There are times when I look at my kids and hear my dad's voice ringing clear as a bell in my ear. That time is typically between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. each night.
"Go to bed. You stay up late, and then you can't get up in the morning," he would tell me almost every night during the summers I spent on the farm. "Go to bed!"
Of course, I never did. I simply could not fall asleep before midnight, ever.
It seems that I have been cursed with myself in the form of my son.
While Katrina is a piece of work in her own regard, five-year-old Spencer is about to drive me to the bottle.
My wife works early each morning, so she is typically in bed by 9:30 p.m. That's when the shenanigans begin. That's also when I do a lot of my work, either for the paper or my photography business. The idea is I can work without interference. At least that's the idea, if not reality.
Other parents on our block tell me their kids go to bed at 8:30 each night. They look at me in amazement when I tell them I have a hard time getting them to bed before 10.
Katrina will putz and procrastinate occasionally raid the fridge. "I'm hungry" she'll say around 10 p.m. Eventually she will settle down.
Spencer, however, seems to think he's James Bond, despite never having seen a Bond film. He stealthily sneaks out of his room, and the pitter-patter of little feet prance across the floor to the kitchen, where he will take himself at least three times.
Why, I don't know. We feed him. But he never wants to each much supper. He always leaves half on his plate, if not more. So we leave his plate out for a while, expecting, occasionally rightly, that he will return to it while grazing.
My office is directly below the kitchen, so I can hear every little noise he makes. The light-footed scamper, the fridge opening, the scamper back.
That's not so bad. But then he will scare me half to death by suddenly appearing by my side, in my office, at 10:43 p.m. "Daddy, read me book," or "Daddy, me can't sleep," he says.
This may be his first visit to my office, or his fourth, since 9:30. Sometimes I am warm and cuddly, and send him back to bed. Other times I snarl and yell and chase him back up the stairs. Neither approach seems to work.
It's my understanding there are essentially two approaches to motivation, commonly known as the carrot and the stick. The carrot is positive reinforcement: do this and something good will happen. You get something you like. The stick is negative reinforcement: don't do this and I will do something you will not like.
I've tried both, and nothing seems to work. I have gone so far as locking him in his room, which just results in him banging on the door for an hour. That doesn't go over well with my wife who has to be up at 5:30 a.m.
Lately he's taken to sneaking into Michelle's office on the other end of the basement, unplugging her iPhone, and playing games on it under her desk. Michelle wandered into there late tonight to find this going on. The reaction was swift and loud.
How Spencer survives on so little sleep, I don't know. His daycare still has naps, but I have asked them to try to keep him from actually falling asleep. We've had varying success on that one, methinks.
Both kids, but Spencer especially, are wired like me: nighthawks. We all have a hard time going to bed early, or waking up early. Mornings are for the birds, not us.
As I type this at 1:23 a.m., I am resigned to the fact the little apple has not rolled far from the tree.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
