When I was a kid my dad always had job lists for us. Sometimes they were permanent lists of jobs that constantly needed doing. Sometimes he would make a list for just that one Saturday. While I didn't love the chores, I didn't really object to the list method of doling them out. What I objected to, was the no list method. The method where my dad would say, "I need the house cleaned up today," so you would get started with what you thought that meant. Then, usually just as you thought you were about done, there would me more to the job than you realized. Argh!
While I'm sure there are things that I do, that my parents did, that I swore I never would, the not list method of chore assigning is not one of them. There are a lot of variations on the list method at my house because I'm easily bored, oh, and because kids grow and change. I've blogged about one of my game list methods before. Today I tried a new method. I was hoping for some of those other life lessons that you learn along the way.
"Alright," I said to Rachel and JD, "Here are your strips. JD, these are for you. You can put them in any order you want or draw them at random. I don't care. Rachel, these are for you and Abby to figure out who does what. Except one. One of those is for JD. You two go negotiate and decide who gets what."
They seemed excited as they ran off to the basement to discuss without my interference.
Yeah. That didn't last long.
"Mom!" JD came racing back upstairs.
"Mom! JD is ruining everything!" Rachel's screeched from the basement, accompanied by foot stomping.
"JD, are you ruining everything?"
"No, she just wants me to draw my job out at random, and I don't want to do that."
Rachel flopped into a kitchen chair, tears in her eyes. "That's what's fair Mom!"
"You want the whole thing to be a drawing?"
"Yes. That's the only fair way."
And that's when I realized that there's "fair" and "nobody's fault," and those are not necessarily the same thing. If they drew out the jobs, somebody could get stuck with all the big jobs and somebody else could get all the little jobs. All that would be accomplished would be that the lucky people would get to shrug their shoulders and say, "It's not my fault! It just worked out that way." It wouldn't make the injustice any easier to bear for the unlucky kid.
A person can get a bad draw in life and it's nobody's fault. But that in no way makes it fair. People can get a great draw in life and it's to nobody's credit, and that's not fair either, but most of the time we don't mind when it works out well.
The problem is though, that we act like life is fair. We say that it's not. We quote The Princess Bride and all, but we live like it is fair. We live like, and we treat people like, life is fair, that people get what they've earned. If people need help, it's because they're "front porch sitting, lazy, crack heads." If they have a college education and a great middle class job, it's because they worked hard and made good choices.
That's not exclusively true. To quote The Newsboys this time, "When you get what you don't deserve, it's a real good thing. When you don't get what you deserve, it's a real good thing." Sometimes life is random. To get to my "successful" life, (or at least I see it as successful) I've had a lot of help. The people who have poured good things into my life is longer than a blog post (even one of mine) and the number of stupid things that I've done that I didn't have to suffer the full consequences for is equally long.
Life is not fair. It requires living in grace and peace.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
ADD
I think maybe it's not just kids. I actually think that there are plenty of parents and teachers who have ADD. Maybe even as an American culture we have ADD. Sort of, it's not our fault; how can I pay attention to Haiti when there's an earthquake in Chile just a few weeks later? And how can I care about Rod Blagojevich, when Manny Vasile is busy tickling his male aides? Seriously! There's just way to much info coming in. And I'm supposed to be well informed and thoughtful about all of it. The proof that that's not going to happen is that I consider "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," to be one of my primary news sources.
However, there is another side to our adult ADD that is our own fault and we can actually do something about it. This is the ADD that's caused by impatience. When we want something to work, we want it to work now. And I mean NOW. We are not fans of try, try again. Where I see this as particularly troubling both in myself and others is in disciplining kids. When we set up a new discipline plan with our kids, whether that be at home or some job with kids, we expect that the setting forth of the plan itself is going to solve the behavior problem. We get really ticked off when we have to actually follow through and enact the consequences set forth for the behavior we're trying to change. We cannot believe that the kid didn't just crumble at the mere "threat" of consequences! How dare Little Festus try and see what we're made of! I'm mean, trying and exploring and checking things out is such an insane thing for a kid to do!
Even if we don't get irritated the first time we have to enact the consequence, when we don't see results in a few days, we start casting about for a new plan. Clearly this one is flawed. Here's where I would like to applaud my friend Heidi. She read somewhere that it takes a kid 10 tries to accept a new food. Heidi is one of the most patient and determined people I know. So, she started putting carrots on her son's plate every day. Every day he had to try one bite. For ten days straight she did the same thing. And nothing happened. Until the 10th day. On the tenth day, he took two bites, and then at some point he finally at the whole carrot. That woman does not have ADD. She kept her eyes on the prize and believed in her plan. Now she's on to food number two, some other vegetable that her son needs to learn to eat.
I think with that story of encouragement, I might be able to follow through on grounding my son for falling behind on his school work. If it takes ten times to try a new food, it's going to take at least that many times to try a new work habit. When he gets grounded for the third time this year, (oh wait, that already happened. whatever) I'm not going to throw up my hands and say, "Clearly he's not learning! This plan isn't working! What the heck are we going to do with this kid! Disaster has struck!" Nor am I going to let my husband go hysterical. (That also may take ten times to learn.) No, we are going to put forth our work habit expectations and the consequences for not meeting those expectations seven more times and seriously pray that on the tenth time, he'll at least take a second bite.
