Posts for category ‘children’

Have you ever heard the phrase “The Honeymoon Period”?

A honeymoon is a trip or holiday that is taken by a couple that has just gotten married. The honeymoon period is the early harmonious time in their relationship.

The phrase can also be applied to other situations such as the first few months of a newly elected president. People generally give their new officials a lot of freedom in that period; then assess their performances at the end of that time. Then, as is often the case, discord results as it becomes apparent that their leaders cannot live up to expectations.

But it can also refer to changes in family life. Recently I have written several posts about the new House Rules we have been implementing in our home. My son Max was not thrilled initially with them; especially when they were posted on our living room wall.

But then he conformed to them. They went up on Monday. He was great Monday and all of Tuesday. Some of the rules required the loss of some of his allowance for infractions. He was okay with that. In fact if he thought we were too lenient he would take more money out himself.

But then Wednesday morning the “you know what” hit the fan. He woke up angry and attacked anyone and anything in his path. Before the school van arrived at 7:15 a.m. he had lost his whole allowance for this week from all of the hitting, swearing, screaming, and throwing things. The only thing that finally settled him down was the required time out. Because of all the problems it lasted twenty minutes. He also lost his current most favorite toy for the day.

Not only was that unexpected for him but the bigger shock was when next week’s allowance chart was posted and he started losing money from that as well. He has informed us that he will not follow the rules anymore. He blames them for the increased number of tantrums he has been having. And you know, he is probably right. He doesn’t like the idea of losing his freedom no matter how unhappy it makes him.

The “honeymoon period” is over. Monday and Tuesday he was testing the waters. On Wednesday was the beginning of the resistance. According to our counselors if we stick to it these problems should all be over in a week. I hesitate to mention it but it takes three to four weeks to break habits, no matter how bad they are.

At the same time we have to remember that Max has been diagnosed with:

• Bipolar Disorder – with the accompanying rages and explosive temper tantrums, and oppositional and aggressive behaviors.

• ADHD – including interruptions and intrusions on others; and not appearing to listen.

These issues may make it harder in the near term to enforce the rules.

So Wednesday was day one of the resistance. He battled us constantly. My wife and I were strong and consistently enforced the consequences.

By Friday morning Max had started to conform again; he has only lost twenty cents since Wednesday night. But he was unhappy. He has finally realized he is really losing money from his allowance. He has been telling us that it is too hard to follow the rules. We asked him why:

• Swearing is too much of a habit; he doesn’t know how to stop. We responded that he never swears in school. Not only that he has already been doing it less at home since we instituted the rules.

• He doesn’t understand the yelling and whining rule. I assume it is based on the fact that his parents still do it a little bit and he sees that.

• There are other rules he doesn’t get. These are obvious ones like disobeying and threatening. We think these are really delaying tactics. They are pretty straight forward.

Even though he has the disorders which may make the rules harder to enforce; just the fact that he is a child who hasn’t had a consistent set of rules will cause him to fight back.

At the same time, this is only the start. The rules were only defined on Monday; this is only Friday. He will learn them and he will eventually conform to them.

As long as we stay consistent.

In my first post on house rules I mentioned five problems my son Max has that we have to resolve:

• He isn’t clear on the rules.

• He isn’t clear on the consequences.

• In school he has a defined set of rules and consequences but at home there is nothing.

• His parents are not always together on what his consequences should be.

• His parents haven’t been modeling the required behaviors.

In the following post on house rules I addressed the first four issues. But what about issue number five?

What does it mean to “model behavior”?

First of all, children imitate the adults around them. This is an excellent way of learning. A child wants to know how to open a door. She cannot figure out how to do it herself so she watches those that can do it. She takes note of how they grasp the knob; turn it; then pull it open. With a little practice she will be able to do it herself.

It is the same thing with bad habits. If a child notices that his parents are constantly swearing they will do it as well. It doesn’t matter that he has been told that swearing is wrong he has seen it in action so he will continue to do it. Not only that he might become very confused. He will wonder why his parents are telling him that it is bad to swear; it must really be okay because they are doing it.

We set up several rules for Max including:

• No swearing

• No hitting or kicking

• No yelling, whining, or screaming

• No disobeying parents

• Ask politely for things

It is our job to model the behaviors we want our son to use. This means when we are angry we have to talk calmly and assertively. If we want Max to do something we must respect him by asking him politely. If he disobeys we don’t hit or kick him.

