When I was a kid, I either lived, with my mom and my sister on our own, or we lived with my mother's parents. In either home we learned one important thing, DON'T WAKE THE ADULTS. At my grandparent's home it was understood that if you woke up Grandpa he would hit something. It's not that he would seek out someone to hit, he had PTSD and would immediately strike out when startled. Being awakened by little girl calling your name or touching you in this frame of mind is startling. Standing next to the same girl in her teen age years while she's chopping carrots does the same thing. Grandpa didn't often hit one of us because we were far enough away when waking him or startling him but that extra hard carrot left a bruise on my chest for a couple of weeks. In my Grandma's case, waking her up from her nap meant it was time to do chores, homework or yard work. I would rather sit in the air conditioned house and read, crochet, knit, sew or embroider than do any kind of work. So I learned to be quiet, as did my mother before me.
When we gals were on our own, my mother was often in her sick bed. She would be sleeping through a batch of depression or trying to lay still while her anxiety caused her digestive system to roil and cramp like she had a batch of angry critters with spikes and claws in her tummy. I have the same anxiety induced tummy troubles, sometimes brought on by bad food choices. Being quiet and self sufficient was necessary for our own mental health. Like at her parent's "you wake the momma, you do work!" Most often, we would have to clean our room, occasionally it was another room, generally the bathroom. While we were quiet, I was in charge. I could let that go to my head occasionally but my sister was a loud complainer so I did my best to let her do her thing while I did mine.
Fast forward 33 years. My 15 year old boy is a lot like me and his younger brother is a loud complainer just like my sister. The difference is, Mr. Teen isn't worried about waking his parents at 7 in the morning on a Saturday or holiday Monday by torturing his brother. In fact he's not scared of insulting his younger brother in front of us either. His un-medicated ADHD brain just has to say what is on his mind when it occurs to him. I did that too but not where I would get in trouble for it, ever. I had to be good or my mother would be bed ridden for days in the aftermath. It was my mother that inflicted lots of verbal abuse during my childhood so now Mr. Teen is the worst of 2 people.
So today, I have a sleep machine malfunction and I'm not sleeping heavily like usual. I get up and run Mr. Teen off. Three hours later I've taken over my husband's sleep machine and Hubby has gone outside leaving the boys unsupervised in the house to bicker. That's when it hits me. I need to be more like my mother. When I'm awakened by these boys they should have to clean. I may not have the energy to enforce this all the time but maybe it will sink in sometime before Mr. Teen leaves for college. We can hope.
There's something else we could do. One of us could get up when we hear the first one stirring, or we could just get up long enough to medicate them then wait for it to kick in before returning to peace and quiet. But, that requires feeding the boys and keeping them separate until the medication kicks in and that early in the morning, I can barely sit upright without feeling like I'm going to hurl. So I'm going start a new thing. However many times I have texted you to be quiet is the number of chores a kid will do later in the day. My husband is going to hate this.
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