Self-Inflicted Discipline
In my household we conduct what we call “5-Minute Room Rescues.” We got this concept from FlyLady.net, a web-site for over-achieving, have-too-many-interests, obsessive, perfectionistic, therefore-life-is-chaos people like me.
The concept of the 5-Minute Room Rescue works great for young children. Every morning before school, and at other times when I feel the need, my kids race around their room picking up everything they can before the timer goes off. I inspire as much urgency as my own energy-level allows me. When the time is done, they are done.
This works wonders for kids who buckle under the overwhelm of a messy room. They don’t have do a perfect job. They don’t even need to get it done. They just need to do the most they can in the given amount of time.
Starting last August, my tumultuous, yet manageable, life has plunged further and further into the endless pit of chaos. That manageable part is fading from my view. For a while I was still able to keep the home in decent order. But now it’s more like decent disorder.
Blake probably doesn’t realize the reason his room has become so unmanageable is because his baby-brother is now a kid-brother and I have not rearranged things to fit all the bigger kid toys and books.
Taking responsibility for his life, and always the idealist, Blake announced to me last night that he should be doing 10-Minute Room Rescues! I agreed, but wondered what it is about my son that he is so eager to inflict this upon himself?
And do you know what else? He doesn’t let me start the timer until he is at the doorway. Sometimes I am in a hurry (rather, ALWAYS I am in a hurry) and I just want to push the dang button and get back to work. But Blake won’t allow it until he is in his room, ready to go.
I used to think that, brilliant as he is, he must be utterly lacking in street smarts. Wouldn’t he prefer to waste a good twenty-seconds of time, which I am perfectly willing to relinquish?
I am sure he inherited my perfectionistic genes, but maybe it is partially the result of a room-cleaning concept that doesn’t demand unrealistic amounts of perfection. Perhaps the concept gave him the freedom to acquire his own desire for a clean room, rather than to always be fighting MY desire for one. Maybe the concept of a 5-Minute Room Rescue allowed him to take responsibility for himself.
Today, the day after his announcement of self-inflicted discipline, I told him it was time to do his Room Rescue. I wondered if he remembered his idea to make it a ten-minute activity. And if he did, would he still be up for it?
Sure enough, he yelled across the house as he positioned himself in the doorway of his room, knees bent, feet in a stance ready for action, arms out and poised to grab onto STUFF, “Set it for ten minutes, Mom!”
And I did.
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May 26th, 2006 @ 7:37 am
That is an awesome idea! I will have to remember to use it. Blake is truly remarkable. I think because he is still so young he is eager to accomplish such things, but when he gets older and more overwhelmed as you have, I’m sure he will prefer the shorter way out. =)
May 27th, 2006 @ 8:28 am
I am going to try this idea too :)! Thanks!
I also had a question for you unrelated to this topic. How have you dealt with the subject of death with your kids? I have already dealt with the subject with my son and he was fine with my explanation. Now, my daughter (4) has been asking questions and keeps saying she’s afraid to die. I want to comfort her, but I do not want to resort to the concept of heaven. Do you have any ideas?
May 27th, 2006 @ 10:10 am
Stephanie–How funny you ask. It is the topic of my next article for the Humanist Network News. Except my article deals more with introducing what happens at death and less about comforting them and their fears. Here are a couple ideas.
I told my children that when we die our brains stop working. It’s like the brain shuts off. When Trinity (age 6 and very sensitive) expressed a little sadness at the idea of an animal dying, I engaged her and Blake in a brief discussion about whether we can feel sadness and pain if our brain shuts off. Blake and Trinity concluded that, no, you couldn’t feel sad, or anything else, if your brain stopped.
So then, just to cement it in their minds, I summarized for them that when you are dead you cannot and will not feel sad or hurt. You don’t feel anything. That’s why we focus on the life we have right now, when we CAN feel things.
Trinity seemed really pleased at the idea of not feeling anything, including not being sad. But then, she is past the phase when she was much more concerned about death. I don’t know if this is adequate for a 4-year old child more gripped in fear. I’d love it if you started with that (if you haven’t already) and then reported back on the results.
Here is another idea of an event that happened spontaneously for us, and perhaps you can find a way to manufacture a similar event for your kids: we found a dead butterfly. The butterfly was still whole and beautiful. But it was obvious that it was dead. I let Aiden and Trinity hold the butterfly, examine it, and talk about it freely.