How are we doing? Swearing is kept to a minimum; every once in a while you will hear an expletive in the house. We yell if things aren’t working properly and sometimes we are rude in asking for things.

Max listens and hears all of this. And because he is learning from us he is repeating them, and he practices these actions. But as you can see from our house rules these aren’t the behaviors we want. For him it’s “you are doing it, why can’t I?”

It is our job to show him the best behaviors; we can’t just tell him. That means we have to stop the yelling, swearing, and rudeness. We have to be good role models.

We want Max to grow to become a good, responsible adult. It is our responsibility, just like with all parents, to “up our game”. That is, be the best role models we can be. No matter where we are at today we can always find something to improve upon.

If we don’t suit our actions to our words then our children will not become the kind of adults we want them to be.

Recently I wrote about raising my 9 year old son Max and the fact that there were no consistent rules in our house. My wife and I had been at our wits end trying to figure out how we were going to raise this kid right.

We read a lot of books and listened to parents, educators, and counselors. We tried implementing all of the suggestions but nothing seemed to work.

Recently we started working with both a family and a parent counselor. The first comes a couple of times a month, generally on Saturdays, so that Max will be involved in the session. The second comes every week in the morning to work with just my wife and me.

Several weeks ago they both asked us the same questions independently:

What are our house rules?

So we rattled off several things: no hitting, no swearing, and no yelling, among other things.

What are the consequences if the rules are broken?

We gave some answers like “he gets a time out if he does A” but then sometimes “we take a toy away” and “we have been known to take away a privilege or a special outing.”

Where are the rules and consequences posted?

Umm, nowhere.

Does Max know the rules and consequences?

He knows the rules; we tell him all the time. And, well, he has experienced the consequences so he knows something will happen if he does anything wrong.

Both counselors shook their heads. They suggested it might be best if we had a joint session with both counselors to come up with some rules. We agreed.

Hooray, finally we are going to find out what we can do about House Rules!

We all joined together last week and hammered out a list of rules. These are some of them:

• No swearing

• No hitting or kicking

• No yelling, whining, or screaming

• No disobeying parents

• Ask politely for things

You get the idea. We have several more but these will do for examples.

We didn’t come up with consequences on that day but one thing was suggested. We had recently started giving Max an allowance. With it he could follow his passion with buying as many things as he could or put it in the bank. But that’s another story. In this case the idea was brought up that for some of the consequences he could lose some of his money. That was something to think about because our consequences weren’t working.

We scheduled a second group meeting for this passed Monday. This time it was going to be after school so Max could contribute to the discussion.

When the day came both counselors arrived and sat down in the living room. Max was dropped off from school, came in the house, and asked the usual question: “Who’s coming today.”

When we told him he was disappointed. We were surprised because he likes both people and generally has fun with them. On this day, we think that with both parents and both counselors present he may have felt intimidated. He adamantly refused to join in the meeting.

“But Max, this is about setting house rules. Last week you were excited when we told you this was happening.”

“Yeah, well, not today.”

We told him that we were going to do it anyway with or without his contributions. He shrugged and told us that we had better make tougher rules for the parents otherwise he won’t follow any of his.

So we got down to business. We pulled out a large cardboard sheet and in one column wrote out our list of rules. While we were doing this we could hear Max muttering and swearing in the other room; he wanted one of us to play. He even went so far as to disrupt the discussions several times.

The counselors just shrugged and smiled. Their response was that he didn’t like what we were doing and didn’t want it to happen. We persevered. Once we were done listing the rules we started on the consequences for each:

• Loses five cents for each swear.

• Five minute time out and a loss of privileges for hitting and kicking.

• For yelling, whining, or screaming Max will first get a warning. Then he will lose five cents each time he does it.

• The first time he disobeys he will get a warning. After that he will lose twenty-five cent for each incident.

• If he doesn’t ask politely he won’t get what he asked for.

When we were done we called Max in to see our results. He started to read the board and then complained it was all about him and there was nothing about the parents. We reassured him that we would have to follow the same rules.

But he wasn’t happy and he tried to tear the sheet down the middle. We stopped him and taped it up on the living room wall so that we would all be able to see it.

At the same time we attached a weekly sheet of pictures of one hundred nickels. For each transgression nickels would be crossed off. Whatever was left at the end of the week would be what he gets for allowance.

Max asked a very smart question: “What if I do so many bad things that I go over the amount of money I get?”

