By Katie Branley 
“Then I don’t even want to go!” my son yelled at me from his perch atop our stairs. Red-faced and angry, he tantrumed like the 3-year-old of his youth and less like the almost 12-year-old he was. The road trip I had painstakingly planned for the past month was off to a rocky start. His rage was in reaction to one of the many parenting decisions he found draconian and unfair.
This cycle of no and I told you so seemed to define our relationship. Standing on the cliff of teenhood, we were locked in a battle. He perched on the edge, wanting nothing more than to leap into the cavern of freedom beyond. And me with the full force of my weight pulling in the opposite direction. Willing him away from the side. Struggling to keep him from making mistakes. Guiding him to just grow up a little slower.
This road trip may have been a manifestation of these emotions in physical form. An attempt to numb the pain of my oldest child getting older with highway tchotchkes, snacks, and the region’s largest ball of yarn. Months earlier, I looked at our calendar and realized that the universe had laid squarely in my lap its most precious and elusive gift, the gift of time. My son and I had a week all to ourselves before the school year started. Bonus: that school year happened to be his transition to middle school.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, which I rarely am, the road trip could become a rite of passage. A ritual I could bake into our family’s lore that would be handed down through generations. Each year, the mothers that would come after me would look to the horizon of puberty and stave it off as they loaded their sons into SUVs and took to the road. These women would tell stories of the mother, who had the foresight to see that her life was about to change and freeze time with a road trip so epic, so earth-shatteringly fun, filled with so much bonding and togetherness that her son would count it as the best time he ever had. It was a simple request.
As my son raged about his need for three separate electronic devices to accompany him on the drive, I sensed our goals for the journey were not exactly what you would call “aligned.” I had spent the previous evening researching and downloading podcasts related to his interests while he had charged the instruments of isolation to buffer him from bonding with his mother.
At that moment, it occurred to me I might be taking this venture to spend quality time with my son a little too seriously. If I didn’t relax and enjoy the time together, I would miss the entire experience. Incidentally, if a vision board existed for this voyage, or parenting him in general, a campy “enjoy the ride” bumper sticker image would have surely been on it—right above the “Hang In There Baby” cat poster.
Parenting can seem like a series of life-and-death moves if you let it. The consequences of every decision you make seem dire when you think about them in terms of who you want these precious kids to become. When he was a baby, I was so afraid I would make a mistake that would cause him harm or damage him.
The first lesson of parenting I learned was that children are resilient. No matter how many times I accidentally bumped his head into a wall in the middle of the night or forgot to turn on the baby monitor, he rolled with it. He had no idea how little I knew about the job and assumed I was the best version of a parent there possibly was. His ability to love was undeterred by the fact that I had no idea what I was doing.
Regardless of what the year before had looked like, the performance review he gave always came up glowing. He understood the assignment and championed me as “World’s Best Mom,” no matter what. As he got older, this transition to adversary shook me. But I was undeterred in my quest for togetherness. With the trip in the balance, I caved. We compromised on two devices with time limit controls and hit the road.
Our journey would take us through three states over five days. Our agenda included activities from white water rafting to hiking the Smoky Mountains. First up was a tubing float down a North Carolina River. Tubing was an activity we had enjoyed together in the past, but this river was new to us. As we set out, I quickly realized this float was far more rustic than the gentle floats we had attempted in the past. I noticed several seasoned adventurers equipped with their own oars and dry gear bags.
“Have you floated this before? What’s it like?” I asked one woman who looked like she had just stepped off the pages of an REI catalog.
“Oh yes, it’s a fun one. A little rough at times, but you’ll make it. We didn’t have an oar the first time we came. I recommend you grab a large stick for the critters.”
Critters, what critters? Terror overtook me as I watched the bus that had dropped my son and me, equipped only with floating tubes, on the banks of what was apparently the river of doom abandon us. Less than three hours into my solo road trip with my son, and our lives were already in danger.
Now, dearest, I will let you in on a secret of mine: I like to be prepared. My family calls it annoying. I call it ensured survival for those I have been charged with keeping alive. Plus, I don’t hear anyone complaining about the road trip snacks or extra socks when their feet get wet.
To say that standing on the side of a river filled with who knows what, preparing to float two miles back to the safety of our car without a checklist of life-giving items like bug spray, a flare gun, and extra trail mix was anxiety-producing for me, would be an understatement.
As I struggled to get our two-person flotilla into the water and away from the banks where I assumed the “critters” would be, my frustration and fear had me take an all too familiar tone of annoyance with my son. I barked orders at him and rolled my eyes when he could not magically make our rafts hop over debris. Then, when we became lodged on a rock, and it was clear I would have to actually get in the water. I began to spiral into mean mommy mode. To my surprise, my son looked at me and said, “Mom, just stay calm. I’ll get it. We will get off the rock, and then I can swim to keep us in the middle of the river. You just have to stay calm.”
His instructions snapped me back to reality. I was not going to die on this river just because I didn’t have preparations for my preparation. I just needed to float and let him swim me down the river. He was far more capable of contributing than I was giving him credit for.
Over the next five days, I began to see more instances of my son’s growth. He, of course, still made phenomenally bad decisions, but he also made good ones. I had become so worried about what he might get wrong that I stopped seeing what he was getting right. Like when we accidentally forgot to scan the items in the bottom of the basket at the self-check-out, he walked them back in and paid. Or when he held the door open for an entire tram load of people as the hot sun baked down on him for five full minutes. Or insisting that we get out of our comfy beds and ride the midnight mountain coaster on the last night of our trip because when else were you going to ride a roller coaster at midnight with your mom, if not on an epic summer road trip?
It occurred to me that he was becoming the person his father and I wanted him to be. I had to admit that perhaps we weren’t giving him the time to do it. Before he was born, we read a book about cultivating what the author called a “growth mindset” in children. The idea that being good or bad at things is a myth. The theory highlights the power of yet. There aren’t things you can’t do; there are just things you can’t do yet. So phrases like “I’m bad at math” or “I’m just not an artist” are things you should never tell a child. Instead, you should plant the idea that learning something new is the result of intentional work, not the result of magic talent you luck into at birth.
Why had we abandoned this idea as our son got older? As the teen years overtook him and he looked more like a grown version of himself, we expected that the skills he would need to navigate his world would come naturally. The ability to regulate his emotions, plan for the future, navigate friendships, or weather disappointment would be mastered simply because he grew eight inches and blew out one more birthday candle.
In truth, I may not want to acknowledge who he is becoming because it means I have to admit he is getting older. On one of our hikes, we encountered a snake off to the side of the trail. I saw it, and he didn’t. I moved us past quickly, terrified the snake would leap up and bite me. Later, I told my son I had seen a snake on the trail. I asked if he would have wanted me to tell him or if that would have made him freak out. He said, “Well, I probably would have been scared, so maybe I wouldn’t want to know at that moment. But I wish you had told me sooner, like when we were right past it. Then I could have decided if I wanted to go back and see it or not. I also would have been proud that I made it past.”
This is the hope of all parents in the middle years. These years shield our people from the parts of the world they may not be ready for while building a bridge of knowledge and confidence to make good decisions about the life we must launch them into. The trick I am learning is to recognize all they are already capable of.
by Whitney Fleming 
by Jessica Johnston 
