Parenting: GETTING
OUT THE DOOR
by Joyce Maynard
To
get to school on time this year, my sons and daughter need to leave our
house by six forty-five at the latest -- earlier, if the weather's bad.
This means coordinating the showering schedules of three kids who each
believes his or her need for the bathroom to be the most pressing. It
requires rounding up homework assignments, papers, journals, cleats, musical
instruments, hats, gloves, boots, glasses, dioramas and gym shorts and
getting each item zipped into the appropriate backpack. It means locating
the backpacks, naturally. Also toasting the bagels, pouring the juice,
making the sandwiches (no mayonaisse for one, no mustard for the other.
No bread for the third.) Somebody has to feed our dog and someone has
to walk him. Someone needs two dollars for a field trip and someone needs
a permission slip signed. "By the way," Willy may tell me, just
as he's zipping up his jacket. "Did I mention the lace on my skate
broke last week, and I need a new one for hockey?"
"Next time this happens," I mutter, as I'm frantically threading spliced-together pieces of packaging string through the holes on his skate before his ride arrives, "tell me sooner." Only next time, of course, the problem won't be a broken lace. Next time it will be lost glasses, or the discovery that we have left a tuna sandwich sitting in his lunchbox all weekend. Or the sudden realization that his homework was supposed to be typed, not hand-written. "Lucky for me you're such a fast typer," he says, giving me an appreciative pat on the back. Also five minutes before his ride arrives.
A line that often comes to mind, when I'm thinking about what's involved in raising children (a subject I have considered with some frequency, over the past sixteen and a half years) is the one about how it's the journey not the arrival that matters. There may be all sorts of occasions in life when it's appropriate and even necessary to be goal-oriented, but where shepherding children through childhood is concerned, a person had better love whatever it is she discovers along the way as what she does what's at the end of the road. Because it's going to be a very long, slow trip getting there.
And I do love the journey of parenting, too. It's just this business of getting out the door that tries my patience to its limits and, sometimes, beyond.
When your children are little, there's this awesome amount of support apparatus they need every time you go someplace: diapers, stroller, bottle maybe, pacifier, well-worn copy of Poky Little Puppy, Tommy Tippee cup, a plastic container filled with Cheerios, the last threads of a beloved blanket. During that brief but memorable period when both my sons were in diapers simultaneously -- and it was winter, and their father and sister had both broken their right arms and were wearing casts -- I remember laying their two snowsuits on the floor, and them on top, holding one boy in place with an outstretched leg while I worked the foot of the other into the leg of the snowsuit and zipped him up. No sooner had I got the one brother bundled up than I'd turn around and discover the other had tossed his boot across the room. No sooner had I retrieved it than I'd hear an unmistakeable sound, emanating from deep inside the snowsuit of Brother Number One that meant I had to unzip him, undress him, change his diaper, and start all over.
We didn't get to a lot of places, that winter. In fact sometimes, partway through the process of getting out the door, I'd figure I'd had enough and we'd forget the whole thing.
These days, of course, the challenges confronting our family when we prepare to go someplace have changed considerably. But even though my children have gained all kinds of competencies over the years, I have to say it's a toss-up, which was harder: getting out the door back in the days when I was living with babies and toddlers, or getting out the door today.
I have tried all kinds of methods in my endless attempt to turn this family's leave-takings into a smooth-running operation. Laying everything out the night before is one. But even if my sons hadn't complained that sandwiches made too far in advance of lunch were soggy, it always seemed that no matter how well we'd we'd nailed things down down the night before, morning would inevitably bring some new, unexpected event to upset the plan. The toilet would be clogged. It was raining, and none of last night's clothing picks was appropriate any more. Our hosts called, just as we were leaving, to say "it's such a beautiful day, why don't you bring your bikes?" And then we'd discover, as we wheeled them out of the garage, that one of the bikes had a flat tire, and no one could lay a hand on our bungee cords to attach them to the bike rack.
If money could buy a smooth-running morning, I'd ante up. But I have purchased all sorts of equipment over the years, aimed at getting my children's departures more organized, it never fully does the trick. One time I bought a professional-quality laundry-sorting cart of the sort hotels use, to keep everybody's socks separate. (Sock arguments being a major divisive element of our mornings.) But pretty soon Willy had started raiding the section earmarked for Charlie's socks, and Charlie was doing the same to Audrey. One year I invested close to fifty bucks in various Tupperware containers to keep sandwiches un-squished and carrot sticks crunchy, and drink dispensers to do away with our need for expensive juice boxes. They lost the tops to the sandwich containers, naturally, and within a week they had begun to complain that their juice dispensers smelled of old juice. The dry-erase board I'd bought, to write down reminders for everyone concerning what to bring and where to bring it, and when, was great until someone wrote on it in permanent marker -- leaving us with the words "GYM SHORTS" posted in big letters, forever, at the top of the board. It was all downhill after that.
It's not just getting children off to school that's a challenge of course, either. Try getting a family of four out the door to a ski slope, with poles, boots, ski pants and masks in addition to food, car-games and cassette tapes. It doesn't matter how many lists you make or how early you get up. Whatever your estimated time of departure, children are always going to push the edge of the envelope.
