Friday, January 10, 2014

In Which My Child Tries to Become One With the Couch

For awhile now, one of my children has been trying to deceive me.  It didn't work.  Granted, he thought he was getting away with it for a long time because he wasn't home when the evidence was right in front of me and I kept forgetting to confront him.  But not today, my friends.  Not today.
Let me make something clear right now.  I am not posting this in order to shame or embarrass my child.  I am only here to entertain you, and I really do find this incident hilarious.  And because I do not want to shame or embarrass my child, he shall remain nameless.  Now, back to my story.
I have been trying very hard to get my boys to change their underwear.  I don't understand why this is so hard for them.  I've tried many tactics over the years.  Praise, yelling, etc.  But to no avail.  I've tried telling myself, this will work itself out and they will just do it someday and I really shouldn't worry about it.  But I don't think I will ever know that they change their underwear every day.  
Then one laundry day, one of my children had changed his underwear every day!  Oh, my goodness!  I told him I was grateful to him that he had finally learned how to change his underwear every day and that this was a really good thing.  I think I said, "Good job." and gave him a thumbs up, or something.  Then for a really long time, he stopped, or was really inconsistent about it.
Then I started noticing as I was sorting the laundry that some of his underwear was put in the laundry basket still folded.  "Hmmmmmm."  I thought.  "I wonder if he is putting his clean underwear in the laundry.  To try to make me think he'd changed his underwear."
He was home today by the time I finally got around to sorting the laundry, and was on the couch playing Halo 4 while I was doing so.  I turned to him, "When you put your underwear in the laundry basket still folded, it makes me think you didn't really change your underwear and are trying to deceive me."  My kids are terrible liars.  He looks at me like he'd been caught, and starts trying to sink into the couch and somehow become one with it. Sort of like this:


"Dude.  Just say it.  I can tell that's what you've been doing.  Isn't it?"  "Yeah.  I have." 
I don't.  I can't.  I mean.  REALLY!!?  What?  WHY?!!  I mean, if you are going to try to get away with something, at least try to make it look convincing!


3 comments:

Michele said...

lol. Why don't boys like to change their underwear? Brian and I not too long ago had a calm conversation with a son about at least, AT LEAST, change your underwear after you have bathed. Your body is clean, put on ALL clean clothes including underwear. "BUT THAT'S EVERY OTHER DAY,SOMETIMES EVERY DAY!" You would think I had asked him to clean the entire house top to bottom including under the stove and behind the fridge the way he reacted. Brian and I were surprised that what we were asking would require so much work. Wouldn't it just feel better? Based on ages of conflicts with my children and grooming issues, and conversations with other parents, I think I can guess who it was, and I can say, it is just a phase. I think they don't realize they are going through it because now I have children saying, "EWW that is SO disgusting" to younger siblings while the rest of us just look at each other knowingly because we have witnessed that individual avoid certain grooming habits before. Hormones do strange things. I do think when kids are growing, especially teenagers, their body is focused on dealing with those new changes instead of the brain thinking through things. My kids do some "out of sorts" things when they are hitting a growth spurt.
Also, what's with putting folded clothes in the wash? My boys do that and it drives me crazy. It tells me one thing (at our house)- they were too lazy to put their clothes away in the first place, left them on the floor, cleaned up their room by scooping everything on the floor and put it in the wash. They grow out of that too.

Michele said...

PS I like the cat picture.

Shauna said...

I'm so glad I'm not the only one struggling with this. I mean, they take the underwear off when they shower. How hard is it to put clean ones on instead of sliding back into the filthy ones?! I've resorted to counting on laundry day as well, to no avail.