Carpool Meltdowns

How do explain to a seven year old that it really isn't his fault (entirely) that the family we carpool with no longer wants to carpool with us and and has already found another family to carpool with for the five mile trek to school?

One phone call (don't call home, call me on my cell phone, said the dad), a unilateral decision that supposedly the kids aren't getting along (something I supposedly somehow failed to notice during the drive home every day). No "let's talk about this," or "we're concerned." Just, "we're not carpooling anymore."

My son had nightmares for a few days, fearing that our ex-carpool-ees were banishing him from school.

It has really troubled me also - if they just didn't want to carpool, let me know. But this whole "the kids aren't getting along" without any willingness to talk, and without the slightest consideration for the issues now raised for our family at having to reschedule our lives without warning to now handle all of the driving has, quite frankly, rattled me.

I'm not sure why I am so upset - perhaps it's the lack of closure, so to speak. I see a missed opportunity to teach conflict resolution to the kids (if that really was the problem). I see lack of consideration. I see selfishness.

And I always thought playground politics involved the kids, not the parents.