The What If Game

I've never been one for games.  Not really.  I’ve enjoyed a good game of Solitaire on occasion.  I think crossword puzzles are jolly good fun.  I like Monopoly, as long as I don’t have to be the banker and I can use either the shoe or the dog.  Jenga is fun with multiple people and with two stacks of bricks on top of one another, both on an exploding base.  I've enjoyed a few rousing games of Cards Against Humanity (I will not apologize!  I have never laughed harder!  It's good to be rude, occasionally, and among trusted friends!).  I've never been one for sports, to play them or to watch them, though I enjoy men’s college basketball.  Golf, tennis and baseball are, to me, like watching paint dry.  But there is one game I hate, loathe and despise.  My children, especially boy-child, like to play this game often.  It is called The What If Game.

Here’s how it works:

• What if I didn't brush my teeth?
• What if I just picked out my clothes in the morning?
• What if the sky wasn't blue?
• What if I just read for ten more minutes?
• What if that cloud over there was over our heads right now and we were the only ones getting rained on?
• What if I slept with my feet where my head usually is?
• What if I didn't do my homework?

Alright, I know.  Those are probably not the greatest examples, but I think you get the picture.  What if this?  What if that?  And this game has no rules, per se.  Mostly, in the mind of boy-child, the point of The What If Game is to extend an argument or not do what he has been asked to do. 

So, What If I just walked away and didn't play the game? 

“MO-OM!  CAN I FINISH WHAT I WAS SAYING? 
YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME!!!!”

(Oh, the humanity!)  Usually, at this point, there are tears already on the verge of spilling.  I understand he’s frustrated.  I truly do.  The problem here is he tends to talk so much at home without getting to the point, I tend find myself drifting to other things in my head rather than listening to him with 100% of my attention.  This is my failure, too, I know.  Eventually, I have to ask him to please stop, take a breath for goodness sake, and to simply do what I've asked him to do.  This is the point where The What If Game begins, extending his not-complying-with-mom’s-edict, culminating in “MO-OM! CAN I FINISH WHAT I WAS SAYING?” when I simply walk away, refusing to argue anymore.

The What If Game is endless and always (always) leaves all players frustrated and upset.  It’s a worthless, unproductive waste of time and I loathe it.  A much more creative, pleasant and surprising game for all involved is The Yes Ma’am/Sir Game.  I think we could save a lot of time playing this game instead of that game.

TTFN
JMS

A New Meaning to Tunnel Vision

My son lives in a tunnel.  Ok, not really.  He lives in a small house with his mother, father, sister and Facha, the dog.  (Ok – not really the dog, either.  Sorry – I lapsed into Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant for a second there.)  He lives in a constant state of whatever is currently in his head, what he’s thinking, where he’s going, what he’s doing – but only in the sense of however those things affect him.  He sees nothing but what is at the end of that tunnel of thought.  You see?  He lives in a tunnel.

For such a smart kid (and he is so smart it’s scary) he’s pretty clueless about the world around him.

Let me give you an example or two.

Tonight after supper, he got out of his chair at the dining table, pushing it back and into the box behind the chair.  Banged himself away from the table loudly, bumped into his father, and made a bee-line for the only comfy chair in the room.  When he reached the chair, he hurled himself into it, causing it to slide back and further causing the back corner of the chair to come into contact with the large window in the living room.  The bottom half of this window is already cracked I had a moment of apoplexy waiting on the chair to crack the top half of the window, too.  Thankfully, that didn’t happen.  So when I called all this to his attention, he proceeded to twitch his body in such a way as to hopefully scoot the chair forward without having to get up.  Meanwhile, he’s holding onto an accent pillow which, as he’s scooting the chair forward, is pushing a glass off the side-table with each scoot until….CRASH!  Glass hit the floor.

All this occurred over about a 40 second period of time.  I hollered at him out of sheer frustration and then his father made him leave the room for a little while.

Hubby wrongly assumed I was just being pissy and so I tried to explain that really, it wouldn’t matter all that much if stuff like this didn’t happen all the time around our son.  An explanation to which I received a “Yeah, right,” response.

Ok – moving on.

While I cleared off some stuff from the table, this allowed our son a few minutes alone in his room so when I called him to come talk to me for a few minutes, he was angry and defensive. 

I explained it like this:

Buddy, you do realize that there is a whole big world out that that you interact with, and that interacts with you, on a daily basis?  Everything you do and everything you say affects someone or something else.  Right now, you’re moving through life in a tunnel and I really need you to come out of that tunnel.  All you see is what’s at the end of your tunnel.  Where you’re going.  What you’re doing.  What your goal is.  But you don’t see the things around you that your journey to the end – to your goal – is affecting.  Let me give you an example…

And I proceed to tell him the story of Alice’s Restaurant and the twenty-seven color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and a para….wait.  Sorry.  I just did it again.  I call a do-over!

And I proceed to tell him what I told you above about the chair and the glass.  He was completely oblivious to everything I said except the sitting down part and the trying to scoot the chair forward part – until I hollered at him.

He said, “But I don’t always drop stuff, Mom!”

I explained that it wasn’t just dropping stuff and proceeded to talk about all the times he runs into things, how he sits down by throwing himself into his seat and gets up by banging into everything he possibly can and how when he takes a drink he’s so focused on the next thing that he’s not paying attention to where he’s putting the glass and he nearly always slams it into his plate. 

All of this he laughed at, like I was trying to be funny.

I explained that really, I’m not criticizing.  I’m simply trying to help him understand that everything he does affects something else.  Every single day.  Well, of course then he got upset because he thought I was trying to tell him he was screwing up on a daily basis, which I was not.  But in his ten-year-old brain, maybe that’s how it all sounded, I don’t know.

But what I did say was that I wanted him to start paying attention to the things, the people, the world around him, and how his movement through the world affected everything else.  He said he would.  I probably did an absolutely awful job at explaining all this to him in a non-threatening manner and in a way that he could understand my point.  I suppose the next few days will tell me if he heard me, or he actually HEARD me.

This parenting gig is tough.

TTFN

JMS

Patience vs. Will Power vs. Caffiene

• For all those times when all you want to do is stay snuggled, safe and warm, in your bed and ignore your alarm clock because it’s cold or rainy outside and really, what’s your motivation?  
• For all the times you say “no” to your alarm clock.  Or the dog who has to go outside to pee.  Or to your own bladder, for that matter (ha!  How clever am I?)  Or the child who got up at the BCOD.
• For all those times you say to yourself just five more minutes and then those five minutes turn into ten, then twenty and now, suddenly, you’re going to be late. 
• For all those times that you think I really don’t need a shower (yes, you really do, I promise) so you use the time you would have taken up by showering to catch a few more minutes of shut-eye. 
• For all those times when you’re allergy-ridden and therefore you resort to a full dose of medication like Benadryl or Zyrtec and then the next morning (and possibly well into the next afternoon) you are decidedly zombie-like.
• For all those times when you’re sitting at your desk trying desperately to focus on the task at hand but your chin somehow keeps winding up in your hand and you continually find your head inching closer and closer to a full face-plant on the keyboard.  (Just imagine the pretty, lettered impressions on your cheek.)
• For all those times when it takes everything in your power not to shove your chair back, kick your feet up on the nearest elevated surface, lean as far back as your chair will allow and just close your eyes for two minutes all the while knowing if that actually happens there will be a full-on Drool & Snore Fest.

TTFN
JMS