We told him that it would then carry over into the following week.

The counselors think that it will only take a week before Max starts following the rules. That would be nice and we will be waiting with bated breath.

Twenty four hours later we have only heard two swears coming out of his mouth. Amazing! There has been very little screaming or whining. Awesome!

So far we have only crossed out a half a dozen nickels but we have noticed that he has been punishing himself too. He personally has scratched out another forty. He says it is because he deserved it. Seems like he doesn’t think our consequences were powerful enough.

Another interesting reaction was that when he realized each swear was worth five cents but disobeying would cost him twenty-five cents. His eyes widened; his mouth opened in a circle; and he clapped his hand over it.

Do I think this is it? Is he now going to follow all the rules?

I find it hard to believe that it would happen this quickly. I think that he will probably start testing us to see what he can get away with. It may get worse before it gets better. As long as my wife and I keep a united front it should eventually work.

As the counselors were leaving after the meeting my wife said “If we had realized it was so easy to set up these rules we would have done this a long time ago.”

But they told us that most parents know how to do it but they don’t realize it; they, and we, need to be shown the first time.

This takes care of four of Max’s five problems mentioned in the last post. I’ll talk about the fifth one, modeling behaviors for him, in my next one.

For a long time my wife and I have been working with our son Max to teach him right from wrong, respect, and discipline. The problem was that we were letting some things slide. That is, we would let him get away with doing things he shouldn’t.

Why were we doing that?

Max has been diagnosed with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome among other things. We noticed, for example, that some bipolar children swear constantly. It is part of their “condition”. Parents of this kind of child tend to ignore the bad language because there are other things more important to resolve like bad tempers. We were doing the same thing.

We also looked at Max’s brother who is quite a bit older. He is a great kid; the things we did to raise him were the things he needed. We tried to raise our younger son the same way but it wasn’t working. We have felt clueless at what to do.

We finally learned that Max is no different than “normal” children. Yes, he may have a lot of disorders but there are things he should not be getting away with. If a disorder is preventing him from “naturally” learning what he needs to do he needs to be provided the tools to help him. Let’s face it, it won’t matter that he has a disorder when he is an adult; if he does something wrong he will have to suffer the consequences just like anyone else.

He has several problems that are his parents’ responsibility to resolve:

• He isn’t clear on the rules. Why? Because they keep changing for him. Today he might swear and he will get a timeout. The same swearing tomorrow may cause him to lose a favorite toy for awhile. And yesterday it may have been just ignored.

• At the same time he isn’t clear on the consequences. I mentioned above how they can keep changing.

• In school he has a defined set of rules and consequences. He knows what to expect and he is comfortable with that. At home there is nothing. In some ways he feels unsafe because there is nothing in place to help him. Sure, one day a parent will tell him that swearing is not allowed but guess what? A lot of times he gets away with it. In school he would get a consequence automatically.

• His parents haven’t been modeling the required behaviors. As a result he is unsure what is right or wrong. Dad might hit his thumb with a hammer and swear a little bit but then will turn around and tell Max that swearing is wrong. Which is it? And why is it okay for Daddy to do it and not him?

• His parents are not always together on what his consequences should be. Mom may require a time out for swearing and Dad may just ignore it. At school everyone, adults and children, follow the exact same rules.

My wife and I knew that something had to be done. We had tried out some structure at home on weekends and that works a lot better for Max than just a lot of free time.

A doctor one time told us that we would be great parents for some children but not for Max. He needs strict parents with a lot of structure. We were too laid back to handle him. The doctor suggested we watch The Dog Whisperer and Supernanny to get some ideas on how we should be acting.

Okay we tried that, Supernanny suggested setting up house rules and consequences but never gave concrete examples on what they could be and how to implement them.

For awhile we have been allowing Max’s counselor, child advocate, and mentor teach him a lot of the proper ways to be. I’m not saying we stopped being parents; we kept trying different methods but nothing seemed to work for us. But I think it has more to do with the fact that we, as parents, are not always together on the things we should be doing.

Finally a ray of sunshine opened up. In my next post I will talk more about what has happened recently.

Recently my wife, son, and I went to see the new “Karate Kid” movie:

Even though I liked the old version for me there were two pluses to this one:

1. It stars Jackie Chan; I will go to see anything that he is in.
2. It also includes a rising young star named Jaden Smith. I don’t know much about him but I am a big fan of his parents Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

It took a long time to get there though Max kept saying, “Not today.” We were finally able to convince him to go. When we did he was mesmerized. He loved it and so did we.

