Good Enough Mother!

Yesterday was the second to the last drum lesson for Cole. Let me bring you all up to speed. See, Cole has been taking drum lessons for the last couple of years and is actually very good (note to those considering an instrument for your child, if you choose drums be prepared for them to beat on EVERYTHING with EVERYTHING). A couple of weeks ago, my baby came to me and with tears in his eyes said he wanted to quit. “ Mom, it’s just not fun anymore,” he told me.

Well, my son, being the head strong, future dictator of a small, third world country, would get nothing out of me forcing him to continue so I agreed to let him quit on one condition…. he had to finish out the remaining lessons as they have already been paid for.

It is against that backdrop that I picked him up from school yesterday and he was sporting a face even longer than this one.

“ Mom, I don’t want to have my drum lesson today”. Now, lest you think I over-reacted, this boy has been beating a dead horse (no offense Mr. Ed) about this since I had agreed to let him quit. In fact, Monday night he came into my room, saying he was “depressed” and couldn’t sleep because of Tuesday’s lesson, which was slated to be the usual 45 minutes, plus 45 minute make up session. You do the math. 45 min+45 min, divide by uninterested kid= unmitigated disaster!

Okay, so back to the car. He gets in, long face.
“What’s wrong Cole?”
“Nuthin.” is the sullen response.
“How was school?”
“Fine.”
“ Did something happen today?”
“No.”
“ What’s wrong, buddy?”
“ Nuthin.”
Okay mommy was a little slow on the uptake and then it finally dawns on me; he’s dragging his feet over the drum lesson.

Now, we pay 68 dollars an hour for this kid to learn to how to beat the skins and ensure the rest of us will have headaches and compromised hearing for the rest of our time on this earth. 68 BUCKS! Yes it’s pricey and it was at that point I blew a gasket.

COLE YOU-ARE NOT GETTING OUT OF THIS LESSON! WE HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR IT AND YOU ARE GOING TO FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED!

A few miles and a couple deep breaths later, I resume the rant, with less volume but the same intensity. And I got wise, explaining in terms abundantly clear to every 10-year-old boy on the planet… X-BOX Live. Yeah!

“ Cole, you said for Christmas you wanted games for your X-BOX Live. (He asked for 10 games and at 35-45 bucks a game that SO ain’t gonna happen)
“How about this. We can cancel the lesson but you have to pay for it and it is equal to about 2 X-Box Live games. So we will just take those games off the Christmas list to pay for the music lesson.”

Silence. I tried to keep from patting myself on the back for a) being able to maneuver in traffic while steam was coming from my ears and b) for totally scoring a goal in the I-am-trying-to-make-my-kids-understand-the-value-of-a-dollar argument.

He got it.. he truly got it. But that didn’t change the ‘tude which still was stinky. Mommy reached once again into her bag of tricks and what came out? The X-BOX Live…Again.

“ Cole, when we get home, I want you to go upstairs and lie down until Matt gets here. And during the drum lesson you will work hard and you will learn. You will not have a bad attitude. I am going to ask Matt how you did and if he says you were dragging your feet, you will not get X-BOX for the rest of the week. Do you understand?” He nods, but just barely.

She shoots, she scores AGAIN!

Okay, this next part I am not proud of. You see when Matt arrived, mommy-dearest had softened her position a bit and asked that the dreaded hour and half lesson be trimmed to an hour. Cole was resistant, Matt was sick, and mommy was just sick and tired.

The lesson I was trying to teach was two fold. Number one the value of the dollar, especially now. I do not want my kids to think we are made of money and even if we were, being wasteful is not an option. In fact, this conspicuous spending party we’ve had the last 17 years is why we are dealing with the national hangover we have now.

And number two: you finish what you start. Okay so maybe he won’t sell out Madison Square Garden but we started these lessons and though he won’t continue, he has to at least finish the session. He committed himself to it then, he will finish it now.

So it all ends well, Cole pulled it together for that hour, and Matt headed out the door with his usual “ See you next week." That's when, Cole with his huge eyes, came to me and said “ I thought you said this was the last session?” "One more buddy." And you know what that means.. we get to repeat this whole thing next week!