I was staring down the barrel of Monday after taking three days off of work to venture into the realm of visiting relatives and college campuses. The four days prior to that I was functioning at minimal levels due to a head cold. Stuff had piled up and Monday was the day to get it all done. The only way I could possibly do it all was to deploy lists and minions–five lists, four minions. I wrote a list for each child and left the lists on the counter. My list resided in my google tasks window. At 7 am the work began.
I wish I could take credit for training my kids right, but I can’t. The truth of the matter is that each of them made choices this morning. I made the lists, but they could easily have chosen to rebel or get distracted. Instead my kids decided to own those lists, to claim them and dispatch them as quickly as possible. By noon the house was cleaner and all the critical kid tasks were complete. (Except for Patch’s science fair project which required my participation and thus was the one item on his list which remains incomplete here at bedtime.) I grant you that we have carefully practiced doing chores. We’ve created system after system for tracking chores, assigning chores, rewarding work done, and applying consequences for incomplete work. Each system was built out of the functioning bits of prior systems that had fallen apart. There is definitely a refining process as we figure out what works and what doesn’t for each child at each stage of life. Mostly though, the kids have realized that they have power to make our lives better, that when they do work life is happier, that if they don’t things feel chaotic. Some of this learning is the result of me being too tired and stressed to save them from from the consequences. My kids are good workers because I built a structure and then got out of the way. This let their innate awesomeness have room to grow.
My list of things also shrank by leaps and bounds through the morning. The largest of these things was that I needed to be online to help answer questions and troubleshoot during the opening of registration for the Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat which will take place next summer. It is an event I’m really excited to be part of, but which I’ve not been mentioning online because there was only so much space and it seemed important to let those who follow the Writing Excuses blog have the first chance to register. They wasted no time at all. The event was sold out within ten minutes. Mary and I were online for an hour more just to double check everything and iron out a couple of minor behind-the-scenes organizational issues. So next June I’ll be headed back to Chattanooga for another writing retreat. Only this time I’ll have Howard with me and I’ll probably get to do some teaching. I’m looking forward to it.
By the time my kids were finishing up their lists I was barely half way through mine, and I was losing steam. I always assign myself more things to do than can be reasonably done in the allotted time. This is because some days I really can get it all done. Most days I just can’t. Also I have to put every random task I think of on the list or I will lose track of them. I often put things on lists for next week or even next month so that I can forget about them today. Somehow the afternoon turned into a slog for just about everyone. Then we all had to wade through patches of cranky in the evening. Yet here we are at bedtime with most of the things done. I do feel caught up, like tomorrow can be a normal day instead of a sprint. That will be nice. We need a steady pace for a while.