Not only that, there were things I could take away from it. I don’t want to give away much of the story but part of it is about a karate master that trains a young boy. His methods are a good way to teach children respect. If you’ve seen the old version with Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio you may remember the “wax on, wax off” scene where the boy is required to wax a car with one hand and remove it with the other:

This continues until he learns a lesson from it.

It reminds me of the television show “Strict Parents“.  If a child needs a consequence she is generally required to complete a chore over and over again until she understands what she did wrong.

With all of the discipline he receives the boy in the movie goes from being unhappy and sullen to enjoying life.

It seems like there are things we can use with Max. He tends to get belligerent if he is told to do things even as minor as “pick up your clothes.” Generally he gets time outs and the loss of a favorite toy for awhile. Maybe if he has to do something over and over again he will finally understand.

But there is a problem; Max has become more aggressive since seeing it. If he is in a pool with other boys he has been convincing them to karate chop each other with him.

He has also been coming up behind his mother or me when we are sitting down. He will then wrap his arms around our necks to hug us. He then starts squeezing tighter and tighter, oblivious to us telling him to stop. He only ends it when we yell and then he feels like the victim. He runs into his room and slams the door.

A karate kid he’s not…yet. A lot of parents will send their kids off to martial arts school to teach them discipline. These children learn that it is not good to use it as a weapon. I have no doubt that Max can pick up this skill without a problem. But I’m not sure he would understand that he is not to use it on other people. I mentioned the playing around in the pool he does.

I am also speaking from experience. He is a very good wrestler and the coaches love having him on their teams. The problem is that we have not been able to make him aware that he cannot just perform a wrestling move on his elderly grandmother just because she happens to be in the room.

So perhaps a “wax on, wax off” style will work better. This is one way of teaching kids respect; maybe he can learn it too.

It is Sunday; no school today. We had a very active and sometimes unhappy boy today though. As a result his Mom and Dad were totally exhausted by noon; and we still had a half a day to get through.

I’ve written a lot about how Max needs structure for things to run smoothly. Weekdays are great because he is in school which has a set program. He gets home around 3:30 but then he has counselors and mentors in to play with him. On the off days he may find a friend available to play with.

Weekends are always a problem since it is difficult to structure Saturday and Sunday for Max. This last Sunday nothing was set up so we were worried how it would go for him.

But the way things went you would think we had actually structured the day. This was Max’s schedule:

• 6 a.m.

My wife and I were startled awake by a scream and a jarring bounce on our bed. My son was awake and raring to go. We, of course, were groggy and not ready to roll out of bed. With a lot of prompting my wife struggled up to start the day. Fifteen minutes later he was after me to come into his room which I finally was able to do.

• 6 to 7 a.m.

We were subjected to a lot of screaming and cursing. Nothing was going right for him. Needless to say, there were a lot of time outs and more grumbling.

• 7 to 8 a.m.

Dad and son went down to the football field to toss and kick the ball around. I was not quite ready for this but Mom needed a little bit more sleep so off we went. We had a great time; he did all the running; he and I did all the throwing, kicking, and catching.

Several times Max asked me to dive for the ball but there was no way his old man was going to do something like that, especially that early in the morning.

• 8 to 9 a.m.

My wife and I realized that this would be a great time to take Max to get his blood tests. We called the hospital and they told us that since it was so early no one would be in the blood lab. Right now it is only available to patients but they would be able to fit him in.

But even though it was a great time it didn’t go without a lot of problems.

• 9 to 10 a.m.

Once we got home we finally had breakfast. My wife and I have been drinking these great fruit shakes. It is my job to make then. We sat and drank them along with some turkey bacon.

Max had a toaster waffle and watched a little bit of television.

• 10 to 10:30 a.m.

Now my son started screaming and whining again. What are we going to do until 12 o’clock? He knew that he had a playdate at that time but he was too anxious to wait.

• 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.

We put up with Max’s issues for awhile but then realized we would need snacks to take with us at noon. Dad and Max went shopping; we picked up a bag of veggie chips and a bag of red hot corn chips. But of course if Max had had his way we would have bought a lot more than that.

• 11:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.

There was more whining. Dad did his best to distract his son as Mom finished getting ready for the playdate.