I can't say I've arrived at any ultimate solutions for the problem of getting a family out the door, in time to get on the road before sundown. But I have learned a thing or two I thought I'd share with you.
One of our biggest breakthroughs as a family occurred when I purchased each of my children his or her own alarm clock, thereby freeing me from my old and thankless task of repeatedly attempting to rouse reluctant children from their sleep and get the morning scramble started. For my daughter Audrey, the choice was a clock radio, tuned to a rock and roll station. For Charlie I purchased a sleek, hi-tech digital model with a firm insistent electronic buzz. Willy got a clock shaped like a saxophone-playing dog that actually says, "You gotta get up so you can get DO-oo-WN!"
Something else I've discovered about getting children organized and out the door: The more I do for them, the more disorganized and unfocussed they become. The more I step back and leave them to their own devices -- sink or swim -- the more they tend to manage for themselves.
On family vacations, for instance, it used to drive me crazy how long it would take them to get dressed and gathered up so we could go out for breakfast. I'd be showered and dressed, with my guidebook hi-lighted and my sneakers laced up, and they'd still be bickering about someone leaving the toothpaste tube in the wrong location -- a situation made worse by the fact that for me, the day can't begin properly until I've had my first cup of coffee. Then one day I simply announced that since I was ready I would head down to the hotel coffee shop, where they could join me when they were ready. Interestingly, without my constant stream of repeated reminders to bring this or that, my children got themselves out to the coffee shop within minutes of my departure after that. Now I almost wish they weren't so efficient, because I had started to enjoy my quiet moments with coffee and the morning paper before they joined me.
At home, I have turned over most of the morning jobs to the children now: the sandwich-making, dishwasher-filling and gathering up of stuff for the day. As long as a child observes that whatever he forgets, his parent will remember, he doesn't have a lot of motivation to provide for himself. When neglecting to pack his cleats means sitting out the soccer game, however (as my own younger son has learned), he's unlikely to forget them again.
Difficult as it is attending to all your children's needs in the morning, it may be even harder resisting the impulse and letting them do for themselves. You have to be prepared to let them experience the consequences of their disorganization, if your family's truly going to get its act together where leave-takings are concerned. Depending on the ages and competencies of your children, you may even need to do as I have, and hold to the promise that if your children haven't got their belongings collected and their bodies out to the car by a certain hour, you will have to leave without them, or stay home. Nothing teaches children a worse lesson than making ultimatums you don't live up to. But little teaches them better than making good on your promise. It may hurt, but you're unlikely to have to go through such an exercise more than once.
I won't say we have our act down perfectly around here yet, or that there aren't days, still, when nothing moves according to plan, and everybody's yelling at everybody else. The puppy has peed on Audrey's rug. Charlie can' t find his math homework. Willy's model has just collapsed. We're out of coffee. But those mornings are fewer and farther between. And because of that, not just our mornings are consistently better, but our entire days.
After years of excruciating experiences rounding up children to go places, I've concluded that getting everybody out the door on time -- to work, or school, or day care, or dancing class, or the supermarket -- is important not only for the overall efficiency of your own busy, very possibly over-scheduled life. It's an important exercise, for children, in responsibility. When they learn to get themselves moving, efficiently and well, they feel competent and independent. When they repeatedly forget books or possessions or items of clothing or lunches, they reinforce their own sense of incomptetencey and dependency. And just as unused muscles atrophy, a child's ability to organize her time and energies does too.
A rushed and harried exit from home -- especially in the morning -- sets the tone for the day. It may be overcome by good things that follow, but very often, too, I've found, the way the morning goes defines, to a surprising extent, not only my own approach to the rest of my day but my children's as well. When we argue over dog-walking or unfinished homework or inappropriate clothing selections, two minutes before the school bus pulls up, and part for the day with issues unresolved and harsh words hanging in the air, I head to my desk with an uneasy feeling, and I know my children do the same.
I remember a morning when my daughter was little, and we fought so bitterly getting her out the door in time for first grade that my glimpse of her as the school bus pulled away was of her tear-stained face in the window. I was still in my pajamas and bathrobe, but the sight was so afflicting I jumped in my car and followed that bus down the road -- five miles -- to meet Audrey at the other end and give her a hug. It would have been better to get things right the first time, naturally. But just as married couples are admonished to never go to bed angry, I'd add: parents and children shouldn't set out into the world, at odds. If it means being late, or taking time out to stop, just plain stop, and hold your child or take her out to breakfast and talk, the losses of time are slight in comparison to the consequences of a bad beginning to the day.
When our morning goes well, and we have time and leisure left for a chapter on our front steps before school, or a couple of lay-up shots before their friend's father picks them up for an outing, or a couple of practice pitches before the ball game, we're all relaxed and in good spirits as we launch ourselves into the world.
Which is why we keep a checklist mounted on the door my children walk out of -- or run out of -- every weekday morning at 6:45. "Have you packed your lunch?" it begins. "Did you remember your permission slips?" "Do you have the mouthpiece to your trumpet?" "Did you feed your puppy?" "Did you turn out the light in your room?"
One more thing I require, same as Donna Reed always did, and it's the last item on my list, printed in block letters in day-glo marker. "Did you kiss your mother?"
They do.
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