Bored

My son lost screens today.   He lost them last night.  Today he had a brief bit of screens when he helped his sister with 3D Minecraft.   Their father had created a house for her against a lake and handed over the headset and controllers to her.   She asked her brother to help create a few things for her (one of them was a hot tub with magma at the bottom causing the water above to bubble up).  But otherwise, he was “bored” for the day he told us.

He didn’t realize his reasons were only going to backfire on him.   Just that little bit of screens with his sister and he was a menace to his father, whining, complaining and acting the victim (of boredom among the milder of his complaints).   He bordered on being insulting, insinuating that we were using our screens, probably having fun, stating something about his father and Fortnite.   I shut that one down pretty fast although he hassled his father for a while longer, asking if he’d please do something with him.

Our neighbor’s children got home from out of town in the afternoon and they all played together until after dinner.   Our neighbor came over and the adults talked while the children cleaned up everything they’d pulled out.  After everyone had gone home it was back in on the boredom and screen time discussion.  He was playing martyr and acting like his life was over—his very privileged life I might add.

So I did what I do best and I snapped.   Well, I didn’t snap at first, I incrementally snapped.   It was a building to a “pancake splat” because he did his very best to make things worse for himself.   I told him he was folding laundry with me because he was bored and I needed help and that was just that.   His resistance was impressive.   At one point he fell off the bed (slowly, intentionally) and told me he’d hurt his head and was injured.   I threatened to take him to the emergency room and have him explain to the doctor that he slid off the bed, landed gently on the carpet and insisted he had a head wound all so he might hopefully get out of folding laundry.  AND, I told him, he would still be folding the laundry when he got back from the hospital.

When he found out he had to fold his sister’s laundry, oh the misery that created.   Also, and this is just crazy, a lot of the items were wrong side out.   His complaining and resisting and telling me he was, under no circumstances, folding the laundry.   Not nobody.  Not nohow.   I’ll shorten the story a bit at this point by saying he got an education on what his father and I did—regularly—to keep this household running, including the laundry.  Laundry that was put in the hamper wrong side out, despite my requests to help me out and put things in right side out, including lessons to the both of them on how to pull off clothes without inverting them.   There was a lot more said on both sides and resistance on his part culminating in him loosing screens for two days (which overall is a good thing).

He folded the laundry.   All of it.   He turned it all right side out and then he put it up in the drawers when he was done.  He listened to The Wizard of Oz while he folded, which reminded me of the, “not nobody, not nohow” phrase from the movie I saw so many times as a child.  Once he accepted his fate he was in a good mood, talking happily to us and folding (slowly) but doing a good job.

We talked about allowance and I said there would be more laundry folding in the future.   There should have probably been laundry folding help by now, but it takes infernally long when they do it.   It’s just easier to get it done while they’re gone.   But they’re both capable.

The Big Boy Update:  While my son was folding the laundry he asked me something interesting: could he have some money, go into a store, buy something all by himself and then come out and meet us?   Could he do that whole process without an adult?  This wasn’t about having money to buy something or buying anything in particular, it was about the independence to do that whole process by himself.   I told him I though it was a great idea.   The conversation dovetailed into the allowance topic.   We might start with him running into the grocery store to get something we need that he could find easily.   I’m glad he wants to do this on his own.   I never really thought about it before, but he’s always bought anything with us there with him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter not once, but twice today, made slippers.   Literally, they slip across the floor.   There are lots of staples involved, but somehow they’re not at the bottom part of the pieces of notebook paper she used to make them.   She showed them off to Dave and Kate when they came over today she was so proud of them.  I wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing the first time she made a pair.   I was at her braillewriter, writing up a full page of Alexa games and things she could do that had recently come out.   I’m not bad at braille, but I invert things and have to focus to make sure my e’s aren’t i’s and I’m only using contractions she knows.   When I got done with the list she had these ready to show off:

The dog is in the picture above, checking out her new creation.   The dog, whom we all love, is a very laid back Wheaton Terrier.   She looks like this sometimes (and yes, I’m putting this picture up because it’s too cute.   Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)