My 12 year old son sings barbershop with his dad and grandpa.  A few times per week they have rehearsals.  These rehearsals go pretty late into the evening.  Last night, my son went to bed around midnight due to one of these rehearsals.

This morning when he woke up he realized that he didn’t remember to wake up to help the boy scouts deliver flags for the 24th of July state holiday.  While talking about it, he said, “I was just too tired to get up I guess.” 

Later, he realized that he forgot another commitment as well because he woke up late.  He didn’t seem to really care about fixing the situations he created either.  He said he was too tired. 

We looked up the word duty in the dictionary and talked about what it meant to have a duty and how sleep was something that wasn’t allowed to get in the way of duty.  He seemed to understand the point and fixed the situations he had created by waking up late.

A while later we started our family cannon.  (We were a bit late today due to the holiday preparations.)  As soon as we started our scriptures he slipped onto the floor and laid his head on the couch and acted as if he wanted to sleep and didn’t want to participate in the family scripture study. 

This kind of behavior goes against our family vision and mission statement.  In other words, this kind of behavior was not acceptable.  If he REALLY needed sleep, he could disagree appropriately, but not participating, and seeking negative attention is not acceptable and a sign of an attitude problem. 

I knew that he needed to be corrected for his negative behavior.  I almost went into a corrective teaching, when I realized that the root of the problem is that he doesn’t realize what he is REALLY communicating.  And, if I told him what his behavior was communicating, he would probably choose not to do it.  So, instead of a regular corrective teaching, I went for a communication lesson that doubled as a pre-teach for appropriate family social skills.

I said, “Quinton, do you know what you are communicating to me right now?” 

He looked over at me and said, “No.”

“You are communicating to me that you are too tired to participate in family scripture study.  This tells me that you are not able to get enough sleep because of your singing barbershop at night.  If this is your message then you will probably have to give up barbershop singing, because it goes against our family vision and mission, not to mention it takes the Spirit from our home by making you too tired to have family time.  Is this what you wanted to communicate to me?” 

“No,” he said. 

This was the end of my short teaching moment.  It was really short on purpose.  He knows my teaching style by heart, and so I don’t always have to go into tons of explaination for him to see what the situation looks like, and I didn’t want to disrupt our family time too much.  This disruption was probably what he was looking for, because he didn’t want our regular routine today due to the holiday etc.  I don’t ever want to show my children that their negative behaviors can control or change a situation which they wanted to change. 

The effect of the pre-teach and reminder that he is always communicating things to people was that he immediately sat up and opening his book and began to participate.  Then he looked at me and said, “I guess sometimes, I think that no one can really see what I am doing.” 

My son had forgotten that people watch other people and take in the other person’s communications.  It is our jobs as parents to let them know what they are telling the world, so that they can better analyze themselves and who they want to become. 

It was a grea learning day for Quin.  Success!