Month: July 2022

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Consequences

Teenagers are tough.  I mean, they’re also amazing and funny and FUN to be around… until they’re not.  

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that they’re still kids.  They might be HUGE kids.  They might even LOOK like adults.  But they most definitely are not adults.  They are literally unequipped to make smart choices because they don’t have fully functional frontal lobes.  

We try to teach them.  We try to model for them and train them and talk to them but ultimately, they are going to be out in the world without us and they will be faced with thousands of choices.  Sometimes they’re going to make the wrong one.  

Maybe you’ve got one of those teenagers that just always makes good choices.  Bless your heart.  You can probably stop reading now. 

Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find out about them later, when your kids are ‘safely’ in their 20s and 30s.  Hearing stories from our older boys, we cringe… and we’re grateful that we missed out on all the worrying that would have accompanied awareness. 

Or maybe you’re IN IT right now.  Like we are.  And being IN IT means that we have to make choices about how to handle it.  I’m lucky to have a husband who is right there with me, because he makes it easier to stick to it when we’ve decided on a consequence.  But deciding on a consequence is so freaking hard. 

Sometimes I wonder if being a teacher makes me overthink these things. When I was in undergrad, aspiring teachers learned about positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reward, and negative reward.  In this case the positive and negative aren’t emotional states.  They simply refer to giving and taking away. Positive punishment adds something.  Putting your kid on dish duty for a week is positive punishment. Negative punishment takes something away.  

When my kids do something wrong, the easiest and most immediate punishment is to take away their phones.  It’s a thing I can control, and it’s REALLY upsetting to them when I take it away.  For a while, it was my go-to.  

Taking the phone is definitely a punishment. A punishment is designed to make them miserable.  It makes an impact because it makes them feel bad.  Presumably, that bad feeling will make them avoid bad decisions in the future.  Sometimes it works.  

It took me a long time to figure out what wasn’t working about punishment in our house.  I struggled with it as much as the kids did. If I took away their phones because I was trying to punish them, and then they wound up painting murals or catching frogs or building shelves, I was so torn.  I loved that they were doing great, creative, fun things but weren’t they supposed to be miserable?  Was I teaching them that all of these great things are a result of being ‘punished’?  The whole thing became more about screen time, and I realized I needed to address that as a separate issue… not as a punishment, but on the regular. 

Another concern was social isolation.  I have one child who struggles with friendships and has been through periods of depression.  When that kid was grounded, without his phone, I’d cut off all of his budding friendships.  It didn’t feel responsible.  It didn’t feel healthy.  

The more I thought about it, the more I went back to those undergrad lessons.  I assume they use different language now; we talk more about consequences than punishments.  We talk a lot about natural consequences.  The result of a bad choice should be related to the bad choice.  In some cases, the natural consequences are apparent. If you threw your phone in a fit of anger, now you have a broken phone.  Sometimes we can create consequences that seem to be the obvious ‘result’ of a bad choice. If you graffiti a wall, you have to clean it or repaint it to fix the damage you caused.  In other cases, the natural consequences are so far removed that the kids don’t see them.  The natural consequence of vaping might be lung damage, but that’s not concrete enough to a 13 year old.  They don’t care about that yet.  So you have to come up with something. 

Most parents I know have two go-to options.  Ground them.  Or take their phone.  I definitely do these things.  Those are negative consequences.  Taking something away.  

But recently, I’ve had more luck with positive consequences.  GIVING them something.  A new responsibility.  A daily chore.  A way to prove themselves and earn back our trust.  

We had a recent shoplifting incident.  I was beside myself.  I honestly believed that my kids would never… but they did.  They were banned from the store and from the mall.  They were grounded.  They lost their screens.  They had extra chores.  But the most impactful consequence was that I assigned them a writing prompt each day for a month.  What is integrity?  Write about a time you felt proud of yourself.  Why do we have laws?  These writing prompts opened up a lot of important, meaningful conversations and debates.  They got our whole family thinking and talking about our values.  (Thanks to my mom for the great idea). 

What I’m learning is that positive consequences give me more opportunities to engage with my kids about their choices.  I feel like I’m teaching them instead of just punishing them.  A kid who has a stack of dirty dishes in his room might get put on dish duty for the whole week.  It teaches him something.  He’s building a skill.  Bonus that it helps me out.  Instead of giving me another job, it takes one off my plate. 

A few other things I’ve learned:  

-I don’t have to give them a time frame.  That’s freeing.  I used to think I had to give the consequence an end date.  Now I’ve found myself saying things like, “We’ll revisit in two weeks,” or, “You haven’t earned our trust yet.” 

-I can ‘tweak’ things as I go.  If something isn’t working, I explain why and make a change.  

