Aside from my uncle Jack, who lived with us for a few years later, I did not have much of a father influence. I'm not sure why that was; we spoke, I saw him once a year (even though he only lived two hours away) but I've not asked him why he didn't try to be there (could have been him, or me, or my mom, or his wife) and I don't ask him now... when we talk ... via facebook... once a year (Daddy issues shall be left to a professional). Ahem, other than the brief interludes of male influence, I was raised in a family of women. Between the two reasons mentioned above, there was little to prepare me for a life with men or boys and I ended up with one of the former and three of the latter. Irony is kind of a shit.
Boy things. My seven-year-old wants to play video games. He has wanted to play video games since he was 18 months old (because his father played video games?). The older two play sometimes, more since the iThings, but they didn't know about video games at 18 months. Aaron will get up in the middle of the night to try to crack the PS3 password. I'm not impressed with his perseverence and I'm about to cave, again, but on my terms.
This obsession with video games has been bothersome because it's the first time I've had to deal with it and I don't think he's old enough to play them. However. His friends play, his dad still does sometimes and he's obviously not going to quit wanting to play them. So we have had to make some decisions. There have been attitude issues around not getting what he wants (anything unrelated can revert to the fact that he's also not allowed to play his game). He has perseverence so I have decided to try to play that out to my benefit, and his own, in the end.
I want the poor attitude to go away and it takes approximately six weeks to make a habit (psych classes again, bless you). There are ten letters in the game he wants desperately to play and I need to draw this out as close to six weeks as I can. With summer already begun, I am not about to give him carte blanche on his game after school starts so it has to be attainable while he's still on vacation. Here are the rules; at the end of each day we make a list of plus and minus behaviour and so long as he is in the plus at the end of the day, it counts. He appeared to understand the reasoning behind this as we made our list tonight.
I began with the plus side; shared with siblings, tidied up without being asked and volunteered help to mom. Minus? Bad attitude for an hour and a half straight in the car ($%^), hurt Ethan. He's still on the plus side and what I hope to see is this side of the list getting smaller as he tries to keep the plus side up. Because he is seven I know he needs some regular incentive to make it through. Every four days, he can earn another letter in his game. This way he will have the tangible results of working toward his goal; he can spell, he knows how close he will be to getting what he wants.
The way that I see it, he is going to either continue to be this sometimes miserable child (and I have to deal with it) or we can make changes. He's literally been trying to play this game for over five years. I finally saw it as an opportunity for me to teach him something and to also get what I want: a well behaved child more often than not. His goal is not my ideal goal but I'm not him. I won't always be able to control everything he does but some things I can. This is Aaron's first try. Yes, the end goal is not my choice but that is probably my own lesson. He is going to be his own person with his own likes and dislikes. The best I can do is realize those opportunities to teach him what I think is the right way to get something you want; you have to earn it. And I'm sure I will earn the well behaved child as well - in 39 +/- days.
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