I Left My Tween Daughter to Die on Mount Rainier
Navigating challenging parenting moments.
Hi, it’s me.
When I was around twelve or thirteen years old, my family—me and my parents—went on a road trip from Minneapolis to the Badlands and Mount Rushmore in western South Dakota. It’s an excruciatingly long and boring drive across a very flat and remote area—probably a seven or eight hour drive today, though likely longer back in the 1980s when the speed limit was lower and cars were slower.
The most vivid memory I have of that vacation was standing at a viewpoint that looked across to Mount Rushmore in the distance—four faces carved into the side of a rocky mountain cliff—declaring in my most disgusted adolescent tone, “We drove all the way here for this?!”
Did my parents want to throw me over the ledge of that viewpoint? Probably.
So I suppose it was Parenting Karma about twelve years ago when our then ten-year-old daughter Ruthie nearly sabotaged our own day trip to Mount Rainier National Park’s Paradise Visitor Center by suddenly “feeling sick” as we got ready to explore one of the easy trails to a nearby waterfall. It was the pre-teen’s version of the toddler with no bones trick—she simply flopped onto a chair in the visitor center and “fell asleep” while the rest of us walked around to look at the exhibits.
Whatever, I thought at the time. Her choice.
After touring the visitor center, we went outside to find the easy, paved trail to a popular waterfall spot with a beautiful view of Mount Rainier’s peak. Ruthie lagged behind us, perhaps complaining. I can’t recall exactly, but the sour attitude was strong. Fed up, I deposited her on a stone bench along the trail where I could see our waterfall destination up ahead, and told her to wait there while we kept going.
As if resigned to die right there on the side of the mountain, she laid down on the bench, pulled her hoodie around her face, and the rest of us went on with our lives.
This is one of our family lore stories, like the Mount Rushmore story from my own childhood. It marked an era of parenting when one of us didn’t have to stay behind to deal with a misbehaving child–she could practice a little independence to feel her feelings in a safe spot while we proceeded to a drama-free waterfall experience. I thought we handled it well, given the circumstances.
Years later, though, my perspective started to change when Ruthie was in middle school.
We were packing for a family camping trip at Ohanapecosh, a campground on the southeast side of Mount Rainier. Ruthie dug in her heels, not wanting to go. It was the evening before our scheduled departure, and I was frustrated that she wanted to bail on spending time with the family—yet, I didn’t want her to come if her attitude would sour the experience for everyone else. We talked through it, and eventually, she was able to articulate her fear that Mount Rainier, an active volcano, would explode on us.
Over time, we would learn that Ruthie struggled with anxiety in general, and for a season her anxiety focused on a fear of natural disasters–earthquakes, volcanos, hurricanes, and the like. We had to turn off news stories about extreme weather events when she was around, and she couldn’t watch any movies that involved natural disasters.
I recalled that previous day trip when I assumed her behavior was all attitude and stubbornness. Was it actually an anxiety that she was too young to understand or describe? Was she so overwhelmed that her mind and body essentially shut down? She’s nearly twenty-two years old now, and I asked her about this recently. Did she remember what she felt like that day? Does she understand it better now that she’s older?
Friend, she doesn’t remember. She barely remembers the day itself and certainly doesn’t remember how she felt or acted. Whether her attitude that day was willful or rooted in something deeper (we may never know!), turns out I didn’t ruin my daughter by leaving her on the mountain to die giving her space to feel her feelings!
These are the challenging parenting moments that keep us awake at night.
Every parent has doubts and wonders if they’re doing the right thing. Are we being too strict or too lenient? Are we addressing the right behaviors? Is our child willfully disobeying or is there an underlying issue we haven’t figured out yet?
No parenting book that I’ve ever read addresses these Oh Shit! moments when we realize we had it all wrong. Maybe a book like that exists, but I never came across one when I was actively parenting. The books I read were more about setting sleep schedules, methods of disciplining, how to raise respectful kids, or how to get your kids to obey without yelling at them.
These books left me with the impression that parenting was like feeding an algorithm. If I entered the right data, I could expect a certain output—like how I trained my Instagram feed to serve up funny Reels about GenX, menopause, and gardening. If I just follow the rules outlined in the Universal Parenting Manual, my kid will turn out okay!
I’m writing a different kind of book.
It’s not a parenting how-to book, but a parenting memoir. In my book, I share stories about challenging parenting moments and how they sometimes went sideways or I got it all wrong. In my book, I don’t claim to be a parenting expert. In my book, I don’t parade my now young-adult kids across the stage as if to say, “Look at how awesome my kids are! If you follow my advice, you can have awesome kids, too!”
(I knew a parent like that once who touted his kid as an example to follow. That kid was later discovered to have been molesting two girls in our church community for several years.)
The only formula you’ll find in my book is this: Do the best you can, and when you fuck it up, own it and apologize (but you probably didn’t fuck it up).
That’s it. That’s the Tweet.
I hope you’ll stick with me as I write it!
Until next time,
Jen
🌼 What delighted you this week?
I’ll go first: No more wondering whether John Wick lived or died—I found out where they buried him. 😂 What delighted you this week?
My aunt and my sister's MIL both gave her the same advice.
The stuff kids hold against them they don't remember doing. The stuff they thought would scar the kids for life? The kids don't remember at all.
MIL used to tell about the time they drove from DC to California in a station wagon with six kids. She remembered the kids were miserable and fighting every mile.
My BIL and his siblings remembered it as this great adventure where they saw all sorts of neat stuff.
You do your best.
I can only hope my kiddo doesn’t remember the things that I keep replaying in my own head assuming they must’ve have impacted him…because I certainly messed up a lot! But maybe I’m lucky and he doesn’t remember- I love that your girl can laugh at these stories with you now!!