• 12 to 4 p.m.

We met up with Max’s friend at the local pond. The boy was there with his brother and grandmother. My son met this boy in Cub Scouts. I’ve noticed that separately he and Max are both hyperactive. But together it was wild. Just watching them was exhausting.

• 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

When the boys got tired of swimming we came home. Since it was still early we brought Max’s friend with us. Both boys showed up at the house still hyper. The first thing they did was ride bikes and later disappeared down to the football field to play.

The other boyfriend has ADHD like Max, and is very hyperactive too. Unlike my son he gets silly; we haven’t seen him angry. He is on meds though just like Max.

At one point he felt sick and wanted to go home but there was no one there to take care of him so we kept him longer. Very soon he was better and out skateboarding.

After he left my wife commented that it is wonderful to have playdates but we don’t think they should last 7 hours….

• 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

We can’t forget that Monday is a school day so we wanted Max to have a shower before going to bed. But we would have had to hold him up and wash him ourselves because he was pretty close to sleep walking by then. We put him to bed and made sure he showered in the morning when he got up.

So this was our “unstructured” day. Originally we had only planned a two hour playdate but as you can see everything just fell into place to keep Max occupied all day.

It would be nice if every weekend day could be like this.

On Sunday it dawned on us that Max need his drug levels tested. His psychiatrist had been asking for weeks for a report. She needed to know how much Depakote was in his system. Too much can cause liver problems. It had been difficult to schedule because we had to take him before he had gotten his morning meds.

Today appeared to be the best day to get him up to the hospital. When he first heard our plan Max dug his feet in. He was not going; he hates having the needle stuck into his arm. We were able to persuade him that the last few times things had gone really well and it would be quick. Ha, ha, famous last words.

Once we were there it looked promising. The parking lot was empty and there were no patients in Admitting. We sat down with the intake person and handed over the order from Max’s psychiatrist. In the process of filling things in the girl noticed that the doctor’s full name wasn’t available. We didn’t know the first name and the hospital wasn’t willing to accept incomplete information. They looked the name up in the hospital directory but couldn’t find it.

I left my wife and son to drive home to get it. Just as I pulled into the driveway I got a call that the hospital had found her correct name. By the time I got back the paperwork was done and everyone was ready to walk over to the blood labs. There we turned in my son’s records and then had to sit and wait.

This wasn’t going well. The longer Max waits the more he starts thinking. We knew that if the technician didn’t get us quickly he would decide he really didn’t want to do this. But he was good. When he was finally called he went into the lab without a problem.

All the way down he talked about how he had done this before and he wasn’t afraid. He hopped up into the chair and presented his arm.

But this is where the fun started. Sadly, I am being facetious here. As the girl took his left arm he asked if someone could hold his hand. The supervisor came over and grasped his right hand. At the same time she took his left hand and held it down. After this two mistakes were made.

If you have ever had blood drawn you know that when you stretch your hand out there are several steps they follow:

• They wrap an elastic tourniquet around your upper arm long enough to find a vein.

• Once found they clean the area around it.

• You now clench your fist.

• The needle is slid into the vein. You might feel a pinch.

• Once it is in place you are told to unclench your fist. This allows the blood to run freely.

• The technician attaches a tube to the needle and takes some blood. She will repeat this step until the required number of tubes are filled.

• When done, the needle is removed. A cotton swab and band-aid replaces it.

• You are finished.

The first mistake the technician made was with the needle. She slid it into the vein after having him clench his fist but rather than leave it there she began to move it.

Imagine your arm lying stretched out on a clock; your hand is pointing towards the 12. The needle is inserted from the 12 in the direction of the 6. Being dissatisfied with the positioning she turns the needle to the 9 o’clock position. Nope, it didn’t work. It is now switched to 3 o’clock before settling back in the 12 to 6 position. In the process she lifts and lowers it a couple of times. Imagine how that would feel.

As could be expected Max howled and we were stunned. We had never seen such a botched job.

Once the needle was in place and the first tube was inserted Max was never told to open his fist so the blood trickled out slowly and painfully. He cried the whole time.

When it was done they congratulated my son on how brave he had been and gave him some graham crackers. Just before we left my wife turned to them and told them that we had never had problems bringing him in for blood tests but he would probably not want to do it again. He had never been in so much pain and in fact until now he had only ever felt “the pinch”.

