Role Reversal

I took this picture last month, on Eleanor’s birthday.

I had completely forgotten about my last post and all the trouble I was having with Phaedra. She has been much better; I think it goes in waves. This week, she was my superstar! She hopped up and got to work on chores whenever I asked her to, and once she finished, she asked for more! She was very helpful and obedient in many ways, and I have told her so many times. We have still had some bedtime trouble with her and Curtis, but at least our daytime has been better. I’ll take what I can get, and we’ll work on the rest.

On the other hand, Eleanor has decided to be trouble this week. She and Phaedra are very different forms of trouble. Phaedra is a loud, boisterous, and also screechy form of trouble. Eleanor is just a slow, lazy, space-case form of trouble. We had a lot of difficulty with responsibility and following through this week. I got so fed up, we grounded her from TV for the whole week. She would be asked to go clean her room, and a half hour later, I would find her reading a book, never having touched her room. Or she would move at sloth speed when picking up a room. Or she would be upstairs getting ready for school and get caught reading or playing around instead.

Let me say that I love having an avid reader. I love how much Eleanor loves to stick her nose in a book. But I don’t love finding her reading whenever she knows she’s supposed to be doing something else! Grant got pretty fed up with her this week, too. She got assigned to load the dishwasher each night (her most loathed chore) besides all her regular chores. Every time she did something else (like leave her spelling list at school so she could come home, spend a half hour “trying to remember her spelling words” and then say she wouldn’t be able to do her spelling homework), we tried adding extra chores, but that didn’t work. She did her regular chores so slowly (in spite of our nagging, prodding, and threatening) that she had no more time left to do extra chores.

We kept at it all week, and I can say that we’ve seen some improvement in the last few days. It took a long time at first to impress upon her the gravity of her situation. I think she thought she could appeal to the parent who wasn’t as upset. We tried to make it very clear that we were equally upset. I don’t know what finally did it, but she has gotten better.

While I’m mentioning good things about Phaedra, I wanted to write down this moment from the first of our week. Since General Conference, our family has decided to “ponderize” one verse of scripture every week together. This week, we told Phaedra it was her turn to choose the scripture we would ponderize for the week. Grant told her on Sunday to think about what scripture she might want and she could tell the family during Family Home Evening on Monday.

She told Grant that she already knew which scripture she wanted us to ponderize: John 14:15.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

I figured she must have been taught about that scripture recently in Primary and thought nothing of it.

On Monday evening, when she presented her scripture to us, Grant asked her why she wanted to do that scripture. She said she remembered it from Carole M. Stephens’ talk from General Conference. She told us she liked the story she told about the little girl who kept taking off her seatbelt in the car.

I was so impressed! I remember Sunday of General Conference weekend. After the morning session, I asked the kids what talks they enjoyed from conference, and I was met with blank stares. I told them that conference was not just for the grown-ups. I told them I really wanted them to listen to the next session to see what they could learn, and I would ask them again what talks they remembered after the afternoon session.

I was thrilled that evening when I asked Eleanor and Phaedra what talks they remembered and they mentioned Sister Stephens’ talk, with the story about the girl who took off her seatbelt and Elder Keetch’s talk about the barrier keeping sharks away from the surfers. I was glad they had paid attention and listened as I had asked them to do. But my joy was even greater still when, weeks later, Phaedra still remembered that scripture and felt it was important after paying attention to conference. Grant and I were so proud of her in that moment.