A family outing with older kids is always one part incessant whining, one part sulking and a good portion of ME playing puppeteer and pulling the strings to work in MY favor. Shhhh. Don’t tell the kids.
And so it was when I decided two weekends ago that we wouldn’t go just down the street to get an already-cut Christmas tree from the farmer’s market. This year, after drooling over photos posted by friends from a very picturesque valley covered in trees waiting to be chopped, I decided we should make the trek out to Leicester to the Sandy Hollar tree farm.
First rule…do NOT tell the kid and teen that this will involve more than five minutes riding in the car. They’ll get it, when they finally look up from playing on my phone/his phone/someone’s phone, and see that we’re still in the car and that the car is, in fact, still moving. This realization will begin the dramatic episode of previously mentioned whining with an Oscar-worthy monologue by one of my offspring about how awful it was for me to think they’d enjoy driving this far, how they’re now carsick, and how, gasp, they no longer have cellphone service. Cue the applause.
We arrived at Sandy Hollar after a gorgeous, very winding drive through the mountains. No one puked and all survived the last 15 minutes without a device. But still the troops were restless and not at all happy with their adventurous mom. The teen, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, insisting he didn’t need a coat even though it was 47 degrees, tried to convince me he wasn’t affected by the cold while he shivered and his lips turned blue. He put on the coat.
This led to the next level of whining while we waited for the Christmas wagon to take us a mile uphill to pick a tree…”why do we have to wait for the wagon?! Can’t we just cut down one of these trees by the port-a-potty and be done?!” Followed by… “Don’t touch me!”
Then it was my turn. For the record, I only resort to playing puppeteer when their behavior has reached an all-time low and I’m tired of getting mad. That’s when I “pull a string” and do MY best Oscar-worthy performance. I look at the boys, try to get my eyes to water just slightly, and say in a soft voice, “All I wanted to do was create a fun, memorable family experience. My bad.”
Drop the mic, or in this case the tree saw, and walk off. Thank you. Thank you very much. (Friends in the mental health field, please don’t judge.)
Something about a little guilt makes my two sensitive creatures crumble. Moods change quickly as they realize their actions and words CAN actually affect others. I see their faces register something close to…”oh…this wasn’t planned to make me miserable.” And they start to have fun.
We climb on the wagon and begin the ride to the top. My boys are happy now as we ride past farm animals and old barns. We laugh at the llamas, make noises at the goats, and are impressed by the massive piles of poop produced by the geese. Caught up in my excitement of finally having a nice family activity, I momentarily forgot a major rule of raising older kids/teens. Do NOT touch them. Ever. And never, EVER attempt this in public. I put my arm around the smaller one and laid my hand on the bigger one’s leg, just to see if he was cold. And then came the minor “freak out.”
“Stop! Mom, you are SO weird!” Lesson learned.
Once we got to the top, we found our tree and the older one jumped into help…without any prompting! A brief peek into responsible, adulthood? Perhaps. He even carried it down the hill. Score one for mom and my child-rearing abilities.
We laughed on the wagon ride down, got snacks as we waited for the tree, and took photos of the boxer with the awesome under-bite in the car parked next to us.
My patience and puppeteer-ing paid off. And I hope it provided a memory they’ll smile about years down the road.
Sometimes, you just gotta know which strings to pull. 😉