I am convinced they sent someone new down to practice on my son. Why else would a supervisor offer to hold his arm down while she was working? That had never been done previously. It is true the first time Max gave blood he sat on my lap and howled but that was before the needle ever came near him. He was very young at the time. It took over an hour but when it was finally completed I think he was surprised how little it hurt.

Even though he has never liked having it done the only struggles we had were when we tried to get him there. Once he was in the seat he would always sit through it without a whimper.

And he always gets a prize when it is over. Today he got a pen with four different inks inside. He can switch to whichever color he chooses at any one time. He has been asking for one of these for awhile and today he got it.

Even though he has his prize my wife and I know it is going to be a real struggle from now on to get him there. Why do they have to let novices practice on our children?

Frankly, I would like to get Max off any drug that requires blood tests anyway. And I would be much happier if he could get off of the drugs all together!

The beginning of last week end was a blast!

On Thursday Max and I went camping in the White Mountains. This started out as an experiment. Except for Cub Scout overnights my son and I have never gone away by ourselves. I wanted to see how we would handle any meltdown he might have in front of other people. He was great; nothing happened.

Friday we took the Cog Railway up Mount Washington. Our original plan was to just drive up, do the train, and then come home. We both decided that a 5 hour round trip drive would be just too much so we added the camping. Max and I had a lot of fun “riding the rails” and being on top of the mountain.

But then we came home. We walked in the door on Saturday morning…and all hell broke loose. The fun and good times were completely forgotten. Max snapped. Nothing we did was right. He was screaming and yelling. Several times he threatened to hit us.

He spent more time getting time outs and consequences for the rest of the weekend. We noticed that he was unhappy as well.

What prompted all of these?

• Maybe he doesn’t like end of the fun times.

• Or perhaps it is similar to the way a lot of kids with disorders go through school life. That is, they are able to keep things together during the day but once they get home they are in a safe environment where they can lose control.

• My wife believes that this is the same as when we go away whether for one day or several. Max is able to keep in control during the trip but then he needs that release time once he gets home.

But then Max and Dad are tired once we get home. For whatever reason we tend to be grumpy too. I know that my son reacts badly to my bad humor.

• Our doctor is convinced it is due to the food Max eats. He won’t touch any of the meals his Mom creates. It is not because they are terrible; they are in fact quite good. As a result he tends to eat both junk and fast foods on a regular basis which isn’t terribly healthy.

It could be any or all of these reasons. Or it could be something else.

But I think that whatever it is Max’s reactions are not the result of conscious thought. I believe that he is having such a good time he doesn’t realize that he is winding tighter and tighter like a spring. When he finds a safe place like home the catch on the spring lets lose and he loses control

Once that happens he doesn’t know how to stop his explosions. And the longer they go on the more escalated he gets.

One thing I do know is that he is very unhappy while this is going on. When the storm subsides he is very apologetic. He has also been known to cry, like this weekend…which is very rare for him. He thinks that he should never show tears.

By Sunday evening things were back to normal. Of course, it was bedtime and he was asleep almost immediately. Both my wife and I slept through several programs on the couch.

So it turned out to be an exciting weekend. The first part had a lot of ups. The second half was very down. We are hoping that the tools that his counselors are teaching him and changes in his diet will help level things off so that we can go away more often.

In the end we want him to be a happier kid.

Last Thursday my son and I went camping at Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Our initial goal was just to ride the Cog Railway up to it but since it is a 5 hour drive round trip we decided to break it up. That is, we would drive up on Thursday. Spend the night at a camp ground and then do the train on Friday. After that we would go home.

Mount Washington is the tallest mountain in the Northeastern part of the United States. It is over 6200 feet high and is known for its dangerous and very changeable weather. But today we got some surprising news: at the top it was 63 degrees and very little wind. This meant we would be able to leave the winter coats in the car.

I had heard for years how exciting the train ride was up the mountain. One friend told me that it was worth any price…but take a lot of pictures.

When Max and I arrived we were presented with something out of the past. This small train was built in the mid 1860s and sits outside a large old train station. There are actually 10 of them which consist of a passenger car that holds about 60 people and a small engine that pushes it up the slope.

To give you an idea what it looks like I found this clip on YouTube:

When we first arrived Max and I had to check in. This meant converting the tickets we got online into real ones. Then we had to wait. The train hadn’t arrived back down the mountain from its first trip so we wandered around taking pictures. This one is of the first train used on the line:

This picture came from the Cog Railway website. Max’s photos have not been developed yet.

