BackToSchoolPlan › Build a plan › Ride the bus both ways for two weeks
Plan for a Child Who Is Afraid to Ride the School Bus
When the school day is manageable and the bus is not, the fear is usually about being enclosed with other children, being far from you, or both. Splitting the trip into pieces makes it testable.
The builder below is already set to this goal, with a few steps added to start from. Rate each one 0 to 10 from your child's point of view, add or remove whatever you like, and the ladder sorts itself.
Step 1 of 3
What do you want your child to be able to do?
Choose the goal closest to where you are now. You can change it later without losing your steps.
Step 2 of 3 · your ladder
How hard would this be for your child today?
0steps rated
Add steps from the suggestions on the right. Start with anything your child could try this week, even if it looks small.
Suggested steps
Choose a step to add it to the ladder. Add the small ones too; they are what makes the order usable.
You have added everything in this category. Switch filters or write your own step below.
What the ratings show
Working the ladder
This tool builds the plan. Bia, a phobia and anxiety recovery app, is where a child works through a ladder like this one step at a time, with a rating after every attempt and a record you can show a clinician.
biajourney.comGoal
Start here and work up
Repeat a step until it stops being the hardest thing on the list. A common rule of thumb is to move on once the rating has dropped by about half.
This plan has no steps yet. Go back and add some.
What the ratings point at
Where to work this plan
A ladder only helps if someone tracks the attempts. Bia is a phobia and anxiety recovery app built for that: one step at a time, a rating after each attempt, and a record you can show a clinician or a school. This plan can be entered into Bia as it stands. biajourney.com
This plan is not a diagnosis or a treatment prescription. Share it with your child's pediatrician, school counselor, or a licensed therapist before making changes to a school schedule or an accommodation plan.
Step 3 of 3
Send the plan to the people who will see it work.
The plan lives in this link. Nothing is stored on a server, so anyone with the link sees the ladder exactly as you built it and can copy it as a starting point of their own.
The other parent or caregiver
Everyone at home needs the same next step, or the plan gets undone at the door on a hard morning.
Teacher or school counselor
Send the ladder before the next meeting so the conversation starts with a plan instead of a description of the problem.
Therapist or pediatrician
The ratings and the pattern summary give a clinician something concrete to work from in a first appointment.
Another parent going through this
They can open your plan, keep the steps that fit their child, and re-rate the rest.
Now comes the part a piece of paper cannot do
Ladders work when each step gets repeated and re-rated until it stops being hard. That is daily tracking, and it is what Bia was built for. Enter this plan, work one step at a time, and keep the record of what your child actually managed.