My youngest daughter has been telling me all summer she wanted to paint her bedroom. I was fine with it, but it sounded like a lot of work for me. I told her if she wanted to do it, she needed to let me know when she was ready as I wasn’t going to nag her to do something I didn’t actually want to do. The summer marched on.
So last week, the week before college started, she decided it was time. I groaned and said, “well it’s a bit tight before school starts, isn’t it?” My oldest piped in with, “it’s a whole week.” I said, “It’s still a lot of work. You’ll have to pull the bed away from the wall, move everything out of the room, empty the walls of posters and such, wipe the walls down, then paint, maybe even two coats. It will take awhile.”
Never underestimate the will of a child, or in her case, young adult, who wants something in their life to change. Next thing I knew she had her room torn apart and was at Home Depot, by herself, discussing paint chips. Besides telling her she could put her stuff in the living room, I stayed out of it. She even paid for the paint and supplies.
When I got up the next morning, she was sleeping on the couch in the family room and her bedroom was pretty much painted. Her usual routine is to stay up until the wee hours of the morning anyway, so she worked on it while I slept. She also decided she wanted a new desk. By that time I was so proud of her taking the initiative for such a big project, I was more than happy to desk shop with her.
We checked all the thrift stores first, but unfortunately we were right behind the college students starting back to school and there wasn’t a desk in sight. So we did the next best thing and went to Ikea. They had exactly what she wanted at a reasonable price. I was in such a good mood or so ecstatic I didn’t have to paint, that I paid for the desk.
It gets better – she put the desk together by herself. By the next morning her room and the living room were still a shambles, she was again sleeping on the couch, the desk was mostly put together, and painting was finished. She was only two days into it, but I started to get concerned she wouldn’t have time to pull it all together. The hardest part of finishing a project is in the details and all I could see was the wreck in my living room. But she rose at a decent hour (before noon) and started wrapping up the loose ends. When I awoke the third day, my living room was back in order, she was sleeping in her own bed, and she had everything back in place. She only had to hang her pictures, which she finished later that evening.
All the household projects I have undertaken and made her help with paid off for both of us. I’m sure she never imagined as she labored over some task I charged her with that she’d someday be painting her own bedroom by herself. If I hadn’t made her lend a hand, she would have never even known where to start.
There isn’t a lot my daughters have done that I can say I directly influenced, since ultimately they are their own people. But I’m taking this one, I taught her how to do that.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh,” or twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.