It wasn’t long before we heard an “ALL ABOARD” bellowed from the train conductor. The passengers lined up ready to hand in their tickets. I had made sure that Max and I were first because I knew he’d love the seats just inside the door. These would give a perfect view of the tracks in front of us as we chugged up the side of the mountain.

As we settled in the conductor informed us we were sitting in one of the new biodiesel trains. They still have one that is powered by coal and that runs once a day at 9 am. I must say this was our only disappointment because we had been looking forward to that one. I also noticed that the whistles are different. The newer ones sound like a regular train whistle.

I won’t go into any detail about the ride up. The nice thing was that the conductor also acted as our tour guide pointing out notable objects along the way. It took an hour and we not only passed many hikers climbing along the tracks but also a lot of incredible sights. Max enthusiastically took pictures on the way to the top. At the peak I couldn’t resist photographing him standing next to the summit marker.

But of course once there the first thing he found was the requisite gift shop. This is where his buying addiction kicked in. He was more interested in getting the moose back scratcher, the Mount Washington Park Ranger badge, and the “this bike climbed Mount Washington” bumper sticker than seeing the sights.

This was totally different from when we hiked up Mount Monadnock last fall. Then he couldn’t get enough of climbing the rocks and pointing out the sights to his struggling old man.

We spent an hour on top of the mountain before it was time to board the train again and head below. On the way down the conductor became the brakeman. It was now his job to spin the massive wheels at the front of the passenger car to make sure we didn’t descent too quickly. Like on the way up it took an hour to get back to the train’s base station.

This is another clip from YouTube showing the return trip:

As I mentioned earlier it is never a complete trip unless Max is begging to buy stuff. But I’ll tell you one thing, on the way down that scratcher did a great job on my back and on his. But like everything else he buys my son forgot about his new prizes immediately after returning to our home in Massachusetts.

The big plus about our trip is that except for the buying Max’s disorders did not present themselves very much. This was a good thing. I had been worried that this could be a make or break event. That is, if he wasn’t able to remain calm and enjoy the time we had we just might not be able to do it again.

But it was successful and we are now planning our next trips for the summer.

I can’t wait!

Recently I was talking to my 9 year old, Max. It is summer now and I mentioned that we hadn’t started planning what we will be doing. I asked him what he would like. He said,

“I want to go camping.”

“Great idea. Where do you want to camp?”

“At Mount Washington.”

“I like that. And what do you want to do when we are there?”

“Take the cog railway to the top of the mountain.”

“You know, I think that is a great plan. Why don’t we do it.”

“When?”

“We will leave on Thursday.” Today was Sunday.

Max was excited; he couldn’t wait.

I didn’t tell him I had already planned the trip to Mount Washington in Northern New Hampshire on Thursday. We would camp out overnight and take the train up the mountain on Friday morning. I had already bought the train tickets and scheduled the campsite. Except for packing we were all set to go.

Isn’t it nice we think alike?

Because Max is still in school and has afternoon programs it was my job to pack and get ready. I cleaned and packed the tent and sleeping bags, food, water, and clothes. But then of course there were other things that Max wanted to take. By the time the car was loaded it looked like we were going for a week instead of one night.

And then there were his meds. I was a little worried about how I was going to keep track of all of them. My wife came up with a great idea. She bought a box of those small yellow envelopes. She then loaded them up with the correct dosages. After that she labeled them with their days and times. Perfect.

I suppose it would have been easy if Max’s meds were all the same each time of day but they are set up so that he gets different ones at different times. Not only that some of them have to be cut in half. The envelopes worked great!

Since we were leaving on Thursday he ended up missing two days of school. Generally this would be a problem because he loves going but this was a special case. He was genuinely excited about going north.

The drive took 3 hours so we were both ready to relax when we got there. As we went to check in at the camp I noticed Max was getting worried. I asked him what the problem was and he pointed to several signs posted around the door. We were in bear country. These were warnings to watch out for them.

I spoke to the camp owner and he assured me that he hadn’t seen a bear come through in two years. That was great but a short time later Max was talking to his kids. They informed him that they saw one every day during the school year. They would pass it on the bus as they passed through the next town over. Apparently the residents were feeding it. It seemed like they were trying to make it a pet. But if they weren’t careful they would be in for a rude awakening. Bears don’t make good pets.