-I can ‘do it my way.’  I always thought of grounding as social isolation.  But it doesn’t have to be.  If my kid is making bad choices when unsupervised, then they can’t be unsupervised.  But I could decide to still let them have friends over here when I’m around.  

I’m learning as I go here… and I’d love to hear from other parents about what works (or worked) for you! 

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This Mess

I wake up to weird things in the house lately.  These kids stay up later than me now, and the evidence of their nighttime activities leaves me baffled. 

There is a two-gallon insulated Igloo drink cooler on the floor in the bathroom.  Why??? 

A mutilated can of sweetened condensed milk sits in the refrigerator.  Someone obviously couldn’t get the can opener to work, and maybe went at it with a knife?  What were you even planning to do with sweetened condensed milk after midnight?

A blue striped towel, the coloring drained in patches.  It’s been bleached by hair dye and dropped on the bathroom floor. 

A small saucepan on the stove, dried remnants of ramen noodles stuck to the bottom.  

Wrappers.  Wrappers everywhere.  Cheese-stick wrappers.  Lollipop wrappers.  Band-aid wrappers.  I find them in the most random places.  Next to the dog’s bowl.  On the side table.  Behind the toilet.  

There are socks on the dining room floor. A fork under the couch.  Eyelashes on the coffee table. 

Why are my dishwashing gloves in the backyard? 

Guys, these are REAL things! 

What is HAPPENING here??

These little messes annoy me.  But I’m grateful that they didn’t leave a whole sink full of dirty dishes after a night of binge-baking.  It’s been known to happen.  I’m glad that there aren’t snack bags all over my living room, like last week.  I’m grateful that nobody forgot to turn off the oven or blow out a candle or push the freezer door all the way closed.  I’m glad that I didn’t wake up to burned brownies or a newly-pierced nose or a flooded basement because someone overloaded the washing machine.  (All actual, true events.) 

And then I have that moment.  The moment when I remember. In a few short years, they’ll be gone.  There won’t be any messes to wake up to.  There won’t be any 2am giggle fests.  There won’t be any disastrous baking attempts or pink hair dye or midnight ramen.  

It will be so clean.  

And so quiet.  

And so strange.

Oh, God.  I pause.  I say a prayer of gratitude.  I vow, once again, to take in these moments.  To laugh at the absurdity of the bathroom cooler and the backyard gloves and the mutilated can of sweet milk.  To appreciate their curiosity and their fearlessness and their appetites.  To be grateful for the chance to teach them and laugh with them and love them.  

One day very soon, I’m gonna miss this mess.   

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Past Tense

A friend is struggling with his child’s new pronouns.  We were together recently and he slipped.  His wife corrected him.  He nodded, corrected himself, and kept going with his story.  

A little while later, he was telling another story; this one from a few years ago.  He used the wrong pronoun and his wife, again, gently corrected him.  He nodded, but then paused.  Eyebrows raised, he shrugged. “But they were still she back then.” I felt his struggle.  I’ve been there.  

*****

Lee came out as trans when he was nine years old.  He’s sixteen now.  

The fact that he’s sixteen, alone, is unreal to me.  He’s driving.  He’s got a job.  He’s a young adult.  But that’s a common phenomenon.  Parents can’t believe how quickly their kids grow up.  

The second, less common phenomenon is that his transition was simultaneously just yesterday and so long ago. I vividly remember the steps in the journey and also… I can’t remember who I was when I took those first shaky steps. 

*****

When Lee first came out, we made a lot of changes simultaneously.  A haircut.  New clothes.  New name.  New pronouns.  Other changes came later.  Puberty blockers.  Legal name change. Social Security card.  Passport. Eventually, there was testosterone.  But at the beginning, I didn’t know any of that.  I didn’t know where we were headed.  I just knew I needed to love my child.  To listen and learn and stop thinking I knew things because I didn’t know at all.  

Practically, the new name was pretty easy to master.  I messed up occasionally, for a few weeks.  He went from Leah to Lee.  He lost a syllable.  I frequently started to shout his name and then remembered, choking off the last syllable at the back of my throat before it escaped my lips.  

Emotionally, the name change was hard.  I chose that name so deliberately, so lovingly.  I loved the way the letters curled around each other when I wrote it out in my careful script.  I loved the way the sounds rolled off my tongue.  I loved the way the first and middle names sounded in tandem.  And he just dropped a syllable.  For months, I tried to get him to choose a new name with me.  I wanted it to be something sweet-sounding and carefully chosen.  He just wanted it to be masculine.  

The pronoun switch didn’t really trigger any emotion, but it was just harder.  In practical terms, you use pronouns more often than you use someone’s name.  And gendered pronouns are so ingrained in our speech that we use them without thinking.  For months, I would pause awkwardly before I used any pronouns at all. My speech became stilted and it felt as if I would never speak fluently again.  

