A Boy and His Door

While today I talk about a door, what I’m really talking about is parenting. But let me start at the beginning, the fact that our son indeed, has a phone, but not because we caved to pressure. On the other hand, it started as a medical necessity, a device to control insulin delivery to our son who has been Type 1 diabetic since kindergarten. It wasn’t completely necessary, but it provided better control over insulin delivery than his previous device did, so we opted for the phone since as he grew older and his hormones kicked in, having better control over insulin delivery was going to be necessary. When we first got him the phone, we locked everything down that we could, limiting access to as many platforms and games as possible, and still to this day, prohibit all social media on his phone. For the most part, he does really well with his phone, does not spend hours staring at the screen, still delves into books on a daily basis, but at the start of high school, had the tendency to disappear into his room upon arriving home with his phone with him. We obviously weren’t a big fan of this and so added the requirement that if he was going to be in his room with his phone, his door needed to remain open. If he wanted privacy, he had only to leave his phone outside the door and there wouldn’t be any issues. The punishment for closing the door with the phone in the room was having the door removed temporarily.

I think you can see where this is going. The first few times I had to remove the door, he got upset and couldn’t understand why we would do something like that. However, after having gone months without an incident, he slipped up twice this weekend and after the second time, I informed him of the consequence to which he grew solemn and resigned to the fact that it had to happen and there wasn’t going to be any talking me out of it. That’s the thing, if the ground rules are set and enforced, it doesn’t have to be a big deal when the slip ups occur. It takes merely reinforcing the consequence and I’m sure there won’t be any slip ups for quite some time. He is smart and he understands why we have the rule in place, and so abides by it 99% of the time. Having rules and sticking to them has made being a parent actually easier in our house. Both of our children understand that we stand behind the consequences we have in place and will follow through when a rule is broken. These days, while there are new challenges with every year that passes, things also get easier in many ways. Its all about the door.

It doesn’t need to be a ton of consequences, just basic ones that can be easily enforced. If parents can follow through on what they say with the little things, it makes enforcing the big ones even easier. I don’t care that my children may not like me periodically. I am not their friend right now and my job is to get them prepared for life down the road. Friendship with them can come later, and its not like I’m not ‘friendly’ with them right now, its just that parenting comes first. I feel that on a deeper level, they appreciate it and will grow stronger from it. It is already showing in how they conduct themselves and deal with others and I can’t wait to see how it develops down the road. For now, though, I will take the door off whenever I need to and enforce every consequence that needs enforcing. I will be the parent I need to be and worry about friendship with my children later.