Diane: (snorts!) Yeah, right. I picked them up and washed them, then stacked them at the foot of her bed.
Me: And she put them up?
Diane: (snorts) Yeah, right. She climbed into bed and shoved them on the floor. That's where I found them the next morning.
Me: (revving up into my Dr. Spock mode) Diane, Diane, Diane. Don't you see what you're doing? You're enabling her. You need to get tough. Refuse to pick up after her.
Diane: The house will be condemned within a month.
Me: And don't wash her clothes. When she runs out of clean clothes…
Diane: (Breaking in) She'll wear mine.
Me: (undaunted) And the next time she throws clean stuff on the floor, I'd put it in a trash bag and stick it in the attic. That'd teach her a lesson.
Diane: Yeah, right. It won't work. Believe me – some day you will understand.
My daughter is now 13. The other day I walked into her room and found clothes on the floor and under all of her furniture. Some were dirty, some were clean, some were still on hangers – but all were on the floor.
Did I follow my own advice? Did I grab giant garbage bags and stuff my daughter's jeans and school shirts and dirty socks and dance leotards and clean, freshly-folded underwear and recently dry-cleaned silk shirt into it?
Did I let her dirty clothes pile up, up, up to the sky, forming a veritable Mt. Everest of soiled laundry, with mounds of clothes all over her carpet, under her furniture, obscuring her bed?
Did I tell my errant off-spring "Go clean your room" over and over and over?
Well, actually I did tell her to clean her room and she did. Kind of. She shoved most of the dirty clothes on her floor under her bed, along with all the popcorn kernels, empty chip bags, nail polish bottles, used cotton balls and lost sneakers. All that did was make it harder for me to reach.
As I said in the beginning of this column – I admit it. It's easy to backseat drive. Simple to coach from the stands. A breeze to read child-rearing books and spout conventional psycho-babble. A no-brainer to offer pointers to others from the lofty viewpoint of one's own ivory tower. Easy, but ineffective.
And so, Obi wan Dianobi, I admit it. You were right all along. Teenaged girls defy conventional wisdom and solutions. I am walking in your shoes and they have gum on the bottom of them. You don't have to tell me, "I told you so," because I've done it for you. All I can say is:
Diane – you da man
