, one that is as relevant in carpooling as it is in all other relationships: Communication is key, and parents and children alike will benefit from honest, thoughtful discussion.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 908)