Sadly, it’s Saturday morning and we woke up to discover we were out of coffee! How does that happen when two of the kids in your home work for Starbucks (and get a free pound of coffee a week)? What to do? We contemplated rock, paper, scissors for who would run to the store to buy coffee. Maybe we’d both get ready and go out for coffee – nah. In our house we have an ongoing joke of who “someone” is. It works like this, if Kelli or I yell out, “can someone run to the store for milk?” or “can someone go pick up Sina at school?” The question becomes who’s “someone”? Because of how we handle age, the last person to get their license becomes the new “someone”. When Dani, our youngest driver, got her license, she came in the house, held up her license and announced to everyone, “I’m someone!”

This morning, seemed like a good time to send “someone” for coffee. Well Dani was already on a “someone” errand, so it fell on Tana. We had a card for a free coffee, but Tana headed out the door without it. He happens to be one of our Starbuck’s employees, so he gets a discount, at least if he is buying, which I’m happy to say, this morning, he was. A few minutes later he returned with our coffee (which he knows both our orders all too well – Grande, 2 pump hazelnut, 2 pump mocha, soy, 180 degrees, no whip in case you were wonderingJ) and a smile. Watching my boy walking in, all 6’3” 205 pounds, carrying a drink (which he paid for) for his mother and me was one of God’s small little blessings. This is not the perfect kid, by any means. This is the same kid, that just minutes earlier, I was getting on because of the mess he had left in our office. But to see the young man he was growing into certainly brought a moment of joy to me. If you talk to his coaches, or teachers, or his boss, they will certainly sing his praises (we try not to let him hear too much of that stuff!).

But it did give me cause to reflect on how we got to this point. Again, Tana has a long way to go before he becomes the man he wants him to be (and if we are honest we know that journey will never end). It’s fun to watch him interact with other adults and other kids. Tana’s the kid that anytime we went to a ballgame or the park, within five minutes, he had gathered all the other kids and had a pick-up game of baseball or basketball going.  But I also remembered this hard headed, stubborn kid that wouldn’t give in when he was being disciplined by his mother or by me. We’ve always used the stairs as a place for our kids to sit and get control of themselves (not a timeout but we’ll talk about that another day). Most of our kids, after they got disciplined and put on the stairs would quickly get control, apologize, put on a happy face and rejoin the rest of the family. After all, who wants to sit on the stairs when everyone else is partying? Tana on the other hand would sit for long, long stretches of time. We’d check in with him periodically to see if he was ready to talk. His response was almost always the same – arms folded, chin tucked down in his chest, his lower lip covering his entire upper lip, and his head shaking back and forth “no”. More than a few times this routine of him sitting, us asking “are you ready”, him signaling ‘no”, would go on until he literally fell asleep on the stairs. Then when he woke up, he’d be ready to talk, he’d apologize, smile and life would go on. So many times Kelli or I wanted to give in. After all, he was a pretty good kid. Did we really expect him to get control of himself at 2 years old? Of course the answer is, if you want them to have self control at 16, an emphatic YES.

Learning Self Control?

Sometimes when you are disciplining or training it can feel hopeless. Don’t lose heart – as the saying goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn. It can feel like you’re getting nowhere. Hang in there, just when you think, “my parenting isn’t making a difference”, your “someone” might surprise you and walk in with a triple caramel macchiato.

With his sister Dani at Malibu (and yes the tie is silk screened on his T-shirt!)