Hands On with the Lass

The Wife wanted the kids to vacuum this morning. The lass immediately volunteered to do the hardwood portion, leaving the area carpets for the boy.

So the lass did her ‘vacuuming’ while the Wife ran an errand with the boy. I was poking around on the intertubes at the time, so I wasn’t exactly paying attention to quality-of-performance on the lass’ part.

When the Wife arrived home, I was quickly updated on that point when the Wife asked me “Did she vacuum? It doesn’t look like it…” Sure enough, dust bunnies rolled like tumbleweeds across the hardwoods. Somewhere in the distance, that whistle from “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” quietly sounded. A mouse in a serape and a hat appeared riding a cockroach. Across the floor, another mouse stood precariously on a wood chip with his head in a noose fashioned out of dog fur hanging from a corner of a baseboard heater…

Back in reality, rather than get upset and start yelling, I opted for a more direct approach. Inconvenient to me, but more likely to get a point across. I went upstairs and retrieved the lass from her room where she was listening to one of her audiobooks that she’s heard approximately 100 times. By the hand and without a word, I led her down the stairs.

She didn’t like that one bit. She wasn’t sure what was up, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it. She fought me a bit even on the steps, but I didn’t yell and attained a bit more cooperation when I calmly told her that she could get hurt acting that way on stairs. Her brow furrowed, she trudged downstairs behind me. While she’d stopped physically resisting, her verbal resistance, “I don’t need you to hold my hand!”, served to inform me she was still not liking this one bit.

I walked her over to the still setup vacuum, placed her hand on the handle, placed my hand over hers and assumed a position behind her. We then turned on the vacuum cleaner and I slowly and methodically demonstrated how to vacuum the whole floor, with her present the entire time.

She fought me the whole way. Complaining I was holding her hand to tight; telling me she already knew how to vacuum (I merely replied “All evidence to the contrary.”); saying she’d already done that part. At one point, she spied a dustbunny across the room and wanted to go right over to hit it with the vacuum. I gently redirected her and explained we would get there in a bit. Finally, she said she got it so I let her try a small area.

Clearly, she didn’t get it, so I resumed my training.

I’m not under any delusions that she can now properly vacuum the floor. But if I continue to make the job so pleasant for her, I figure the message will sink in sooner than later. At least, that’s the plan. If one of us has to vacuum anyway to get the job done properly, we might as well make the most of it.