A Peaceful Week

It's been fairly peaceful in our house this week. Kaleb moved upstairs and has been in charge of himself. He’s been wanting to do this since we lived in Norway. He was thinking of our home one day, appreciating all it’s uniqueness, and asked if after we moved back home, sometime he could live in the apartment upstairs and be in charge of himself. Being the homeschool family we are, I thought it would be a great learning opportunity for him, so I agreed. But the more he talked about it, I realized he just wanted to have unlimited electronics time, and that his entire week would be spent sitting in front of his Nintendo, a computer, or the Wii. I’ve been dragging my feet on keeping that commitment ever since. But finally, a few weeks ago, in the heat of us yelling at each other for something or another, he said all he’s ever wanted was to just be in charge of himself for one day. I told him he could be in charge of himself for an entire week, if he stayed off the electronics. He agreed. So all week he’s kept his own schedule, fixed his own food, made all his own decisions. I told him I’d drive him to his weekly commitments for no charge, but he’d have to pay me taxi fare if he wanted to go anywhere else. I offered to give him work to earn money if he needed it. He didn’t take me up on either of those offers. He basically sat around all week and read books. He was fairly bored by the end of the first day, but he wasn’t about to halt his freedom.



This morning I pointed out a few things that made me think I wouldn’t do this little experiment again anytime soon. He went to bed after midnight every night, and slept in every day. He didn’t shower or take a bath, he often didn’t brush his teeth. He only ate pretzels and bagels for most of the week when his refrigerator was full of fruits and veggies and microwaveable healthy dinner options he could easily fix himself. He chose to do basically no school work and rarely practiced the piano. I offered to be available to help him on any and all school work, but he didn’t take me up on that offer either. He didn’t do any of his chores and he stayed in the house even on sunny days – not getting any exercise whatsoever. I didn’t yell at him or tell him to do anything at all. Earlier in the week as Kory and I were eating dinner he asked if he could pay a “restaurant fee” to eat some of what we had, but I gave him a few bites for free just because he sounded so pathetic. Later in the week he appreciated the invitation to dinner when we had company over.


I’m not sure what he learned in all that process, but I know I loved not having to get after him all the time about different things. This morning I asked him if he had done anything during the week that he shouldn’t have, and he confessed to getting on my computer at night a few times, and also to playing his Nintendo once for a few hours. I thanked him for his honesty and I know he appreciated coming clean without having any negative consequences. I asked him if he were me, if I should trust him again to have a week by himself and he said, “No.” So perhaps that was the lesson. Who knows. At least now it’s off my to-do list.


Since I’ve been free from dealing with Kaleb this week, I’ve been a little extra social and had friends over, and gone over to friends for visits. It’s actually been quite nice. Wednesday I even officiated an internment for the ashes of my step-mom’s sister. The family came up here to put her ashes in the columbarium at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery and I orchestrated and executed the event – including the luncheon afterwards. It was all well done, if I do say so myself. Kory even took the day off from grouting the porch tiles to attend. (He’s nearly done now, woo hoo!)


Kaleb and I spent all day today taking a training class for Summit Assistance Dogs so we qualify to be short term foster homes to dogs in their training program. We’ll see how that goes, but already I have my doubts that Kaleb will be able to keep from ruining whatever training they have already gone through, as they have very high standards and Kaleb just wants to love on dogs uncontrollably, but I’m willing to give it a try.


Last night we had a family outing with some friends to go see Tim Hawkins, a Christian comedian, in concert down in Kent. What a hoot that guy is and it was so good to laugh and laugh and laugh. The photo today is of one of the neighborhood chickadees who is so well trained by our neighbor that it eats from anyone’s hand. There are about four of them that do this in the woods near our house. It’s so cool to connect with nature like that. Now if I could just get Kory and Kaleb to eat out of the palm of my hand, I probably wouldn’t need to go see a comedian in order to have such a good laugh.