"I hate Mondays!"
Garfield



On normal school day mornings, my oldest daughter gets herself up around 5:15  and starts getting ready for school. I get up at 6:00 and help get her lunch together and then take her to the bus stop.
This morning I got up and noticed her door was shut and it was awfully quiet in there, so I went in and woke her up.

She said she got up earlier but that the shower water would not get hot so she went back to bed.

ok there is just so much wrong with that sentence. First of all no hot water means something is wrong with the hot water tank, and like I need another financial issue right this minute. And why would she just go back to bed? Shouldn't she have came and woke me up, so we had some time to figure out what to do?

So,  I go to the bathroom and run the water, and yes she's right, no hot water. Then I go down stairs to the hot water tank and stare at it. Because I'm thinking that will fix it. It didn't work.

So, I tell her that she better get up and just get ready as best as she can and hurry now because she has like 10 minutes.

She is 16, this does not go over well!

She wants to just go back to bed and be late to school until her Dad fixes the water heater and I can just drive her when she's ready.

OK, PRINCESS!

I didn't say that.

I calmly said, get up and get dressed, put your hair in a pony tail and make it work.
Apparently I'm Tim Gunn.


This is where the whining, begging, pleading her case starts.

She informs me that yesterday I told her not to take a shower, to give her hair a break since we were just staying home doing nothing.
She reminds me how greasy AND frizzy her hair gets after just one day without a shower.
She even has tears.

I feel like this is one of those decisions that define you as a parent. One of those moments that help shape the kind of adult your child will be.

I can be a little overly dramatic sometimes.

But I honestly saw her as an adult and this same thing happening. Would she chance losing her job because her hair was icky? Would she expect the world would just wait while she got ready.
And I thought about this boy in Africa and all he had to go through to get himself to school each day and that he would love for a cold shower to be his biggest problem in life.

So, after a few slammed doors and boycotting my breakfast, she went to school.
I tried to tell her not to be mad. That she didn't have a choice right now about this situation but she had a choice about how she was going to react. I reminded her about the kids in Africa we had just been reading about and that maybe God was trying to give her some perspective and remind her how blessed she is.
I'm not sure if she listened. I'm not sure if I even made the right choice. I'm trying to imagine myself going to town without a shower for 2 days. Would I do it with a happy heart?

What would you have done in this situation? Take your child late or go all Tim Gunn on them?

Happy Monday!