We talked about the wonderful life the butterfly had. We talked about what it means that it is now dead (this was after the discussion in the above paragraph). It was a chance for the kids to come face-to-face with the idea of death in a safe environment. I think that by giving them that real experience, they have an association of death that is peaceful and appreciative of life.
Until the last few months I have been hiding from the topic of death and I was letting Trinity talk about being with Jesus at death. Now that I have finally been dealing with the subject, I feel really good about it. And I think the more we can face it and address it with the kids, the healthier will be their idea of it.
Even though I was avoiding (until recently) the facts about death before, I did allow myself to talk to the kids about others dying when it came up. They need to see us deal with the death of another person. When they hear about a child dying or a soldier dying in the news, I focus the conversation about that person’s life before they died.
In my opinion, for those of us who don’t believe in an afterlife, death is really about life. It is the conclusion of what was hopefully a fullfilling life. Death makes life meaningful. So we talk about the sadness that we feel when a person leaves us. We talk about the love we had for that person. We talk about the joy they gave us (they made us laugh, they made us think, etc.) and we talk about they joy they had while they were here.
I have heard of a book or two about secularist parents talking to children about death. I’d like to find out what those books are, or read others articles about it. If I come across some I will share them. Feel free to let us know in a comment if you find something as well.
May 27th, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
I love the 5 Minute Room Rescue. Clean up combined with reality and humor is a good thing. I’ll have to remember that one for when the kids are older.
May 28th, 2006 @ 9:12 pm
A kid who asks to clean his own room? Good job, mom! I gotta remember that trick when my kids get older.
May 28th, 2006 @ 9:42 pm
Thanks for the ideas Noelle. This came up because we visit the cemetaries on Memorial Day. I have put together a memory book so the kids can see pictures and I can share good memories I have of family members who have died. My son had concerns a couple of years ago about dying and we talked about death and he was OK with everything. He never expressed any fear…it was just a fact of life for him. So, this has been a little new for me with my daughter. She told me again this morning that she was afraid to die. So, I asked her if she knew what happens when something dies. She was not able to express an answer, so I explained that when something dies, its brain stops working. Then I asked her if she thought something could feel things if its brain did not work. She thought about this for awhile and decided that it probably couldn’t. She dropped the subject right after that and I wasn’t sure if it helped or not. But, she brought up death again this evening and we had nice talk about it and she didn’t say anything about being afraid. I have tried to convey that we need to live this life because that is all we have, but I have found that they have a bit of a problem comprehending that. We’ll see what happens…we are visiting the cemetaries tomorrow, so I’m sure the subject will come up again
Thanks again for the suggestions…I look forward to reading your article 
May 30th, 2006 @ 3:56 am
Stephanie, on the topic of discussing death with children, one thing that helped with my kids (my son especially) was the concept of the circle of life. I asked them to think about what would happen if no one died but we kept having babies. They figured out pretty quickly that this was not a good option. Then I told them that one of the most wonderful things ever in my life was having them, and they agreed that having babies was something they wanted to do one day. The only other option, then, was to have death occur in order to make room for new babies. (other than colonizing other planets, which my son thought would work very well). Of course this doesn’t help in explaining premature death, but it helped them to understand why death is necessary, in general.
Jen
June 7th, 2006 @ 7:05 pm
We have used the book Lifetimes. Focuses on the lifetimes of various living things. Things begin and end and the life that happens in-between is what the book focuses on.
I tell my kids that they do continue, not only in the life matter and lineage cycle, but as part of the world/universe per se. “The world produced life and us along with it. We are not separate from it. Like a drop of water taken from the ocean and returned, when we die we return to the world. There is no place else to go (the world is a materially closed system) whatever we are has been and always will be a part of it.”
If you asked either them what happens when they die, they will tell you, “We go back to the world.”
This raises an interesting philosphical/scientific question as to whether consciousness is a fundamental emergent quality of the universe. If so, even consciousness - human or otherwise - is a quality of world, like life, that is extended in us. It may sound a bit pantheist (pantheists don’t believe in personal immortality either), but this is the personal philosophy I share with my kids. Just as we are the life of the world, we are also the mind and feelings of the world. We are literally the world and whether we are alive in it or die in it, it remains.
Does that make sense?