So, last night my 14 year old son & I got in a little argument. He was supposed to empty the dishwasher and he refused. I asked him many times and he said he wasn’t going to empty it because the dishes were still dirty. Did he bother to “re-run” the dishwasher….oh noooo…. so as I inspected the dishes…they were clean…just a few had the baked on caked on that you sometimes get when it’s loaded too much. So, I insisted that he go ahead and empty it and leave the dirty ones in. He still refused? He said, I can’t….they’re dirty….that’s not safe? Who told him that? After much discussion….I started to empty them myself as he sat and watched (yea, I know it sounds like I was playing victim….but It wasn’t my intent) and I got about 4 dishes out and noticed that they were ALL dirty. Yea, we ran it…but they were ALL still dirty.
So as the 14 year old skater boy looked on, I re-arranged the dishes…soaped the washer…and re-ran the machine. He went to bed. I felt stupid…but was still frustrated. I was first frustrated because I was partially wrong…and I was frustrated because he was being so stubborn (he gets that from Brenda…uh huh!). This afternoon I chatted with Drew about that and started by apologizing for getting upset with him. He was right. The dishes were dirty. Then I asked him if there was a different way he could have handled it. He didn’t know so I enlightened him. He could have still obeyed and showed me the dirty dishes rather than being disobedient and defiant.
Bottom line…we were both wrong. Challenge is…I’m the adult. I shouldn’t loose my cool over stupid stuff like that. It’s actually easier to apologize to your 14 year old son than you’d think.
