Day 5 of the Experiment: Can't Wait for Tomorrow

You can't imagine how happy I am for tomorrow. Our five day, Duct Tape Parenting experiment is over. Again, dishes are piled in the sink. My wife and I went to a holiday party this evening, so the girls took care of their own dinner (kudos to them), but as I head off to bed, there's half a pot of mac and cheese on the stove and a ladle with some of the pasta sitting on the counter.

So, what will come of all of this? My wife, Mary, has been taking notes and I take photos daily. We'll show the girls and tell them what we noticed and they will defend themselves and blame the other one. But, we hope that they realize that we aren't attacking them. Instead, we want them to realize that all of the things we took note of, would have been us nagging or straightening up.

We wnat them to know that we no longer want to nag or do their work. Will that motivate them to step it up? Probably not, but we'll also explain that we want to take time out of our days to help them with their homework, to take them to the store, to take them out to practice driving. But, we also deserve our downtime, and if they force us to do their work (a little here and a little there) it all adds up, and that takes away from the time we deserve to wind down. So, we will still take that time, but it might be at the expense of the time they want from us.

So, we are hoping that they will see the correlation between doing their part and our ability to do more with them. We'll see how it goes with our culminating meeting tomorrow.

image courtesy of ©MorgueFile.com/anitapeppers