Dangling by One Arm from a Broken Bridge

Uncharacteristically, I got a whole lot done yesterday.  I have my clipboard to thank for that, plus a book I’m reading, entitled Throw Out Fifty  Things, written by a self-proclaimed motivator, Gail Blanke.  I am sponging off of her for all she’s got.  Add to that, my June Cleaver hormones are at a 28-day high, which would explain why I had the entire house clean in one day, and took the family to the pool with a picnic dinner, and started a behavioral chart to break us out of our summer slothery.  I plan to turn us all into well-trained poodles by September.

The mellow summers of crafts at the library, trips to the zoo and concerts at the park are over.  We’re in the wake-up call of teen years.  When your son’s voice drops an octave, the mom alarm goes off.  You realize your child will soon be circling the drain and you must do everything in your power before he leaves the house, but with a lot more earnestness than in previous years, to get him ready for the real world.  It’s not enough to be intelligent.  The boys are going to need to know how to do all the boring jobs that I’ve been doing for them all these years.

Day one of the chart went beautifully.  Before I took my clipboard to the grocery with my list of picnicky foods, I instructed my nine-year old to vacuum the living room and my 13-year old to sweep the kitchen.  If they start their jobs right away they get their third sticker.  I’ll give them a fourth upon returning home and seeing that they hadn’t put down the vacuum cleaner and broom the second I backed out of the driveway.

Do you have any idea how wonderful it feels to leave your house and hear the sound of someone inside vacuuming?  I just wanted to sit in the driveway with the minivan idling so I could bask.

Now that I am armed with stickers, all I need next is some follow-through.  I’d like a sticker chart just for me for that goal.  I have ADHD, as do my boys.  If you google ADHD in Wikipedia, you will see a photo of us.  It looks like we’re just spacing out but we’re really multitasking.  Inside our heads.

The downside of having ADHD and wanting to use a sticker chart as a behavior modification tool designed to turn your two negotiators into well-trained poodles is that you don’t have the follow-through to ever see poodles.  You lack consistency.  ADHD is the genetic equivalent of a beagle/basset hound mix, off chasing scents and shiny objects.

My kids know this about me.  They are not afraid of this new way of responding to me “at first call of their name or no sticker.”  They know it’s just a matter of time before my hormones swing the other way and I have house blindness to the sticker chart on the wall.  It will hang there and I will walk by it and not even see it.  Stickers?  What stickers?  And then a few months will go by and I’ll see my abandoned chart.  I will feel lame when I notice it because I will imagine the well-trained poodles for children I could have while I’m picking up after beagles.

The boys will know when the house blindness for this chart occurs because there is a certain week in my cycle when I let it all go to pot.  I bring home MSG and salt and high fructose corn syrup in the form of chocolate chip cookies and cheese in a jar and potato chips.  They’re on to me.

When my 13-year old was in third grade he was sitting at the counter after school one day, dipping chocolate chip cookies in milk.  Halfway into the second row of cookies he said with a mouthful of milk-soaked cookie, “I love the week before your period.”

Day two of the sticker chart.  After the first negotiation, I realize the stickers are not going to cut it.  I know I’m not going to follow-through.  I tell my 13-year old, “In the end it is not about the grand reward you’ll earn, which is still in negotiations.  The bottom line is I want you to be able to live without me.  To not need me to tell you to brush your teeth or to start getting ready for bed.  We’re probably going to run out of stickers before that happens.”

He said, “Then you’ll have to get some new stickers that say, ‘bitch, please!  I haz back up,’ if you really want to get results.”   This is his way of telling me he is not opposed to the idea and that I need to stick with it.

I tell him, “I don’t want our conversations to be task-reminders.  I want them to be moments where we enjoy the people we’ve become.  I had no idea you had such an interesting opinion about stem cells until yesterday when we were hanging out at the pool.  I didn’t know you knew what  stem cells are.”

I got real with my son about the intent of having this chart — to get him ready to live an independent life.  I made sure he understood that what I’m asking is for him to do what I’ve been doing for him.  That it’s time and it will be good for all of us.

As the words were coming out of my mouth, I wondered if what he was hearing was “blah blah blah blah.”   I was sure he tuned me out.  He was steps ahead of me, walking clumsily on the curb in his crocs, looking like he was going to twist his ankle and fall.  He interrupted me with a story about a video game.

I tried very hard not to tune out once he said video game…assassin’s creed…dangling from a bridge.  I waited patiently for him to finish so I could get back on topic.  We were rounding the corner for home and before the walk ended, I needed to be sure we had an understanding of what I expect and why.

I’m glad I didn’t interrupt.  I realized he was listening.  He understood completely what I was asking.  He compared what I want him to do to a video game in which a guy is dangling by one arm from a broken bridge.   The dangler is asking for help from an assassin named Altair.  Altair replies, “I think it would be better if I didn’t help you.  It would create a bad habit and you wouldn’t learn to help yourself.”

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