Colton and Trips

This is a tricky one, folks. He does great with his DVD player and movies, usually. This road trip was a bit more rough. I think in the future I will give him one dramamine prior to leaving. He can go from being completely calm and happy watching his movie to tears to yelling "how many more hours?" to asleep. In general, he does very well, but it can be a good time if he is nervous or anxious or if we are traveling on the last day of school. Enter our latest road trip on the last day of school. Summer all by itself is tougher for Colton, as it is for most ADHD/Pediatric Anxiety kiddos, because of the lack of structure. When you have a single mama who works full-time and goes to school it is extra fun. I do create a calendar for the boys and during the summer, I am home during the day on Wednesdays to add a little more routine, but the school-days routine is gone and that is tough. I don't know if it was the fear of not having school for three months that contributed to his struggles this past weekend, but it took patience on everyone's part. Colton would panic about HIM not knowing how much gas was in the car. We have NEVER run out of gas. FYI. Colton would panic about hearing someone else's movie over his. Colton would panic about not knowing where we were. Colton would panic about what time we were going to arrive. You get the point. This poor little soul can't just sit back and relax. Everything seems to come with a panic button and that button gets fist pumped a lot! When it comes time to do activities, patience is a virtue. And I don't have a lot of it. Colton cried and cried the entire time we were in line for the Alpine Slide. Josh pulled him aside and calmed him down and gave the option to do it or not do it. He decided he would do it. He and I were sitting on our sled (the same sled) and he was screaming. Picture it people. We were not the only ones in line!! The line was loooooong and my sweet boy was screaming. A sweet old man in the line talked very softly to him and told him that he was scared the first time he went on it too, but that once we started he would want to go down it over and over and over. That sweet old man was right. Colton loved it, as we knew he would. After the slide, he was done. Like, done done. Braxton decided he didn't want to do the zipline and offered to go take Colton to the sandbox to dig for fossils. We were in line for quite.some.time. and sweet Braxton was so patient. Colton had a great time digging. He loved, loved swimming and was just happy to be in water. Water always seems to have a calming effect on him. He is free in the water and he loves that, I suppose. Someday I hope that Colton will be able to find peace in his sweet mind and not worry about every aspect of everything. He just gets so rattled by things that no 9 1/2 year old boy should have to worry about.