When it clicks--and then some

Saturday morning Edith came in and asked if I felt I needed to sleep more. Oddly enough, I did. So she said she thought that my sleep was important and that she would get herself breakfast. Which she did. She also played with the bunnies, fed them, and gave them water.

Sunday morning she didn't even ask. I heard her in the kitchen, getting her breakfast, playing with the bunnies, feeding them, and getting them water. I finally got out of bed at 8:45 to get showered for church (or rather, Friends' Meeting, which the girls and I have been attending for several months).

When I returned to my room to get dressed, my first impression was that I hadn't remembered making the bed. Then I noticed the aroma and saw that next to the perfectly-made bed, there was a steaming cup of coffee. Next to it was the remainder of a pot and a note from my waiter, urging me to "Drink product while hot."

I asked if there was a fall holiday comparable to Mother's Day or a birthday that I had forgotten. Edith shrugged and said she thought it would be nice.

It was the nicest thing that's happened all year.

Tom and I have noticed a few other remarkable changes of late. We tell Edith it's time to do her homework, and most days, when she isn't tired or overwhelmed, she just goes and does it. No stalling on her part, no nagging on ours, not even help organizing the many pieces and prioritizing. It's all her doing, and we often don't hear another word.

Similarly, when I tell her she needs to take a shower before bed, she disappears and returns about 15 minutes later smelling fresh, hair dripping, clean pajamas on. Edith doesn't like bathing, finding it a tedious interruption of her reading or leisure time, but somehow she has figured out that washing and getting it over with is easier than procrastinating. She no longer needs someone to wash her hair, or hand her a towel when the water drips in her eyes, or sit in the bathroom and keep her company. It just happens.

So you put in unremitting labor, and every 8 1/2 years or so, you reap a windfall return on investment. Non-parents don't realize how HUGE these small changes are for quality of home life. In fact, moments like these--Edith learning to buckle and unbuckle her own carseat at age 5 was another one--remind me of just how hard the labor of daily life has been for so long.

Incidentally, learning what it takes to train children in certain habits, ingrain in them key life lessons, and help them reach the point where they can independently navigate daily tasks has made me a more patient teacher. Or rather, a teacher with long-range perspective. My colleagues and I may kvetch over lunch about the students whose computers always crash before a big paper is due, who arrive late to class and ask in the middle of a lecture what they missed, or who don't know how to construct an email using basic conventions of polite address. But more often now, I find myself viewing it all as part of the learning process. Students are developing these skills, and I'm the parent/teacher enforcing and reinforcing and reinforcing again--not in a defeatist way, setting increasingly significant consequences, but always with the perspective that they're learning these skills and I'm playing an important role in helping shape them as independent, organized, respectful, self-motivated students and human beings. It's a long haul, but it's supposed to be.

At least, so I tell myself. None of my students has left a cup of fresh coffee on my desk yet.