We got my daughter a cell phone last fall. She was starting high school, which meant taking public transit on a daily basis, spending more time hanging out with friends, and general extra busyness outside of the home. We foot the bill, but with a condition - she does the towel laundry.
Through this experience, I have learned a few things about teenagers. Or at least my teenager. Based on discussions I have had with parents of teenagers, she seems to be fairly average, so I will assume for the purpose of this blog (as it is not a research paper or any other piece of writing that requires any sort of real accuracy), that I can generalize her characteristics to the teen populace.
1) Teenagers have selective sight.
In a household of 8ish people, dirty towels pile up pretty quickly. Now when I see the laundry hamper full of towels, my brain tells me to take them down to the laundry room and wash them. Apparently this trigger does not exist in the teenage mind. There were several times when the hamper was overflowing, and there was no indication that it would be emptied any time soon. Teenagers also have selective hearing (clearly this carries over from toddlerhood), as I would have to mention this several times before receiving a response, which typically included the statement, "I didn't realize that the hamper was full."
2) Teenagers will do minimal work to achieve their desired result. (To be fair, I believe that many of us do this. Teenagers just take it to an extreme.)
She wants to keep the cell phone. To do so, the towels must be washed. Upon threats of removal of the cell phone, my daughter would reluctantly get the towels and start a load of laundry. To the average adult, finishing a task means finishing all steps included in that task. To a teenager, finishing seems to equal starting. A typical conversation went something like this:
"I need your cell phone. I asked you to wash the towels, and it hasn't been done."
"Yes, it has. I washed them last night."
"But they're still in the washer."
"Yeah, I had to go to bed, and I didn't have time to put them in the dryer before I left for school. Besides, you didn't say I had to dry them, too."
Which brings me to...
3) Everything needs to be spelled out.
"I need you to wash the towels" became "I need you to wash, dry, fold and put the towels away. Oh, and you can't just leave the laundry basket in the washroom. It needs to be taken back down to the laundry room." I don't know how many times I walked into the bathroom to an empty laundry basket staring me in the face. It wasn't as if taking the basket with her was difficult. But when I questioned her about it, she told me she just forgot it. How do you forget a basket you just emptied? Point #1, I suppose...
Well, I got tired of harassing my daughter about the towels, and my husband, who won't harass, got tired of doing the towel laundry when it piled up. So I wrote up a set of rules. I was initially going to call it a contract, but then I thought that making it look like she had some sort of choice in the matter wasn't quite honest.
As a good employer, I took my employee's words to heart and addressed her concerns. She doesn't realize the hamper is full/can't remember to bring the towels down? It now must be done every morning. Simple. She's not sure when they should be washed? They must now be washed, dried, folded and put away before bed on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Failure to comply will result in immediate suspension of privileges. Today was the first Tuesday. I can tell she's a little less than impressed, but the towels are washed, dried, folded, and in the closet.
And the laundry basket? It's in the laundry room.
No comments:
Post a Comment