I misgendered the kids, the dogs, my students, and my friends, but I eventually got Lee’s pronouns right.  

Except in the past tense.  Except when I was looking at this child in pigtails and a purple dress.  Except when I was telling old stories and relying on old memories, because THERE, in those memories, that child was still Leah. 

It always felt awkward, and I didn’t know how to navigate it.  Until I did what I should have done all along.  I asked him.  

My animal obsessed kid gave me a pet analogy.  “Mom, imagine you have a pet.  And you thought it was a girl for a long time.  Girl name.  Girl pronouns.  And then imagine you find out you were wrong.  Your pet is a boy!  So you start calling your pet by a boy name and using he/him pronouns.  You might make mistakes in the beginning, out of habit, but you try to get it right.”

“But when you go back and talk about your pet’s first vet visit, you don’t switch back because that’s what you called him then.  You get it right because you know better now.” 

“Mom, I’ve always been a boy.  You just didn’t know it.  But now you know so you have to try to get it right, even when you talk about the past.” 

*****

So that’s what I did. 

At first, it felt clumsy.  Awkward.  Like learning a new language.  I had a thought in the old language.  And then I had to translate in my head before I spoke.  

But here’s the thing about learning a new language… eventually, you get to the point where you’re not translating in your head anymore.  You’re THINKING in the new language.  

So if you’re a parent in the thick of it… if you feel clumsy and awkward?  Keep at it.  Keep practicing. It gets easier.  It becomes natural.  

Even in the past tense. 

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What do you want?

I’m learning something about decision making, and it feels like it’s coming far too late in life.  

Let me give you an example from about 14 years ago.  I have one young child and I’m pregnant with my second.  Money is tight and I’m frequently exhausted.  Friends are planning a night out.  Someone just went through a tough breakup.  I’m the only one with a minivan that will fit us all, and I’m the perfect designated driver because I’m not drinking anyway.  I’m a little on the fence about whether I want to go, and I talk to Jack about it.  

My focus is on the fact that my friends need me.  My friend is going through something hard.  She needs emotional support.  And there’s the whole van/driver thing.  If I go, it makes everything easier.  I’m a little worried about the money, but I think I should still go.  

Jack listens to this line of reasoning, getting angrier and angrier.  I think he’s mad because I’m going to spend money.  Because I’m leaving him home with two kids.  Because he’s jealous that I’m going out with my friends. 

It took me ten years and a million variations of this conversation to finally understand that he WAS angry, but not for any of the reasons that I thought.  He was angry because he thought I was making decisions out of a sense of obligation when I didn’t really WANT to go.   He felt like I was allowing myself to be USED.

Mind blown. 

Since I made this discovery, it’s shifted things for me.  I have to start with asking myself, “Do I really WANT to do this thing?” 

And if the answer is yes, I need to LEAD with that when I talk to my husband.  This is a thing I want to do.  These are my reservations.  Will you talk it through with me?  Of course, it’s not all smooth sailing, but it’s made the conversations easier; we’re speaking the same language now.  

For me, simply WANTING to do something was never enough of a reason.  And the inverse is also true.  NOT WANTING to do something wasn’t enough of an excuse.  For Jack, the WANTING or NOT WANTING has always been primary. 

I don’t know if that’s just our nature, or ingrained gender roles, or the way we were raised.  In therapy, I’ve started to understand the depths and dangers of my ‘people-pleasing’ and conflict avoidance, and I’m working on them.  I’m trying to get in tune with what I want and then work for it.  I’m trying to ask for the things I need instead of passively hinting and then sitting with the disappointment.  

In a way, having teenagers in the house is helping with this.  These kids constantly WANT.  They want snacks and rides and food and sleepovers and money and trips to the ice cream shop.  They want ALL DAY LONG.  They’re not spoiled.  (Well, maybe a little.)  But for the most part, they’re just growing and trying to assert a little independence before they’re allowed to get a job or drive a car. I want them to go places and do things.  I just wish it didn’t require so much commitment on my end.  

So I’m learning to prioritize what I want.  It’s easier when I have solid plans.  When they need a ride to the mall, I can say, “Sorry.  I’m going out to lunch with a friend. I can take you later or tomorrow or you can try to get a ride with someone.”  

But when I’ve been running around all day and I just got dinner in the oven and folded the last load of laundry and I finally sit down with a good book, it’s a little harder.  

“Can you bring me to the movies?”

“Not now.” 

“But why not?”

Because I’ve had a long day.  Because I drove you all over God’s green earth yesterday. Because gas costs a fortune.  Because dinner is already in the oven.  Because I’m tired.  Because this book is good.  

Because I don’t want to. 

Can that be enough?