Daddy, My Ears Hurt!

On August 16th the weather was beautiful and so I planned a flight East across the cascades and then North to Omak (KOMK), a small airfield just North of Okanagan. My daughter, Lauren, was excited to go too, so she and I headed to the airport around 3:30 that afternoon. I had originally planned to take a 172 (N9534H), however when I got to the airport I noticed that the 182 (N42043) was available. I canceled the reservation for '34H and booked '043 until 9:00 PM. I did the preflight and we took off into a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. As we climbed, Lauren complained that she was getting a headache, probably because the adult-sized headset she was wearing was squeezing a little too hard. As we passed Cle Elum on the East side of the Cascades she said she wanted to go back home, so we turned around and headed back. I started a 500 foot-per-minute descent, and within a few minutes Lauren started complaining that her ears were hurting. I tried to help her equalize the pressure, but she wasn't having any luck. Unfortunately we had to continue on down in order to make the landing back at Auburn, and she was in tears during the rest of the flight. Since I had to keep flying the plane, there wasn't anything I could do for her. It's hard knowing your little girl is in pain but there's nothing you can do to comfort her. Fortunately after we landed she started feeling a lot better. I need to start looking for a kid-sized headset, and try to teach Lauren how to relieve the pressure in her ears. Total time: 1.2 hrs.