Perhaps it was because I had dug out about 7 yards of dirt by hand, so I was tired and a bit edgy. Perhaps it was because temps hit around 90 yesterday while I was doing all that digging. Perhaps it was because the digging was particularly difficult since the earth I was digging in was a devilish mixture of clay, sand and rock. Perhaps it was because while all this was going on, the kids were climbing around the 2 massive dirt piles I’d built up, getting ridiculously dirty and having fun.
Perhaps it was a bit of all of the above.
I made the kids help me dig for a bit yesterday. I knew they would have difficulty doing it, but I made them do it anyway. When I first told them to start helping, they both probably thought it was one of those one-off threat-request parents make and never follow-up with.
But I did this time. If I’d cared to look, I might have seen the surprised look on their faces when I insisted they pick up shovels and start digging. “Hey,” I told myself, “I’m giving them the easiest part of the digging.”
So they struggled with it for about 5 minutes, while I continued to labor away. I glanced over and they were displaying all the classic signs of boredom: not doing what had been asked, drawing pictures in the dirt, sitting where they should have been digging and generally getting distracted by every little thing.
It annoyed me (see the first paragraph). I’d compelled asked them to help and they could barely do it for more than a few minutes. I’d been out there for several hours already. I made my displeasure with their efforts known.
They tried again to get something done, but they ran into difficulty quickly again and were clearly stalling and looking for an excuse to bolt.
I took a moment. I was sweating, hot, exhausted and not done. The work was difficult for me. What, exactly, was I proving making them do this? Sure, on the one hand they’d dug many a hole under the deck prior to all this work- but that was in the context of play. I wasn’t playing a game. At least, not the kind of game they were ready to participate in.
So what was my point making them do this work? Give them a chance to prove to themselves they could do it? Give them perspective so they’d appreciate the work I was doing? Was this a lesson worth spending my, severely depleted, energy on now?
What could only have been my more rational side convinced me this wasn’t the time or place. I was making them do work they weren’t capable of performing, in conditions they weren’t really ready for, for reasons I could barely articulate to myself. In reality, I figured, I would only make them hate working with me on big projects.
I finally relented and let them go back to playing. There was still a part of me that didn’t agree with the choice. That felt they needed to be made to do this. If not now, when? They need to learn how to be able to knuckle down and do work. If I don’t stick to my guns, they’ll always bail on projects that are too hard, or not fun.
True as those things might be, I slowly came to realize, it wasn’t going to happen on a too-hot Saturday afternoon under our deck.