Thank God for Do-Gooders

After a five-month hiatus from blogging, I decided to fire it up again. I enjoy writing, just as I enjoy other things I don’t make time to do: knitting, exercising and reading actual books (as opposed to Us Weekly and geek tomes about SEO and website analytics). But I’ve decided that my problem is my lack of a blog strategy, a basic outline of topics about which I’ll write. I need the outline and I need deadlines. Without the structure, I just won’t do it.

Anyway, I had sort of decided that this would be the weekend I’d think up with a few basic topics so I could get started again. And I suppose it’s just dumb luck that I made that decision and now life is putting me in contact with (annoying) people who are practically handing me my material on a silver platter. And this morning, I can thank a buttinsky do-gooder for my inspiration.

For the past three months, my sons Liam (3 years old) and Ruairi (who will be 5 years old next month) have been taking swimming lessons. I hired a swim coach who conducts their private lesson in a Chicago Parks District pool on Saturday mornings during the “Tot and Family” swim time. So the pool is filled with parents and their kids. The kids range in age from just a few months up to about 8 years old.

For the first 30 minutes of each lesson, the coach works with Liam one-on-one. Then she works with Ruairi for the remaining 30 minutes. In the beginning, Ruairi was doing pretty good, making an effort and enjoying the resulting praise. Liam was not thrilled. However, in the last month, Liam has come a long way and now is very close to actually swimming, or at least not drowning. He’s really on board with the whole thing, and enjoys his time in the pool and is very compliant. Meaning: He does what the coach tells him to do.

Around the time Liam began to excel, his older brother regressed. Big Time. Meaning: He won’t do anything the coach tells him to do, and now he spends his 30 minutes screaming, crying, struggling, bargaining, and generally being a pain-in-the-ass. I know it is nothing more than a power-struggle. And he will never win. Because I’m not someone who will ever allow her kids to run the show. Ever.

Patrick and I have tried rewards for good behavior (there wasn’t any); and depriving him of things he likes for bad behavior (has no effect whatsoever). So this morning, I had a conversation with Ruairi before we left the house that went something like this:

“You shed so much as one tear, buddy, and you’ll spend the rest of the day in your room. The. Rest. Of. The. Day. Until you wake up tomorrow morning. You’ll come out for lunch, dinner and a haircut. Other than that, you’re lookin’ at your own four walls until tomorrow morning.”

I asked him several times if he understood. He said yes. I asked him to repeat what I’d just told him. He did.

So he was worse than ever. Screaming. Crying. Shouting. Sinking. Snot a mile long all over his face. I’m telling you: The coach earns her money with Ruairi. For every minute she actually gets him to “swim” she spends 5 minutes putting up with his nonsense. I actually feel guilty for paying her to do this. At one point he choked and spent the next 30 seconds gagging. It was the perfect time for a pert new mother with an infant to swim over and butt in.

She told the coach that this was “hard to watch” and it looked like “borderline abuse.” Coach told her not to worry, that mom approved and she wasn’t asking Ruairi to do anything he didn’t know how to do. When the 30 minutes of torture was up, I walked over to the pool to retrieve the drama king. The do-gooder swam over to me.

“That was very difficult to watch,” she said.

“Then don’t watch,” I said. “Look somewhere else.” (seriously: there’s about 40 other people in the pool at this point. she should be looking somewhere else.)

“That was terrible,” she said. “I guess I just can’t come here anymore.”

“No problem here,” I said.

Blank stare.

And then she floated away in her skirted swimsuit with her 6-month-old who’s not old enough for a power struggle yet. But when he is, I’m sure she’ll speak to him sweetly.

And so thank you Do-Gooder. You made it easy for me to get back in my groove.

I’m mildly amused by the thought that she’s probably some fervent mommy blogger sitting at home right now writing about some horrible mother she saw who actually makes her son learn to swim, even though HE DOESN’T WANT TO. <Heh, heh.>

She’d be super-upset if she knew Ruairi was in his room right now and he’s not coming out until tomorrow morning. Because he’s not winning this power struggle.