Fatherhood the Hard Way: Teaching Responsibility to Your Children

I have been a father for almost thirteen years. As any "long term" dad would tell you, there are times when you have to let up on the proverbial "Iron Fist" and give a child their space. The trick is, however, knowing how much grace time to give them. I learned the hard way some time ago.

I had been "on my boys' case" for sometime about responsibility. They both share a room upstairs and, between the two of them, I expect the room to be kept tidy. Note that I did not say "shiny", but at least clean enough to be a healthy room. I explained to them that I should not have to climb the stairs and bark out specific orders; that they are old enough to know what needs done.

In the following weeks, the boys impressed me. Trash was now being brought down every night before bedtime. Every couple of days, I noticed dusting rags and surface cleaner being taken upstairs. Dirty laundry was being brought down in baskets even when they were not heaping over.

Ahh! The sweet feeling of fatherhood breaking through that half inch layer of rock that is their skulls. I gloated. I shared the glory with my wife and I am sure that, while I was talking, I had the look in my eyes that said, "Now that is how you take care of business."

The next day, I walked upstairs to watch the boys as they played the new video games they had bought with holiday money. Two steps was all it took. Two steps by a common dad who refuses to wear shoes in his own house. Two steps that felt like a barefoot walk through a forest floor of pine needles.

I had to look closely at the light colored carpet in the room and it occurred to me that I had failed. Yes, I did see trash being brought down stairs every night. Yes, I witnessed the dust rags and polish being transported up the stairs. And yes, laundry was being taken care of before each son had run out of clean clothes.

But, in all of that time, I could not recall the last time I had heard the upstairs vacuum cleaner being turned on. A crop of discarded fingernail clippings/chewings had been strewed across the floor. the kind of follicle fragments that had been there long enough to become flesh piercing carpet daggers - I really don't know how they managed to walk from points A to B in their bare feet.

Games were turned off. There was yelling. Words like, "I have never seen...", followed by, "If my dad found this..." and, "How many times to I have to..." was said in rapid succession, mixed with other terms that a twelve year old boy may or may not understand.

I sentenced them both to a mild punishment of half an hour apiece of vacuuming the room. As I stood outside their door, the sound of severed fingernails bouncing around inside of the vacuum's guts was quite similar to the sound of road salt striking the underside of a moving vehicle.

Now, there is a list.

Now, there is an inspection every two evenings.

The "Iron Fist" is not clenched tight, but it does have a pinching grip on the backs of their shirts.