TAMING HAIR AND LEGOS
When it comes to parenting, you have to pick your battles!
One mom’s humorous account of how she learned to pick her battles with her sons!
Alow-key Saturday afternoon at home. I’m upstairs getting ready to take son number 2 to get a haircut. Son number 1 is down the hall sequestered in his bedroom—supposedly doing homework, but more likely watching Youtube or Netflix. He has an invisible forcefield protecting him from any attempts at intrusion by me, more conventionally known as noise-cancelling headphones. As it turns out, I am the noise to be cancelled. I regret the day I agreed to buy that diabolical device for him.
Son number 2 is just as remote, but he has chosen physical distance as his weapon of choice—he’s in the basement. Two floors between us. He might as well be on the moon. I feel too lazy to go down the stairs to tell him to get dressed to go out. Yelling down is quicker, but less e ective unless I shout through the laundry chute, which only raises the likelihood of getting his attention to the odds of him ever actually stepping on the moon. I resort to my only realistic option, the sure-fire way of getting his attention. I text him:
Me: Get dressed please. Going to get hair cut shortly. Are there still Legos all over the basement floor?
Son number 2 (instantaneous reply): Okay, and yes about the Legos.
Me: Dress now. Legos later.
Son number 2 grows hair faster than grass grows on a septic field. We are regular attendees at the salon and all the hair-cutters recognize us as soon as we walk in. He asks for “the usual,” essentially a buzz cut. A few minutes later he greets me at the cash and remarks, “Five pounds lighter and ten degrees cooler.” I concur with this pithy pronouncement on his post-haircut condition.
We return home to face the Legos. This situation is far more in my control than the rate of son number 2’s hair growth. The combination of his passion for Legos and my desire to make him happy has led to a love-infused stockpile of Legos in our basement. Most of the time they are stored
in several large bins. But occasionally they break free of their constraints, usually when son number 2 is inspired to build something “special” and then thousands of them spill out onto the basement floor like a toxic tide of a multicoloured invasive species.
As with any infestation, I initially attempt to ignore the reality in the hope that it will run its course and disappear. When I finally come to terms with the fact that the problem isn’t going away, I go into attack mode and call the exterminator—in this case, son number 2 himself. Now the battle of wills begins, he and the Legos on one side (aided and abetted by inertia) and I on the opposite side (armed and dangerous with my OCD). By the end of day, we will likely be bloodied, bruised and not speaking to each other. He will bring in reinforcements colloquially referred to as “attitude” and I will counter with threats. I will break down and help him clean up the mess. The battle will end in an uneasy truce, until the Legos and hostilities break out the next time.
I sigh. How do I smooth things over? Of course! The greatest gift parents can o er to unhappy kids, ordering in pizza!
Perhaps son number 1 will even come out of hiding long enough to watch a movie with us.