White Knuckle Parenting: Parenting Under Duress

There are times when we, as parents, are pushed by circumstances beyond the normal parameters of parenting into extreme do-or-die desperation parenting episodes. Examples that come to mind include shipwreck; the Great Depression; or, in my case, the nearly 12-hour bus ride home from my son’s special hockey tournament with our closest 52 friends.

Honestly, people, it’s a miracle we hadn’t resorted to fistfighting and cannibalism by the time we arrived home.

We had set out on our Rockville to Lake Placid, New York, trip on Thursday full of joy and excitement with two and a half days of hockey and tournament activities in front of us. All of the players were excited to get to spend time with each other as they played hooky from school, and the team moms and dads were giddy with the potential of a safe, nonjudgmental weekend with like-minded parents and probably a few margaritas.

The return trip on Sunday had less anticipation on tap as our hockey players had nothing to look forward to upon return except a full week of school. Regardless, we set off in good cheer.

My goals for the day were to (a) not freak out, (b) have my son, Jack, do his homework, and (c) not freak out. I ended up mostly accomplishing those goals, although I did learn that no matter how hard it is to get my kid to do his homework while sitting at a dining room table, it is exponentially more difficult to get him to do it on a bus.

I also learned that homework and twisty mountain Adirondack roads aren't a great combination.

We handled the first several hours all right. We watched a strange little hockey movie about Canada-USA animosity at the start of the Iraq War. We stopped for lunch. We played a lot on the iPad. Then, in late afternoon, things started to disintegrate. Tempers flared, someone slammed his fingers in the door of the bathroom bus, someone else was crippled by nausea and a migraine. A sense of panic began to feel the air.

My husband called me at about 5 o'clock to ask me where I was. "Hell," I replied. "I am in hell."

Fortunately, I was distracted from said hell by my task of discouraging Jack from repeating "Shut the puck up! Shut the puck up!" which he had just learned from another player. He found it delightful. Me, less so.

It was, however, around this time that I was finally able to access the bus wifi, giving me access to life outside of my little two-seat bus world at the same time as Jack was enjoying watching The Adventures of Tintin on the bus TVs. He had his creepy motion-capture animated movie, and I had my Facebook friends. We were both happy. Although at 9 p.m., when my husband texted me to find out where we were and I discovered that we were still only in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that happiness started to ebb.

Around dinner time, I had flashed back to a college-era Greyhound bus trip I'd taken with a friend of mine from New York state to California. Evidently no one on the bus other than my friend and I had thought to bring snacks. They were busy hurling angry words at the driver and shouting, "There are children on this bus! Won't somebody thiiiiiink of the poor, starving children?" at the same time as I was ducked down behind a seat sneaking Nutter Butters. At its worst, this tournament trip was eons better than that bus ride.

In fact, all things considered, if there were ever a group of people to be trapped on a bus with, this is the group I'd choose. Fifteen minutes away from our Rockville destination, the coach stood up to say a few words about the tournament and the 34 players of all abilities from our team that had played in it.

This was the first special hockey tournament to take place at the revered Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, he told us. And our team, the Cheetahs, was the first to skate in the tournament. He talked a little bit about his thoughts as he skated on that ice with this team, thinking back to that famous Miracle on Ice game in 1980. "As I stood on that ice, I thought about these 34 miracles that we brought with us," he told us.

I took a few moments to think about those 34 amazing players myself and all that they had accomplished that weekend. I looked at my son, sleeping on my lap, who had managed to handle all the transitions and sensory input and forced flexibility, not to mention sheer physical demands that the tournament and bus ride had put on him. Despite—and maybe even because of—his autism, he had managed this whole trip with charm and grace and strength.

Suddenly I knew that if someone had asked me to turn around and get right back on a bus the very next day to do it again, I would be first in line. I guess that is the thing about parenting under duress; oftentimes the sheer honor of getting to parent our kids makes the whole thing worth it.

Jean, a.k.a. Stimey, writes a personal blog at Stimeyland. You can find her on Twitter as @Stimey and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Stimeyland.