Originally Posted by quilting cat
Next time Gage visits, ask him if he wants to have to pay a girl to do his mending when he goes off to college. He'll save enough for a treat if he can hem a pair of pants, mend a torn-out seam, and sew on a button! It may not be "cool" to quilt at 13, but being self-sufficient is "macho"!
I was thinking about explaining to him that people, men and women, in the military are responsible for keeping their uniforms in good order, and they can't always send them home to Mom or get to a cleaners. But he's not ready for the message, if you know what I mean.
He was going on about being bored and not being able to spend time with his siblings because they were busy. (They are in the middle of a messy family situation; I am, as their uncle says, Switzerland.) I reminded him that he made the decision not to make a small quilt and that he would have to live with it. He called his grandmother and asked her to come get him because he was bored - twice! It's a 5 hour round trip and we had to bring all the kids home the next day! I was fuming when I found out, but gained control before I spoke to him. Then I told him that I had never seen a person so devoted to a child as his grandmother was to him, and that calling her to drive 5 hours round trip was the most INCONSIDERATE thing he could have done when he was going home the next day. I explained a few other facts of life to him - like that he is in control of whether he is bored, happy, angry - not me, not his grandmother, not his friends, not his parents - just him. And I ended it by looking into his eyes and saying, "I love you. That was my decision, it will continue to be my decision. Now I'm done talking to you about this. You decide whether you want to have fun or be bored and unhappy. If you choose to be unhappy, we will not feel sorry for you and we will not let you ruin the fun for anyone else."
I don't think anyone ever spoke to him like that before. He brooded over it for awhile and then decided to have fun. If he learned anything from all that, then he had a successful week, even if he was bored.