My child has always been a handful. Now that he’s a wayward teen, my guidance, instructions and loving words fall on deaf ears. Try getting him to pick up the clothes off his floor. You’ll never have a chance of that, let alone getting him to contribute around the house by doing the dishes, sweeping up, or just taking the trash out for crying out loud. Nope, he’ll never lift a finger.
So we ended up making a cleaning roster for the house and the family. I thought it would teach Jerry, my son, some discipline. By the time we had to call the plumber, it was clear that the system wasn’t working. Jerry was supposed to be on bathroom duty that month. I told him that he better stop trimming his body hair in the sink because it kept getting blocked, or else that he better clean the drain. But he just poked the hair down the drain and hoped for the best. That’s when the blocked drain pipe bust and we had a water gushing emergency. I was at work at the time otherwise I would have immediately called someone to deal with blocked drains. Camberwell must have some pretty terrible pipes because this seems to happen a lot in this area.
My son didn’t seem too bothered with the drama, he had just rolled out of bed at about midday, being the lazy brat he is, and emerged from the house in drenched pajamas. It was all my son’s fault that the plumbers had to come around to do the drain cleaning, in Melbourne the pipes are old some places so they can’t be put under any stress. I think it was Jerry’s wake up call actually. He was very apologetic afterwards and even offered to pay for the plumber with his own savings! I told him not to worry about it as long as he did his chores from now on. I guess what I’ve learnt is that as a parent, you can nag and discipline all you want, but sometimes they’ve got to learn their lessons on their own.