When Brilliance Comes Back to Bite You in the Behind

I admit, we try to be creative in ways to discipline our children. Sometimes, we ponder over ways to make the "punishment" fit the "crime," and in doing so, we absorb the precious resource of time.

Recently, I told Serena that if she didn't wash her hair in the shower, I would take away TV time. Jeff looked at me and said, "That makes no sense. What does TV time have to do with washing hair?"

I responded with, "...but it will work," and it did. Sometimes, we just need to give up the romance of making every disciplinary action into poetic justice, and we just need to find something that delivers the desired response.

Keegan does not like to take care of things the way his father and I would. For example, when we ask him to take care of something, he drops whatever-the-thing-is right in front of the doorway to his room. Then, he returns to his previous activity with as much speed and agility as his wiry frame allows. Perhaps in the area of laundry, this is most evident.

We had packed bags to go visit a few different people over the past week. I asked Keegan to unpack his bag upon return from visiting Grandpa and Grandma. I watched in dismay as my son dumped the entire contents of the bag, including clean, folded clothes, into his dirty clothes hamper. At that moment, I declared that Keegan would be helping with the laundry because it wasn't fair that I should have to wash, dry, fold and put away clean clothes.

Later, we cleaned his room and found dirty socks, sweatshirts, and random clothing items shoved among toys, books, and other places. The hamper was overflowing. I asked Keegan to clean out his closet with the hamper. He pulled out multiple clean items and just shoved them into the dirty pile. Mount Laundry was now looming, and mama wasn't happy. (I believe that I previously mentioned how dreadful things are when mama begins to refer to herself in the thrid person.) Keegan had as many dirty clothes for the week as Serena, Dad, and Mom had combined. The mom now decreed that Keegan would be doing his own laundry this week as a completely fitting disciplinary action for his uncouth behavior.

Laundry is not new to Keegan. He has helped me complete all of the individual steps along the laundry trail from hamper to drawer. This would be the first time he would do all of the steps alone from start to finish. I was so proud of myself for developing an appropriate punishment. The voices in my head of mothers around our town acoladed my brilliant plan to eradicate the lazy out of ten year old boys.

As the story goes, I helped him start his first load. Then, I left Keegan home alone for about 90 minutes today while Serena and I went shopping. Keegan has previously stayed at home for brief periods of time on occasion. I specified to him to make sure that he worked on his laundry while I was gone.

When I came back, I knew something wasn't right. Keegan proudly approached me, saying, "Guess what. I got all of my laundry done." I should have checked his work then, but I didn't even want to look. At bedtime, I inspected his drawers. I found a bunch of wet clothes. They weren't even damp really; they were wet. I asked how many loads he did after I left. I didn't get a clear response which is a good indication that the boy squished about four loads of laundry into two. We retreived all of his wet, folded attire, and trudged them back down to the drier.

My so-called brilliance came back to bite me in the behind.

The Lessons Learned
I learned that:
1. trying to lighten my work load just creates more work.
2. supervision is key when disciplining.

Keegan learned that:
1. laundry is a pain.
2. stuffing as many clothes possible into the washer and then drier is not effective.
3. his mom is mean, and she won't help him refold his dry clothes tomorrow.