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Christi Diggs
on May 23 2013 - 06:00 AM
A drop of spin, a cup of deception and tsp. politics=Apathy
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Lindsay Metcalf
on May 22 2013 - 06:00 AM
When that tornado siren sounds, I'm in the basement
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mara williams
on May 21 2013 - 06:00 AM
Summer break has this mom on a house upkeep war path.
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As most of you know, Marc's father and I are divorced. Our attempts at continuing to coparent despite our separation have been mostly, and pleasantly, successful. That's not to say that we don't have our differences. We are divorced, after all. But regardless of our feelings toward each other, I would venture to say that we parent together pretty decently. Provided, that is, that we live in separate houses.
The other day, I picked Marc up from school during one of his dad's weeks and took him out for ice cream. Why the heck not? It was the last day of the first week of school. The boy deserves an ice cream with his mama. Then I drove him back to his dad's house to drop him off.
Now, I don't generally hang out at my ex-husband's house, and I can't say that I've really spent a lot of time in Marc's room, either, other than to check it out when they first moved in. But this time, Dad wasn't home. Marc let us in through the garage and we waited for his dad to come home, and in the meantime he had something he wanted to show me in his room.
Oh my word was this boy's room clean! Excuse me? How did this happen? Surely his dad cleans it for him, right?
"Hey, so uh, who cleans your room for you?" I asked. "Me," he replied. I didn't believe it. But why would he lie about that? I HAD to believe it.
I thought back to his room at home: dirty clothes on the floor, clean clothes on the floor, toys on the floor, closet a mess, bookshelf disorganized, tiny things that get stuck on the bottoms of my feet strewn about... you get the picture. I try to get him to clean it. I go in there and clean every once in a while, and I make him promise to keep it like that. I know I should follow up, but I'm tired sometimes. I've always thought of that as his space to keep how he wants it.
But that was before I saw what I saw. It was like a dream! No clothes were on the floor. Toys were lined up and properly sorted. It even smelled nice. I shouldn't have been surprised. The rest of the house is always spotless, with everything in it's place. I think that's why I'm always so uncomfortable there. It's just so darned tidy!
My house is not tidy. It consistently looks as though someone shopped at Toys R Us, Game Stop, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Office Depot on the same day and then tossed everything they bought willy-nilly around the house.
The next day Marc was home, and I was helping him get ready for bed like I always do. I pointed out the mess. "Why do you keep your room clean at your dad's but you don't here?" I asked him.
"I don't know." Right. That's his answer to every question.
"Well I want you to start keeping your room clean here."
"Do I have to?" he whined. I told him yes, he had to. "But this is my room, Mom! I like to keep it messy! I just like it the way it is!" Okay, so I felt like he had a point. It's his room, and that's how we've always done things. Why would I force him to change?
Oh. It's because I suddenly decided divorced parenting is a competion. Well, that's a terrible reason!
IT'S NOT A COMPETION!
Why is his room clean at his dad's and not here? I don't know, and I shouldn't really even care. Why is his dad's house so much cleaner than mine? It doesn't really matter. Marc is a good kid, and I cherish every moment I have with him. If he wants his room to be messy, so be it.
This is the lesson I learned this week. It's a lesson I already knew, but not one that I fully learned. Life is not a competition, and that includes parenting. Maybe his dad is the kind of parent that likes things neat and tidy. I'm the kind of parent that sacrifices tidiness for other things. Marc is also learning how to deal with different kinds of people and live in different environments on the way to discovering what kind of person or parent he will be.
It's not a competion. Everybody wins!
My DSS's room was always very tidy at our house, but a complete pit at his mothers. It frustrates her to no end that he does it at our house and not hers. We've tried to encourage him to be tidy at Mom's house but he just won't do it. I don't know what the difference is either. I just found it very odd that it's the same situation!
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