What Can you Do?

Dr. Coleman hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and did not move. An instant before, he had been doing well enough–to my untrained eye–in the fighting portion of his brown belt test, but now he lay inertly on the floor of the ballet studio that served–on Tuesday and Thursday nights–as a dojo. I was tempted to go to Dr. Coleman’s aid, but there were actual medical professionals in the class of a dozen students watching the “kumite,” so I remained sitting uncomfortable on my ankles.

After a few seconds, our teacher looked up from his notes. Motioning to one of the other doctors in the class–our group seemed to be weighted heavily with health care professionals–he asked, “Is he dead?”

“No, Sensei.”

“Then move him out of the way.”

***

Contrast the above scene with the following–admittedly brutally insensitive–joke: A mother is carrying her 12 year-old son from a limousine to the door of a five-star hotel. “What a shame he can’t walk,” says the doorman.”

“With any luck, he’ll never have to,” the mother replies.

***

As with all parenting issues, moderation is the answer. Throwing a child in a lake is an abusive form of swimming lessons. But not allowing a child the opportunity to help out around the house is equally harmful.

Of course it is unlikely that your adolescent children WANT to help out around the house. Did I SAY that I thought your adolescent children wanted to help out around the house? Is there any sentence is these hundred articles I’ve written on parenting that would lead you to infer that I am a deranged alien with no knowledge of how children are raised on this planet? (This is a rhetorical question to which the correct answer is “no.”)

Adolescent children don’t want to take out the garbage, do the dishes, mow the lawn, vacuum the floors, bathe the dog, or–if they are lucky enough to live in a home with a pool–clean the pool. The tricky bit is to allow them to want to help out, to find the middle path. Because the “evil dojo method”–“sweep the floor or you don’t get any food” is as bad as the “we carry him everywhere so he doesn’t have to walk” School of Parenting. These kids are never allowed to do any chores. And why would they?

As always, preparing the soil has much to do with healthy plants. It is extraordinarily difficult for an adolescent to disengage from playing “Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Blood, Blood, Blood, Kill, Kill, Kill” to come help prepare dinner. If there are no addictive screens in the home–and need I remind you that all screens are addictive?–then setting the table becomes a more palatable activity. It is hard for parents, indeed it is hard for any flesh and blood creature, to compete with those dopamine inducing video games. But we can eliminate the competition. There is only one way to beat a video game: unplug it.

The other way to allow children to participate in the gentle interactions that contribute to the running of a productive home is to take the time. Remember, the goal isn’t getting the brownies made. We’re working on hanging out with the kids, accomplishing a shared goal, maybe learning some math (if three teaspoons is one tablespoons, how many teaspoons is two tablespoons?) If the goal was just brownies, you could take $3.95 to the market and buy some.

Let me know what gentle persuasions work in your home. In the meantime, I’m going to see whether or not Dr. Coleman has regained consciousness.