Sean O’Donnell’s son could not find his belt. Suddenly Sean had trouble finding his way out of a parenting quandary. Here is what happened.
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My nine year old son could not find his belt. I knew where it was. I also knew that if he would just opens his eyes and look he would see that his belt was exactly where he had left it twelve hours earlier, slung over the back of his desk chair underneath the very clothes he had just put on five minutes prior to asking, “Where’s my belt?” Still I indulged his Helen Keller routine and said, “It’s exactly where you left it.”
“What do you mean?” he called from the stairs.
“It’s exactly where you left it,” I repeated, putting a period after each emphasized word.
Okay, I know, yes, I could have just said, “It’s on the desk chair,” and that would have been the end of it. Lights down. And yes, if I had simply wanted to make a point I could have satisfied the passive-aggressive twerp inside me and added “underneath the clothes you just put on five minutes prior to asking me, “Where’s my belt?”
Of course I didn’t do that. For some reason I had decided to draw a line in the sand and even though I knew where this was headed, “It’s exactly where you left it” was all he was going to get from me.
He came down the stairs a few minutes later. Without the belt. He announced that he would not be wearing the belt because he could not find it.
I snapped. I took him (gently, but firmly) by the arm, marched him up the stairs, pointed to the chair where the belt was hanging and said, my voice dripping with periods and italics, “In. Plain. Sight. The belt is in plain sight. It’s exactly where you – not me, YOU – left it twelve hours ago. I mean, c’mon, you’re too old for this crap.”
It was perhaps not my finest hour, but then I’ve had worse.
He put on the belt and then, looking me directly in the eyes, he played the adoption card and said, “I know you’re new at being a parent, but it’s just a belt.”
Some people might hear this and think my son was talking back to me or being disrespectful, but knowing him I know that he was not doing either of those things. He was being honest in his nine year old way and if I was being honest in my forty year old way I would admit that he had a point…to a point.
It was just a belt, but – as I later tried to explain to him – it was also more than a belt.
Do you ever look at your kids and wonder how it is they will ever be prepared to survive in the world without you? I do. And it’s in those moments that a belt becomes more than a belt because if I can’t teach my kid to open his eyes and see the belt that is right in front of him then how will he ever be ready to drive a car or have a job or manage a bank account or raise his own children?
Sometimes my son will ask me what a parent does and in reply I recite to him a long list of responsibilities. The list changes, but the one constant is always a parent gets their child ready to be an adult. Because after making my kids feel safe and loved and happy all I really want is for them to be ready for the day when I’m not around to find the belt.
It’s not the most pleasant of thoughts, but then much of parenting is about being unpleasant.
So for now I will concede my son’s point that it was just a belt and if I did overreact it was only because one day it will be more than just a belt and when that day comes he needs to be ready for it.
Having said that, the next time he asks where his belt is I may just tell him, “It’s on the desk chair.”
Photo: Flickr/Michael Sheehan