The Power Struggle

Every day Bryant's job is to empty the dishwasher. I have attempted to have him do other things, but it's kind of the only job he's good at doing, so that's his job for now. He's shown some promise in the table-clearing department, and with a little improvement maybe we could add that to his chore repertoire, but for now, he empties the dishwasher and has since last summer. He generally accepts this and does not usually complain a lot when the time comes to empty it.

Most nights I have to tell him that it has to be done before dinner and when it gets pretty close to dinner time he'll go ahead and empty it. On Mondays when the kids skype with their grandma, he knows it has to be emptied before he talks to her, and this has been a rule for many months. Yesterday for some reason he just refused to do it. I reminded him that he would not get to skype with his grandma and he still didn't do it. He was in desperate need of a hair cut and I had previously arranged with Erick to take him to get one after work, so Erick took him for the hair cut, and then went ahead and took him to McDonalds before coming home so I couldn't use dinner time to get him to do it. We then had family home evening and we actually had a lesson about gardening and helped the children identify what is a weed and what is a plant, and we all picked weeds which Bryant enjoyed and had no problem with. But as soon as I mentioned the dishwasher Bryant collapsed to the ground and said he was too tired and felt sick. I then told him he could not go to bed until it was done. Well, to some kids would be pretty excited about staying up for any reason, but not Bryant. On school nights he likes to go to bed on time by 8:00pm at the latest because he's always up by 6:00 (not that he has to be mind you), and he's genuinely tired. He said that he HAD to go to bed and that he was so tired, and on and on, but I stood my ground. By 8:15 he still wasn't emptying the dishwasher so I then told him that if he did not empty it by 8:30 then I would not allow him to go to school the next day until it was emptied. He was very upset by this, and started yelling and getting upset (I by the way, did not yell or become upset at all, at this point it was just a chess game, I knew I could get him to do it, I just had to figure out how). Then, he poked Cora in the arm with a pencil and I told him he would just have to do it in the morning and sent him to bed.

Later that night, Erick started emptying the dishwasher so we could clean the kitchen and go to bed. I told him not to, and explained that Bryant was going to in the morning. We cleaned up the rest of the kitchen and went to bed. I really want Bryant to know that we were serious about him completing his family responsibilities, and that he wasn't going to go to bed and have his chores magically done for him. So we went to bed and this morning at 6:00am Bryant got up on his OWN, went down stairs and emptied the dishwasher without any prompting from us. I was proud of the little guy. I'm also glad that he fully expected that dishwasher to be waiting for him and that he knew I was serious about not sending him to school.

The thing I want our children to feel is that they are NEEDED. I think one of the reasons Bryant does not complain much about doing his chore is that I have shown him on other days when he didn't do it, that I then have to do his chores for him, and that it makes more work for me to do. But if he does it, he's helping his mother and family, and I think he likes to know that he is really doing something to help, not just doing something that I could do better and faster. There are days when I let him off the hook and will do it for him, and days when he has been sick and I let him out of it, but yesterday was not one of those days. He needed to fulfill his responsibility for our family and I'm glad I made him do it!