This evening we have a typical scenario.

Maddie has two things to do tonight before she goes to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to pick her up from school and drive her north to spend the night with her cousin. For several years they have been going to a special Halloween event in my sister’s neck of the woods. It’s always the Friday before Halloween, which is a bummer because Friday night traffic is a true horror show. But I’ll do it anyway. I have no idea how much time I’ll be spending in the car, but it’s for the benefit of two pretty fabulous girls, so I’m going to suck it up and do it. I’m going to take some backroads I haven’t taken before in order to avoid the inevitable multi-hour backup that’s especially bad at this time of year.

So I give her two things to do before her early bedtime: take a shower and pack up her stuff for the Halloween event and the sleepover. I inform her that I would not be reminding her constantly. If she wants me to spend half the day in the car driving her out of town and returning home (oh, yes, and doing the same thing the next day), she was going to have to have some initiative.

“I’m gonna go finish watching Batman Begins,” she pronounces enthusiastically after finishing her dinner.

“Well, you have those two things to do,” I remind her.

“But it’s Batman,” she emphasizes, with bulging eyes and a wide grin. How could I not share her passion?

“Well, how much of the movie is left?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long do you think it’ll take you to shower and pack?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I have no idea!” she insists, with a smile on her face in anticipation of her movie time.

“You’ll need to keep track of time. You need to watch the clock.”

“Well, that’s not gonna happen.” She’s probably right, but I would sure appreciate a different attitude. At least an “I’ll do my best!” But I guess at least she’s realistic.

“Maddie, you have to get those things done tonight, before bedtime, or I’m not driving you tomorrow.”

And here we are again. Oh, boy. The waves of regret are already crashing over me. I’m remembering the Giants’ game fiasco, in which I withheld a privilege and then it all came back to bite me in the butt, and what should have been a fabulous day turned into one of the worst experiences in recent memory.

This time, though, it should be more in my control. I mean the sticking to the consequences part. In no way am I in control of Maddie.

The problem with these consequences, as is often the case, is that if I don’t drive her to her cousin’s house, there’s going to be a very disappointed girl on the other end. I hate that part.

At 1 hour and 15 minutes before she is supposed to go to bed, I’m 100% certain she has done nothing. The problem is she has absolutely no clue how to keep track of time.

I was reminded of that this morning. As usual I woke Maddie up at 6:30. It’s still dark at that time. After a gentle wake-up, which this morning included puppy kisses, I hung out for a few minutes, then left to start the food-related tasks of the morning. I returned several times over the next 30 minutes, and at 7:00 I started to panic.

“It’s seven o’clock, Maddie. You really have to get up now,” I said.

“I will,” she replied, holding onto the blanket I was trying to remove. I stayed for a moment to ensure she was actually out of bed and getting dressed, and then I returned to the kitchen to finish my work.

The cab arrives daily at 7:15. At 7:12 I realized she still wasn’t upstairs, so I shoved her lunch and her water bottle into her backpack and ran downstairs. She was in the bathroom.

“Maddie! You have to leave in two minutes!” I said, knocking on the door.

“What?! Really?!” She opened the door, still in her underwear, her clothes and shoes still lying neatly on her bed.

And that might be the source of our morning issues. She just has no sense of time passing. She never has. When she was little, that came in handy (as it does with most little ones). If we were at the park, I could give a five-minute warning and then 30 seconds later announce it was time to go. The kids didn’t know the difference and that was fine.

Now, it’s not so fine. What do I do? I have tried Time-Timers, with red triangles that shrink as time passes, a nice visual representation of time. I could say, “You have to be ready in three songs.” I can give her the time every two minutes for a half hour. But it doesn’t matter. Time awareness, and so time management, just isn’t part of her makeup. I’m not sure she has completely internalized how long a minute actually is. 

She has no idea how long her math assignment might take, or how long it takes to drive somewhere, or how long she’s been in the shower. How do you plan your daily life when you can’t conceive of any of that? Or if you don’t really care? I think that’s the other part of the problem. Not interesting!

