The Toddler’s Revenge

Every family has stories that are told and retold until they become part of the canon of family legend. One of ours involves my older brother misbehaving as a toddler so severely that my mother threw her hands up in surrender. She said to him, “Robert, if you had a little boy who was misbehaving like this, what would you do with him?” Rob began to cry. The he replied, “I would put him in the trash can!”

The Infraction

I have been growing increasingly frustrated with two infractions committed by one of my children. She frequently “forgets” to clean the guinea pigs’ cage; and when I call her down for our 15-minute Family Cleaning Time before school each morning, she frequently says, “I just need a couple of minutes!” and then comes down for just the last 5 minutes of FCT, if at all. In each case, she’ll say “Sorry,” I’ll shake my head, and then the episode is over. I end up doing the extra cleaning, and taking care of the pigs.

The Guide

There is a book series that I owe a great deal to – it has helped me immensely with my parenting throughout the years. The first book is a little too militant for me but the ones after that have been absolute gems. Even though I’m not Christian, I find the morals and goals of the book to be so much in line with my own, and the information so valuable, that the Bible references aren't a deal-breaker. I think it was On Becoming Preteen Wise that talked about monkeys on the parents’ backs. I tried to give my child the “monkeys” of Family Cleaning Time and cleaning out the guinea pigs’ cage every other day; but then when she doesn’t do it, I take the monkey right back on myself and there are no repercussions for her.

Natural Repercussions

I thought about telling her that she’d lose her phone privileges for the day if either of these things weren’t done; but then I thought, I’m even taking the repercussion monkey onto my back. I’m going to sit down with her after school today and explain the dilemma. If she comes up with the loss-of-phone repercussion on her own, great; if she comes up with something even more severe, so be it. Either way, the repercussion will have been her own decision and I won’t have to be the “bad cop” when she makes her choice To Clean or Not To Clean!