I've been asking Shane to check the cat pot every day as part of home school. I started to smell cat pee around Tuesday. I knew Shane threw out the old pee pad Sunday, so I wasn't worried.
I still made a point of explicitly asking, "Have you checked the pee pad? I smell pee."
Shane's reply was always the same, "Yes."
"Alright. I'm going to trust you."
And then I would and would not double-check after him.
Friday it still smelled like pee. It'd gotten strong enough the trust had eroded. I told Shane I smelled pee and wanted him to take care of the cat pot.
Shane picked it up out of the box and spilled pee on the floor. There was no pee pad! NONE!
Instead of jumping to help, Shane was indignant. "It was there on Tuesday!"
We were not happy.
So Shane found himself wiping clean a pee pad tray on our driveway.
We talked. Oh, did we talk.
I'd never imagined he would repeat the same mistake after the last debacle.
Shane insisted there was a pee pad in there when he checked Tuesday. He wouldn't let go of that belief, so I had to press him on it. Hard.
When did you throw away the last pee pad? Sunday.
When did you check the pee pad last? It was there on Tuesday!
Who would want to sneak and take the pee pad out? But it was there!
Would your mom or I when we got so mad last time? No.
Did you take it out and throw it away after only two days? No.
So who would? No one...
So was there a pee pad in the litter box on Tuesday?
Shane knew he was in trouble, so I'm not surprised he was on the defensive. I wasn't going to let him get away with anything other than realizing what he had done.
"So every day when I asked if you checked the pee pad? You only checked once on Tuesday?" (And even then so quickly you thought there was something there?)
I told him I was super upset, because this wasn't one bad decision. It was a culmination of multiple bad decisions over time. Every day he was asked to check he had a chance to realize something was wrong.
If he had decided to do his job, he would have had a chance to fix things whether he tried to secretly fix it or ask for help.
Instead, he kept making the same bad decisions, lied about doing his chores properly, and failed to admit/apologize when the splatter hit the tile (again).
Yes, I chewed him out for a chunk of a conversation. I was upfront with what I wanted him to learn.
I asked three big questions.
1 - "Who is put first when you focus on doing your job well?" The family. We wouldn't be here. There would be no pee smell. The cats would be taken care of. Mom and Dad would be happy, because they could count on Shane. Shane would be happy, because he helped, earned goodwill, and he'd be protected from being chewed out (again) because the job would be done well!
2 - "Who is put first when you focus on doing your job quick?" You. It saved you a little time, so you can get back to whatever you were doing. Only now, Shane had spent more time cleaning up and getting chewed out than he had saved by not checking the pee pad 4 times.
I had Shane check the pee pad while I counted seconds. It took him 10 seconds, because he started to pick up the whole litter box. I had him put it back down and slide out the drawer a little bit (that he uses to change the pee pad so I knew he knew it was there!). That took all of 3 seconds.
We did some math.
3 - "Do you remember what happened the last time this happened?" It was terrible. I told Shane I thought he would never have chosen to go through that again. I never wanted it to happen again. The laundry room already smelled of pee! We needed to make sure it didn't happen a third time or any time ever again.
Shane went to his room to process. He knew he wouldn't have any electronics for a while, because those were normally what he was in a rush for and rushing caused the problem.
I was going to make him write instructions and post them over the cat pot. I don't know if Shane heard me talking to Carrie or he came up with the same idea himself. He suggested it when I debriefed him from his alone time.
Shane did a good job writing the draft, too. He sat down and wrote it right away with only a few errors.
I wanted three steps: Scoop poop, check pad, sweep litter, done.
Shane suggested a fourth step. He used my exact words, so I knew he had listened some outside.
I wasn't happy with the pee on the floor, but I think the right lessons were reinforced. My prayer is that the lessons stick and Shane knows we love him even as we set expectations for him.
Ironically, I felt like the real loser with Shane's consequence! Plugging Shane in is how I get a chance to rest! Now he was guaranteed to be begging for attention for days to come....but maybe that's worth not having to worry about my house smelling like cat pee.
No comments:
Post a Comment