I go into her room again this evening to check on her progress.

“What time do you think it is?” I ask her.

“I don’t know. Seven o’clock?”

“Look at your clock.” It was 7:20. She had less than 40 minutes to finish packing and take a shower before my deadline. That sounds like plenty of time, but for her that’s a mad rush.

“Maddie, stop what you’re doing. Finish packing the things you absolutely need first. If you have time, you can move onto other stuff.” Packing for a trip to her cousin’s house typically includes a pillow case full of stuffed animals, some costume stuff, and maybe a game or two, in addition to the usual overnight stuff. I want her to leave all the optional stuff for the end. For her, though, it’s all the fun stuff that seems most important, so she usually packs that first. I suspect I’ll finish her other packing tomorrow, despite the rules I set down tonight.

And then, I see a light bulb over her head. “I need to do something really important!” She holds up one of her new gray plastic swords, which is partially colored in with black Sharpie. I can see what she means: she needs to finish coloring. “It might take quite a bit of time, though.” Finally, a clue about time.

Just as I feared. I had laid down some pretty clear expectations, but Maddie’s poor time planning has gotten in the way. AGAIN. What am I going to do now?

“How about if I just brush my hair and wash my underarms instead of taking a shower?” That’s a common substitute for her, but she’d already done that the night before. That long 15-year-old-girl hair is going to start getting nasty.

I stick to my guns…for a minute. It’s all I can do to muster up a “No. I told you what you had to do and you made the choice to watch the movie.”

I am having an internal battle. I really don’t want to take her trip away from her. Also, her intentions are pretty good, but she forgot something. Do I punish her for that? Ugh. I don’t know.

Last night I was half-watching an old episode of The Big Bang Theory. I love that show. I was pretty sure I’d seen all the episodes at least once, but apparently not. This episode focused on Sheldon’s lack of a driver’s license. In case you haven’t seen the show, Sheldon is a brilliant scientist who probably has Asperger’s (even though nobody ever says that). He doesn’t read people very well, he has a tough time with sarcasm, and he’s very regimented in everything he does. Because he didn’t have a driver’s license, he was expecting his friends to deliver him wherever he needed to go. His demands were very matter-of-fact, and his friends were losing their patience. Usually I find this show hilarious, but last night I was kind of sad watching it. Sheldon wasn’t doing anything on purpose. He really couldn’t help it. In the middle of the episode, his friends insisted he get his license, but it turned out he was a horrific driver. Back to his friends driving him everywhere. The bad news is many of his irritating behaviors are beyond his control. The good news is he still has friends.

So tonight I think of Sheldon. He can’t help that he doesn’t roll with change. He can’t help that driving isn’t going to be part of his life. Maddie can’t help that she’s terrible managing time. (She’ll likely never drive, either). I would certainly like her to try and improve, but maybe she never will. And I don’t want to make her feel like a failure because of her challenges.

While Maddie is showering, I have a great idea. You’re not going to believe this, but it involves duct tape. Why color a sword when you can just apply a couple strips of duct tape and call it good? I share my idea with Maddie. She says, “You’re a GENIUS.” Whoever would have thought I would solve Maddie’s problem…with duct tape?!

I let her stay up a bit longer to finish her swords. Once again, I give in to the situation. I don’t think of it as wimping out or giving up. I think of it as coming to grips with reality.

When I say goodnight to Maddie, we review the evening’s events. I am hoping something will land. I point out that she had made choices that made things difficult. “I know. I’m so stupid.” Well, that’s not what I want her to think about herself. At all. I just want her to learn the things that don’t come so easily, like time management.

And in the end, I realize tonight is not the night that is going to happen. I’m not sure when it’s going to happen. Or if. But I do know these ultimatums aren’t having the intended results.

This is such a journey. Every day I learn something. Maybe about myself. Maybe about Maddie. Maybe about parenting. Maybe about life. The key is being open to the lessons, being willing to redirect, to change course, to admit I’m wrong, to try something else and hope it works. And not be discouraged if it doesn’t.

I’m working on that.