However, there is another side to our adult ADD that is our own fault and we can actually do something about it. This is the ADD that's caused by impatience. When we want something to work, we want it to work now. And I mean NOW. We are not fans of try, try again. Where I see this as particularly troubling both in myself and others is in disciplining kids. When we set up a new discipline plan with our kids, whether that be at home or some job with kids, we expect that the setting forth of the plan itself is going to solve the behavior problem. We get really ticked off when we have to actually follow through and enact the consequences set forth for the behavior we're trying to change. We cannot believe that the kid didn't just crumble at the mere "threat" of consequences! How dare Little Festus try and see what we're made of! I'm mean, trying and exploring and checking things out is such an insane thing for a kid to do!
Even if we don't get irritated the first time we have to enact the consequence, when we don't see results in a few days, we start casting about for a new plan. Clearly this one is flawed. Here's where I would like to applaud my friend Heidi. She read somewhere that it takes a kid 10 tries to accept a new food. Heidi is one of the most patient and determined people I know. So, she started putting carrots on her son's plate every day. Every day he had to try one bite. For ten days straight she did the same thing. And nothing happened. Until the 10th day. On the tenth day, he took two bites, and then at some point he finally at the whole carrot. That woman does not have ADD. She kept her eyes on the prize and believed in her plan. Now she's on to food number two, some other vegetable that her son needs to learn to eat.
I think with that story of encouragement, I might be able to follow through on grounding my son for falling behind on his school work. If it takes ten times to try a new food, it's going to take at least that many times to try a new work habit. When he gets grounded for the third time this year, (oh wait, that already happened. whatever) I'm not going to throw up my hands and say, "Clearly he's not learning! This plan isn't working! What the heck are we going to do with this kid! Disaster has struck!" Nor am I going to let my husband go hysterical. (That also may take ten times to learn.) No, we are going to put forth our work habit expectations and the consequences for not meeting those expectations seven more times and seriously pray that on the tenth time, he'll at least take a second bite.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
It's Funny What Sticks With You
When I was in my mid 20s, a girlfriend and I found ourselves on diverging paths. I didn't take it very well. I wanted to stay as close as we had been for the past several years, and I guess I didn't handle it very well. There was an exchange of emotional letters that I remember vividly. I had my feelings hurt immensely and brooded over it for many months and then off and on over the years. I'm a skilled brooder. In the final letter that I received from her I heard her say that friendships change over time and that it wasn't nice of me at all to try and make her feel guilty for not being who I wanted her to be, that I should just be happy and enjoy whatever state the friendship was in.
That, and a similar friendship fiasco that happened to me in the eighth or ninth grade, shaped what kind of friend I am now. I have four close girlfriends who live near me. We've been friends for twelve years or so, some a little longer, some a little less. There was a time when one of those friends seemed to have stepped onto a diverging path. I cried, I worried, I struggled, but this time I kept most of that to myself. This time I just offered to be around if she still wanted/needed to be friends, and did my level best to back off. She dumped the boyfriend eventually and our paths were back from the brink of permanent divergence. Sometimes still though, she's torn between her many worlds, and I feel again like our paths are diverging. And again, I worry and struggle with what to do. Mostly, I don't do much of anything about it except wait and see.
I don't know really which way is better. That's the struggle. Perhaps not everyone struggles with things like this. Perhaps it's just me because I over think things, or so I've been told. (On the upside, if I didn't over think things, what would I blog about, and there would you all be?)
Here's the funny thing though. I recently was back in touch with the friend from my 20s, and near as I can tell, she doesn't remember those letters or any kind of painful ending at all. I was and am so profoundly influenced by something that she doesn't remember or remembers in a completely different way. Part of me feels like an idiot that I wondered or worried what she thought all those years. The other part of me though thinks, it's not just funny what sticks with you, it's funny what doesn't stick with you.
I wonder what things are remembered very differently by other people whose paths diverged from mine long ago. I wonder who's life I've left a mark on that I had know idea I was leaving. I wonder if I should be paying more attention in the present.
That, and a similar friendship fiasco that happened to me in the eighth or ninth grade, shaped what kind of friend I am now. I have four close girlfriends who live near me. We've been friends for twelve years or so, some a little longer, some a little less. There was a time when one of those friends seemed to have stepped onto a diverging path. I cried, I worried, I struggled, but this time I kept most of that to myself. This time I just offered to be around if she still wanted/needed to be friends, and did my level best to back off. She dumped the boyfriend eventually and our paths were back from the brink of permanent divergence. Sometimes still though, she's torn between her many worlds, and I feel again like our paths are diverging. And again, I worry and struggle with what to do. Mostly, I don't do much of anything about it except wait and see.
I don't know really which way is better. That's the struggle. Perhaps not everyone struggles with things like this. Perhaps it's just me because I over think things, or so I've been told. (On the upside, if I didn't over think things, what would I blog about, and there would you all be?)
Here's the funny thing though. I recently was back in touch with the friend from my 20s, and near as I can tell, she doesn't remember those letters or any kind of painful ending at all. I was and am so profoundly influenced by something that she doesn't remember or remembers in a completely different way. Part of me feels like an idiot that I wondered or worried what she thought all those years. The other part of me though thinks, it's not just funny what sticks with you, it's funny what doesn't stick with you.
I wonder what things are remembered very differently by other people whose paths diverged from mine long ago. I wonder who's life I've left a mark on that I had know idea I was leaving. I wonder if I should be paying more attention in the present.
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