My son and I are in the midst of a long weekend trip that is part county trip, part 1 on 1 date, and part sightseeing whirlwind tour. Yesterday we set off to hike up Guadalupe Peak, which is the highest point in Texas. I’ll have a full review of the trip up hopefully before too long, but I wanted to talk about my day of flat out lying to my son, all under the guise of “encouraging parenting”
The hike up Guadalupe Peak
Guadalupe Peak is at an elevation of 8,749 feet, with the trailhead of about 5800 feet, so it’s about 3000 feet of vertical climb. My son is training to go to Philmont with his Boy Scout troop this summer, so that was the main impetus for trying this out. I would not say he’s super trained by any means, but I was hoping that the resiliency of a 14 year old body would make it not so bad.
The Park Service says that it’s a 6-8 hour hike and does call it “strenuous”. I have to admit, I was skeptical – how bad could it be?! and even pondered what we would do with our time once we were up and down super fast.
Oh the lies
It quickly became apparent that my son was NOT in a good place. We made it through the first part of the hike okay, but then the hours drug on and it felt like we were stopping every 2-3 minutes for a 5 minute rest break. All the time, even though I was also not feeling super, I was trying to encourage him as he worked through his emotions and the physical strain. I kept saying things like
- Oh we’re almost there
- Or almost to <some waypoint>
- Oh once we cross around this corner we can rest – there’s some great spots to rest there.
But then the BIG whoppers
The “best” lies were the ones after we had gotten over half way done and, even though we were getting closer, the complaining ratcheted WAY up. He became obsessed with not wanting to walk back down. So I tried to encourage him to not worry about that – let’s get to the top then we’ll talk about that.
I even went so far as to suggest that, at the top of an 8700 foot mountain in the middle of nowhere, there might be:
- A ski lift back down
- Toboggans to take us down to the parking lot
- Or a hang glider available
It probably speaks more to the pure mental and physical exhaustion rather than any naivete, but he was definitely talking about these options seriously, and I did everything I could to play them up. He didn’t think a toboggan would work because of the rocks and mountains and such and was concerned about the cost of the hang glider, especially if we had to go with an instructor. But he definitely had his eye on the ski lift back down 🙂
The real success
The real success though is that after 5 hours, and what felt like 5000 rest breaks, we made it to the top of Guadalupe Peak!
And even better, the hike back down was a piece of cake (comparatively)
Have you ever lied to your kids while traveling? Was I in the wrong?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Perfectly fine, except for D&C 10:28 and 42:21 and 2 Ne. 9:34!
😉
LOL – I had to look those ones up (although I guessed their meaning). But you don’t even have to go that far – you could go with the 10 commandments too 🙂
Was he glad that he stuck with it?
I don’t know. That was one of the things I kept telling him on the way up – things like “you’re going to make it” – “think how proud you’re going to be once you make it” – “you’ll regret it if you quit halfway up”. But he didn’t seem overly pumped when he made it. There was some talk as we were heading down about how once we made it back to the parking lot he was going to yell and high five me, but he was fairly subdued.
Probably just being a classic teenager and not wanting to admit his dad was right 🙂
Same question as above. Did he feel accomplished when y’all made it back down?
Never…I NEVER lied to my kids. Love, mom
You can always count on your mom to read your blog 😉
Not really for traveling lying aside from lying about where we were going on a trip when she was younger. I have lied to get her to accomplish something she was certain she could not do.
My daughter ran cross country in middle school and LOVED it. Said she could not run high school distance, too far at 3.1 miles. So I signed her up for the zoom the zoo run in town toward the end of 8th grade for fun and I knew it was a 5k. Luckily for me they never said how far it was that am before she started. If they had said “Welcome to the Zoom the Zoo 5k” I would have had a real problem. Not only did she finish but she won her age group at the longer distance that day. She said at the end that last mile seemed to go forever….
She just needed to get over the mental hurdle and now she does 6+ miles for fun. So sometimes we lie for their own benefit in a weird way.