Correction or Liberation

Teaching responsibility appears to require super hero strength and endurance. In your parent pack of powers you will need to have multiple personalities including tutor, drill sergeant, lecturer and moralizer.

We have decided our son’s vision is impaired. Though he must walk by the trash can to enter or exit the kitchen, his peripheral vision cannot detect a high level of trash. If his sensors were alarmed by the level of trash, he would then be required to pull forth his super hero strength to remove said trash and then invoke agility and skill to place a new liner in the trash can. Rewards, reminders and rebuking are not strong enough weapons to correct the impaired vision.

Since all efforts have failed, we are now resorting to elimination of privileges. Our son is a normal boy with powerful ties to his gaming system. We have decided to attack his perpetual defensive maneuvers by severing the ties to the gaming system away. Quite satisfied that the removal of his system would invoke the appropriate motivation and modified behavior, we did not take into consideration the liberation he would feel by this correction.

Granted, it has only been two days, but our son does not appear to be affected by the correction. He has taken the liberation of his attachment to the gaming system to draw from his inner imagination. He is playing. He is playing with his brother. He is playing with his non-technical toys. He is creating stories in his head. He is, dare I say it, reading. He even dusted off an old sketch pad and in addition to doodles, created a comic strip with doodles and dialogue.

I am perplexed. I want my son to learn responsibility. I want him to take ownership of his job and do it to the best of his ability, but all we have done is liberate him from a crutch we were not aware existed. Granted, it has only been two days. I suspect over time the call of the crutch will claim him, and he will attempt to recover his gaming system. But if it doesn’t, if he decides he enjoys being a member of the real and alive rather than the digital, how will we ever motivate him to take out the trash?