The Kids

If you spend nine weeks traveling with your kids, you're going to see a lot of changes in their behavior and your own. You'll need your camera and notebook to capture these developmental breakthroughs and you may need a lot of aspirin and/or alcoholic beverages to ease the pain of the transformation.

Before we left the US, the kids spent most days fighting with us and each other over IPODs, video games, computers, and TV time. Setting rules such as no use during daylight hours/school days; one hour of outside play equals 15 minutes of electronics time; and bad grades/behavior equals no electronics privileges at all was a full time job. But on the positive side, dangling an IPOD over the kids' heads could stop their bad behavior mid-meltdown. So, I must admit that I was nervous taking the kids and leaving the electronics for nine weeks.  I might have said in half-jest that we should put the boy on Ritalin first, but in truth we found that you can actually exercise the crazy out of your kids given enough time and vertical space. It just requires more exercise and patience than any adult should rightfully have since asking them to race each other to that tree and back only works so many times.

I've mentioned before that the boy cited a lack of electronics when he repeatedly read aloud from the Amtrak cafe car menu on the way to the airport. By the time we reached Switzerland, he actively tried to either embarrass us or get sent home by loudly asking why the Swiss women weren't making dinner for their husbands instead of hiking--he would only say this if he thought there were English-speakers within ear shot. By Vienna, he wouldn't stop asking in an "outdoor voice" if they had moved Mecca in response to the ample display of head scarves. Having no electronics to restrict nor bedroom to send him to meant that we could either try clever diplomacy (this is not my skillset), beating him like a Persian rug (I must admit I was tempted), or restricting food. So, the boy went without dessert most meals and sometimes without dinner at all....and that was after he ended his hunger strike.

I know I've mentioned the hunger strike before, but I may not have mentioned the why. The boy knows how to order food in German, but he refused to speak anything but English for the first three days. He also told us he would rather go hungry than eat anything that didn't look like his grandmother's cooking, and there is nothing in eastern Switzerland/western Austria which resembles mashed potatoes and fried chicken. At a restaurant in Switzerland, the boy did nothing to hide his distaste for the menu before I declared he would have nothing. So, the good humored waitress set a completely empty plate in front of him when she brought out food for the rest of us. If you want to know the German phrase for "Sorry about the boy," we have it memorized.

After two days of eating nothing but the trail mix in his backpack, the boy threatened to call Swiss Social Services if we didn't buy him pizza, to which we responded that we had no fear of this at all since he refused to speak German.

After the third day, the temptation of gelato was too much and he also couldn't resist the schnitzel his father ordered for lunch. Upon ordering his own plate of schnitzel, he officially ended the hunger strike once and for all. By the time we left Feldkirch, the boy was asking for schnitzel for every meal, including breakfast....in German, and both we and the restaurants were shocked.

So, breaking a kid's spirit is a tough job, but one made much easier by the natural desire to both eat and live indoors. In fact, after a week of camping in the Alps, the act of booking a guest house for two nights caused the boy to grab his sister in a bear hug and jump up and down.  My husband and I looked at each other and smiled not only because we now had proof that the boy loved his sister, but we also had the threat of camping to hold over his head.

So, we achieved a hard-fought victory, and with bad behavior resulting in a date with the tent, the kids stopped slapping each other in the back seat or stabbing each other with the wooden swords we not-so-wisely bought them in Neuschwanstein. They also stopped using common insults like "jerk" or "moron", but this is when the children achieved a victory of their own. As soon as the boy realized that any word sounds like an insult given the right volume and inflection, he taught his sister to repurpose common words and phrases as curse words. The real low point came when the girl called the boy "A freshly paved road" and the boy responded, "Well, you're a red Mitzubishi!" And as annoying as it was to hear the girl yell, "Mom, tell him to stop calling me a chicken nugget!" there was no way to punish the boy without looking like an unstable tyrant. There was also no way to yell at him when he began calling everyone "Bob," or when he convinced his sister that a leper was a grown up leprechaun. I finally threw up the white flag when he responded, "She was only being nice," to the question, "Didn't you hear her screaming or say she didn't want you to pick her up?"

Despite the annoyance of being outwitted by the children, watching them conspire against us in the back seat seemed strangely heartwarming. Watching them look out the window at the European landscapes without headphones in their ears or game systems in their hands was also inspiring. I asked once or twice what they were thinking about, but this was a closely guarded secret.

After a month away from home, the only real fighting ensued over books, yes, books (I may have to type that again because even I don't believe it), and they mostly spent their time coming up with games like who could throw their wooden axe (another ill-advised purchase) farthest; who could hold their hand in the ice cold fountain longest; who could bowl a rock down the pier farthest without it falling into the water; whether the boy could read his sister's mind by placing his hands on each side of her head, or a game they called "Infection"--one person has a water bottle that will infect another if stabbed with the bottle, but the other can stop the attack by throwing and hitting the attacker with their own empty water bottle. At night, we played Tail Trail until we fell asleep and sometimes we played it in the car too.

By Slovenia, the boy had stopped yelling "Man down" while running past his injured sister, and instead he carried her around most cities, hills, and trails whenever she became tired, or complained about her feet, ankles, or legs. Most importantly, (and surprisingly) we were finally comfortable spending time with each other without the crutch of an electronic device.

(Below): Playing swords in Neuschwanstein