Loving and teaching children is the most important thing we’ll ever do. But “important” doesn’t mean “serious” all the time.
A Consequence with Brevity and Humor
Adrienne, a mother of three, called to tell me about an interaction she’d just had with her 13 year-old son, Jake. One of Jake’s household responsibilities was to keep the dining table cleaned off, which meant taking things to the sink after meals or any other time, regardless of who put a thing on the table.
Mom told me that she watched Jake go through the kitchen, passing close by the dining table, which had one plate on it, with a couple of utensils. As he was about to leave the room, she calmly and quietly said, “Jake?”
“Yeah,” he said in a tone that revealed his knowledge of the coming subject.
“Table,” she said. In a previous family meeting they had agreed that she would not nag him, but she would impose days without electronics if she had to remind him or argue with him about his jobs.
“But I didn’t see—” he began.
Adrienne calmly smiled like Buddha, looked straight into Jake’s eyes, and without a word she held up her index finger. Jake knew exactly what she meant. Now he would be required to give up his phone and any other device for 24 hours, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Somebody else put it there,” he said.
Two fingers.
“And dinner was over two hours ago. Somebody should have put their dish in the sink, not—”
Three fingers.
Jake sighed, but with resignation, not exasperation. “You have ten fingers and ten toes, don’t you?”
Mom smiled and nodded.
“And you can probably count past twenty.”
“I could,” she said, hinting with her tone that she preferred not to do that.
“Or I could just do my job and put the dish where it goes,” Jake said.
“It’s a thought,” Mom said.
Jake put the dish in the sink, gave Mom his phone, kissed her on top of the head, and said, “Three is less than twenty, you know?”
Mom nodded, smiled, and kissed the palm of his hand.
Adrienne closed her brief conversation with me by saying, “Loving and teaching doesn’t have to be hard, you know?”
“No, it doesn’t. Nice work, kid.”
