All of my children are stubborn strong-willed. In fact, each consecutive child has demonstrated more force of will than the one before. So my youngest son, Zach, is a force to be reckoned with when he makes up his mind he doesn’t want to do something.
I struggle to find a reward he will respond to or a punishment that will make him yield. He has an incredible sweet tooth. In our house, you never have to eat anything, but you don’t get dessert unless you try one bite of everything being served. He has gone months at a time without eating dessert. Once, when he made his own “taco” (in his case, a taco is a tortilla with cheese on it) and he got particularly greedy with the cheese even after being advised to go easy on it, I told him he needed to finish it before he got anything else, since he dished it up himself. (Another of our food rules–if you dish it yourself, you’re expected to eat what you dish.) He went a day and a half with out eating rather than eating a food he liked. What do you do with a kid like that?
Or, more specifically, what do you do with a kid like that when you start getting behavior notes sent home from his second grade teacher on a daily basis?
In turn, we talked, we cajoled, we bribed, we punished, to no effect. The promise of a trip to the dollar store or new Legos could not entice him. Afternoons spent in the principal’s office did not discourage him. A play date with his best friend was not enough of a lure, loss of recess privileges was no deterrent. Extra chores, letters of apology to his teacher, nothing seemed to have any impact. It reminds me of a Farside cartoon, where a guy is hauling a wheelbarrow full of heavy rocks through the pits of hell while whistling a merry tune. The one demon looks at the other and says, “I just don’t think we’re getting through to that guy.”
We asked other parents for ideas. We spoke (frequently) with his teacher and principal, looking for creative solutions. We searched online for things we hadn’t tried yet.
Then one day he came home from school very excited to tell us about the nice lady from Animal Allies that had come to their classroom that day. She had explained to them why a rat was the perfect pet for a child. Could we get a rat?
Um, no. No rats. But maybe some other small rodent. So I told him if his behavior at school improved and I didn’t get any more notes home from school, and he could show me he was responsible enough to care for it, I would get him a rodent of his very own.
In hind sight, I should have probably discussed this with Dale. My parents were anti-pet people, and even they let me get a gerbil when I was a kid, so since he was the person in the family who initiated our own pet ownership (a dog) when we were newlyweds, it truly didn’t occur to me he’d be so opposed to it. Quite frankly, since nothing else had worked, I’m not sure I even believed I was going to have to follow through on this.
But we had finally stumbled on something that motivated Zach to change his behavior. We had discovered the carrot that would make this donkey go.
It is rare that I promise my children anything. I am the queen of “maybe” and “we’ll see”. It’s important to me that my children see that I keep my word, so on the occasions that I do utter the words “I promise”, I always follow through.
So now I had a whole new problem to deal with. How was I ever going to persuade Dale that a rodent was a good idea? I kept putting Zach off, hoping Dale would warm up to the idea.
And then the neighbors asked us to dog sit for them while they were on vacation. Oh, and could we make sure their hamster had fresh water and food, too? Easy-peasy, Dale would see how effortless a rodent would be.
He didn’t even want us to agree to watch the neighbors hamster. “It’s a bad idea. The hamster always gets out,” he said. This was going to be tougher than I thought.
It was about that time that the comic strip Baby Blues (which has eerily paralleled our life many a time) started a theme about the family getting their turn to take care of the class hamster over the weekend. The hamster, of course, escapes. Hilarity ensues.
Our neighbors departed on their beach vacation. They did casually mention to our son (the primary dog-sitter) that the hamster had been getting out lately because she had chewed through the plastic latch on the cage, but they had fixed it with a metal bobby pin. And she’s really easy to catch, she comes right back to her cage if she does get out. Upon hearing this, Dale just shook his head.
After a long drive, the neighbors posted a lovely picture of their family smiling on a sandy beach with the waves crashing behind them. And their status: “This is the only picture we took before every one of us was stung by jelly fish.”
Dale was out of town with our second son at a soccer tournament, and I was trying to get the other three kids to church on time when Kevin ran over to let their dog out early that morning before we went to church. As we’re getting in the car, late (of course) for church he says, “the door wasn’t locked right, the dog refused to go outside, there is a strange car parked in their driveway, and the hamster escaped.” Hamster missing versus burglars potentially in the house right at that moment? The missing hamster gets low priority. Did it look like anything was missing in the house Kevin? “I dunno, I didn’t notice.” Typical teenaged boy.
I wrote down the license plate of the mystery car as we drove past on the way to church and I called our vacationing neighbors to ask about the car before I called the police, in case they had told someone (the neighbors on the other side, perhaps?) that they could use their driveway. After scaring them about their house potentially being burglarized and knowing they had all been stung by jelly fish and were in agony, I didn’t think they needed to hear that the hamster had escaped as well. Besides, I was confident we’d find her, hadn’t they told us how easy she was to catch? They would never need to know. (For you curious types, it was a friend of the other neighbors that had parked in their driveway, no crimes were being committed.)
Day 1 of The Great Hamster Escape: The kids searched the bedroom for the missing rodent, and did their best to ensure the dog was blockaded from the part of the house where the hamster resides. We were somewhat afraid of coming into their house and finding “Sugar” had become another chew toy for “Rokky”. They move Sugar’s cage down to the floor so she has easy access and can return home on her own.
Day 2 of Sugar’s Big Adventure: Our search of their house the becomes more extensive. Flashlights are involved. We venture into rooms we’ve never been in before. Crawl spaces are explored. Dale confesses to us about the ONE time he watched his neighbors hamster, and it got out. He finally located it after it built a new nest by shredding up the couch cushions. We extended our search to our neighbor’s couch cushions, and removed all the potato chip fragments from the crevices and beneath the cushions, as we didn’t want her to be tempted to take up residence there. Rokky’s deposits are monitored for traces of fur or bone. Sugar remains at large.
Day 3 of the Frantic Hamster Search: We spend hours in our neighbors house, alternating between being very, very quiet hoping we can hear her somewhere and energetically searching including moving furniture. We contemplate buying a replacement hamster, wondering if we would need to confess or if we could get away with this deception. I, for one, am feeling somewhat panicky. Kevin vows, like his father, he will never pet sit another hamster. That evening I call our neighbors and confess that the hamster has escaped. I fail to mention that she escaped days ago. They helpfully tell us how to build a hamster trap. We build said trap and leave the house. I suggest to Kevin that he should sleep there so he can grab Sugar immediately if she is lured into the trap. He refuses. I think at this point he secretly wants the hamster to die.
Day 4 of the Hamster Obsession: As the earliest riser the next morning, I run over to the neighbor’s house at first light. Success! I snag Sugar and deposit her back in her cage. I have never seen a hamster drink so much. She was probably dehydrated and close to death. Revived, mere minutes later, I watch her climb the walls of her cage and start working to dislodge the door again. I run home for wire twist ties to better secure her. There will be no further hamster misadventures on our watch.
Somehow all this fun with hamsters reinforced with Dale that he did not want a rodent in our household. Nor does it help that our dog Nick regularly catches and kills voles in our backyard.
But promises must be kept. We have now, finally, welcomed a gerbil, Nibbles Whitebeard, into our family. And no, he has not escaped yet.
And yes, he bites.
wechoosetolaugh 