My brother Zach is six years old and is obsessed with toy trains. He has tracks laid out all over the house and is unable to focus on anything that doesn’t say “choo choo” for longer than five minutes. His obsession is amplified by my father’s own love for toy trains… and by my father’s lack of self-control on eBay when he finds a new train set available.
This past Saturday, Zach and my father received another train set in the mail. They played with it until mid-afternoon Sunday when my father realized that Zach still hadn’t completed his summer-school spelling assignment.
“Zach,” my father said, when I came to visit late Sunday afternoon. “Go to the table and do your homework!”
“Vrooooooooom,” Zach said, as he flew a locomotive over a local park, and smashed it into an innocent tin soldier.
“Now!” my father said, wagging his finger. Zach didn’t seem notice.
“Boooooooooom!” He tossed the locomotive into the air. “Fire, fire, ahhhh…”
My father looked at me, desperate. And I laughed.
*****
The easy answer was to take away the train set unless he did his homework. But my father couldn’t do it because “they’re new… and, well, they’re trains.”
Zach put some plastic Navy Seals in a pool and hitched it to a little red caboose. He began pushing the caboose around the track like a possessed maniac. “Move away good friends… move away good friends… move away good friends…” he repeated as he pushed.
For sanity’s sake, I asked my father if I could conduct an experiment on the kid. He nodded. “It might be a little weird,” I said. He didn’t mind.
*****
I picked up the train station and pretended to inspect it. “You’ve done a great job with your homework, Zach,” I said.
The kid looked at me like I was a fucking idiot. “They’re trains, dodo brain. Not homework,” he said. Then he pointed to the station in my hand. “And that’s my station. Give it back!”
I put it down. “The trains are now your only homework,” I said. Just keep them moving for an hour and you’re done.”
He laughed. “You’re a stupid head,” he said. “That’s the easiest homework ever.”
My father glared at me. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
I went into the kitchen, brought back an oven timer, wound it, and stuck it next to Zach. “One hour,” I reminded him.
*****
Nine minutes later, Zach threw the caboose onto the ground. “This is no fun!” he said.
“Why not?” I asked, sympathetically.
“Because it’s homework. And homework sucks!”
“But you have to do it,” I said. Then I paused. “Unless you really need a break.”
“I need a break… I need a break,” he said. “Pleeeeeease?”
I laughed. “Well, if you want a break, then maybe you can do some spelling.”
He frowned. “But Danny,” he said. “I don’t want to spell!”
“Actually, I shouldn’t let you spell. Not until you finish your train homework.”
He put his hands on his hips and looked at the trains. Then he looked at his homework on the dining room table. Then he looked, again, at the trains. And he lowered his head. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do spelling.”
*****
When his mother came back, an hour later, he was still spelling…long after finishing his required work. “What the hell did you do to him?” she asked, mortified.
“Ha ha,” Zach said. “I didn’t do my homework.”
*****
My father asked me, later, where I’d learned my “new, eccentric parenting philosophy”.
I told him that it was inspired by a bunch of procrastinators from whom I’ve been receiving e-mails. “If smart, driven people aren’t doing what they really want to do simply because they feel compelled to do it… I guessed that the same would probably be true for a six-year-old,” I said.
Oh God, thank you again… I need this shot of heroin. I need it, Dan!
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Real life is frickin’ funny!
http://TrunkShot.com
Interesting. Isn’t there a way to erase the concept of homework completely?
I mean, there’s a bunch of stuff that I want to do, and I’m not avoiding it because I feel compelled to, I’m avoiding it because I feel compelled to do other things, which I’m having a hard time doing.
I suppose that imagining the dialog that goes with what I’m doing is what’s holding me back. I’d be contented to do anything if I didn’t have to worry about anticipating an “attaboy” or a “you should have…”
I just think I want to value my work more than I value how I feel about it, or what it says about me. To Zach, it seems, the trains were more important than any rules someone might have been associated with them. And certainly he wasn’t much interested in what was going on around him. As long as he didn’t have to worry about if he wanted to do it or not, it seems like he was content to do it.
I think for us, as adults, it would be valuable to see ourselves as nothing without the task at hand, whether it’s spelling, programming, or studying. The process, ideally, should overtake us.
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I am curious, how do you suggest people not feel compelled to do things that they genuinely want to do?
Terrific Story and quite true. If only all things in life went Vroom!!
Reverse psychology works on kids a lot, because they haven’t wisened up to it yet.
My apartment is only ever clean when I’ve got a lot of more important things to be doing. Letting the avoidance of one thing motivate you into another can work well sometimes. Unfortunately, if there’s something big looming over your head, it’s hard to convince yourself that you should be working on something else; you still can’t get to that one all-important thing.
Oh what fun reverse phsycology is.
Great!!!
Neat story. I wonder how I, myself, get to a point where I just do things. Sometimes I just say, “well someone has to do it” and other times i’m like “well if i’m not here tomorrow then it wasn’t worth doing today”.
It is crazy to really think about how to fix oneself, if you really don’t feel you are broken. Just because other people look at you like you should be doing something and your not doesn’t mean that you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing in your mind at the time. If that is the case as well, everything happens for a reason, and if that is a fact, then you are really no more out of place than you would be if you were doing what you thought that you should, or what other thought that you should be doing.
dan, you are a genius. can you come and be my parenting guide?
That’s just fantastic! Would this be a case of reframing: the moment you apply a new term to something, it becomes more interesting? I’ll recommend it for my brother when his daughter starts school. I did find, actually, when I was supposed to be doing my PhD thesis, my apartment was much cleaner, and I got far more writing done, that at any other time in my life.
Oh wow. I should try that on myself sometime, maybe I can get something productive done for a change!
It’s almost unbelievable, but I love this little story because there’s a bit of that little kid in every one of us.
Hilarious.
I’m one of those out there who procrastinate doing things and end up doing them when I want to procrastinate doing other things. See the vicious cycle?
BUT SMART WAY TO GET YOU BROTHER TO DO HIS HOMEWORK. Bravo.
On the down side, he never played with the new train set again.
I think little boys are inherently attracted to trains. It’s just something about them. …I comment on your posts wayyy too much.
Smart one! Seriously, I’m going to use this one on my brother. He’s six and has recently left his train obsession for Star Wars and smacking us all on the butt with his light sabers. Now I know how to get him to do his homework!
Great great story! I should try that with my sister.
-M