We spent the afternoon swimming in the pool and Max made friends. One little girl he met was disappointed. It seems that her older sister had been the one to encounter the camp bear two years before. She wanted to see one too but it hadn’t happened yet. Her family only had two days left at their campsite.

Dinner was fun; not really. I had set up the grill to cook hot dogs and beans but it took over an hour just to get the coals hot enough. I always use a chimney to get things going since I don’t use lighter fluid. It generally takes 20 minutes before the food goes on. That night it took over an hour to get a half way decent fire.

While I was waiting to cook Max kept bringing new friends over to see what was happening so they got to see the non-cook at work.

After dinner and some ice cream that we got at the camp store Max was ready for bed. He was asleep by 8:00. Not having anything else to do I turned in and was asleep by 8:30. I ended up waking at midnight and just lay there thinking about bears. I kept imagining them snuffling around the tent.

In the meantime my son was restless. He kept sitting up, looking around, and then lying down. Several times he would call me; convinced I was gone. I would calmly tell him I was still there sleeping beside him.

In the morning we struggled awake and ate breakfast. After that we headed out to the Mt Washington Cog Railway to ride up the mountain. This was sort of a compromise. We really wanted to ride the train even though we had the options of driving up or climbing. I had been told it was too scary by car and climbing could take a very long time.

The drive from the campsite to the mountain is gorgeous. We were in the middle of the Presidential Range which is in the northern most part of the White Mountains. Every where you look there is a mountain or a steep hill covered in greenery.

The one draw back is that there is not alot of cell phone service. We learned that if you are driving and you find a connection pull over quickly. It can be lost just as quickly as it was found. When we discovered one we called Mom to tell her what was going on.

We had to let her know that plans had changed. Originally after the train ride we were going to head home but we decided to stay one more night. She liked this idea since it meant more time for her to relax. And luckily she had packed extra meds just in case.

After that we continued on the road to the train. When I planned the trip I made sure that our stops weren’t too complicated. The camp was 10 miles from the highway on a smaller road and the train was another 10 miles off the same road. So everything was easy.

After the train it was more swimming and playing at the camp. I tried to cook again that night but I couldn’t get the coals working at all so Max and I decided to go out for dinner. We found a nice family restaurant, ate, and then returned to camp for another ice cream. I was able to keep my son up a little later that night but we were both asleep by 9.

It was another restless night for both of us. It didn’t help that a family with two large dogs arrived in the evening to start their vacation. The dogs barked and the people partied until 4 in the morning. Now mind you it wasn’t just a bunch of kids. It was Mom and Dad, Grandma, and two teenagers. All were up having a good time.

During the night they wandered up and down the camp roads talking and shining their flashlights into the tents. It seems that one of them had had too much to drink and kept crashing into things; apologizing as they went. I didn’t mind too much because I figured that the noise was keeping away the bears.

Then the rain started; it was about 3 am. I could hear it pelting against the tent as it fell. Max slept through it until about 5. He really needed to go to the bathroom so we climbed out of the tent. Since we didn’t bring any rain gear with us we threw towels over our heads and headed out.

The rain had been coming down so hard we found that everything was flooded. Max and I slogged to the restrooms in 4 inch of deep water. When we got done we headed back to our tent where we found that the site had also flooded and everything including the tent was soaked.

We packed everything up and stowed it all in the car. And then we sat huddled in it until the office opened at 8. During that time we noticed that in the next site over the dogs were missing; the tents were gone; and the two pickup trucks had disappeared.

I assumed that they couldn’t handle the rain and had left long before us. After we got home someone suggested that maybe they had been thrown out for all of the noise. There was a rule after all that quiet time was from 9 at night to 7 in the morning. They certainly weren’t quiet.

It was a wonderful trip though the rain put a damper on our last day. Our revised plan had been to spend the morning swimming before checking out at noon. After that we were going to stop at a place called “The Basin” to do some hiking. We were expecting to get home by 4 in the afternoon.

However, with all of the torrential down pours we headed straight for home and arrived at 11 o’clock.

My regular readers may have noticed that this post was a little different than most. Generally I talk about Max’s disorders or some other illness that is being addressed. Except for the mention of medications at the beginning there was nothing to talk about.

My son thrived on being out in the wilderness. I can almost imagine him living outside permanently when he is older. There were no upsets; he just had fun.

Except for the fact that Dad was a little grumpy, everything was perfect.