Wake-Up Call

The morning routine at the Austin household goes something like this...

My alarm goes off at 5:44 and I consistently hit the snooze -- two more times. At 6:02, I am out of bed and in the shower. I get dressed and go wake up Carter, who is 2 feet from an atomic alarm clock that probably is waking the subdivision but not causing him to even stir. I tell him to get up, he acknowledges me and says he IS up!

I go back upstairs and eat my breakfast for 5 minutes before going back to his room for Round 2. At that point, I do not leave his room until he's at least sitting up with his feet on the floor.

Hubby has been getting up around this time, too, so he can get some steps on the treadmill before starting his work day. So some days I send him down for Round 2. On days like today, when I am scheduled to work in the home office, hubby lets me sleep in (yay) and he handles the wake-up call.

Today, that did not exactly go as planned.

Jim was up on time. He awakened Carter and even had a conversation with him while Carter was "coming to." So he hopped on the treadmill and, oh 20 minutes later, Carter comes out of his room and says he just got up!

At that point, he still has 20 minutes before he has to be next door to catch his daily ride to school. He doesn't need to fix his hair. He can splash and go in 20 minutes. However, teen boys actually like to shower (and primp) at this age, so instead of just dressing and grabbing a Pop Tart and heading out the door, he showered, ate and had Dad drive him to school.

I think the conversation on the way to school went something like this... Dad: "If this would have happened to me when I was a kid, my dad would have said, get dressed and get your butt next door or you're walking to school!" Shower or no shower, it was not his fault if Jimmy overslept.

As Jim was telling me this later, it was like getting yet another wake-up call about how many of us parents are raising (or not raising) our children. We don't want them to feel bad. We encourage them and support them but do our best to help them avoid conflict or pain (physical or emotional). They don't have to be responsible for all their mistakes because we step in and rescue them in some fashion many of the times. They don't often ask permission but tell us what they are going to do. They inform us what's on their schedule and we take them where they need to be as if we are their paid chauffeurs. (Right.)

How did it come to this??

I wish I knew. I'm pretty sure it stems from our need to make their lives better than how we had it in our childhood. Yet, we know now that we wouldn't be the people we are today -- loving, kind, honest, respectful, hard working -- if we hadn't made mistakes, hadn't overcome some serious challenges.

On our own.

It's pretty screwed up. I hope it's not too late to teach those valuable lessons and instill these characteristics in our kids.

I also hope Carter doesn't oversleep again. Because you know no matter what I WRITE, Momma's gonna cave and give him a ride!