Brilliant … But Bouncy

You Didn’t Tell Me to Put a Space.

Shane and I were out in the country, and we drove past a rural gas station. The price per gallon looked low, but I didn’t know for sure. So I decided to check GasBuddy.com – a website that allows consumers to check gas prices.

I don’t drive and type, so I handed my phone to Shane in the back seat. “Google ‘gas buddy,'” I told him as he took the phone. “It should come right up.”

“It did,” he said.

“Then click on the one that….” I said, but Shane interrupted me.

“I already did,” he said.

I was astounded. Shane is cautious and rarely ventures a step ahead of my instructions. “That’s great!” I told him. “You’re starting to think ahead! You must be at the website. Do you see a gas tank in a circle?”

“No,” he said.

“You don’t see a picture of a gas tank?” I asked again.

“I don’t see any pictures.”

For purposes of brevity, I will just say that Shane had not ventured a step ahead after all. He was still on the Google site, waiting for instructions on what to do next. It never occurred to him to click on GasBuddy.com.

Eventually, with the car stopped, I clicked on the link for him. Then I walked him through the process of typing in a city/state name to get a list of gas prices. Shane adores numbers, and I thought this would be great fun.

So he typed as I assisted with spelling. He still couldn’t get a list of gas prices. I looked at the phone again. He had spelled everything right, but he didn’t type in a space between the city and state.

“You didn’t put a space between the city and state,” I said, thinking, he is in FIFTH grade! How is he going to survive in the real world?

“You didn’t tell me to put a space,” he said.

“But you know that the city and state are two separate words, right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“So why wouldn’t you put a space between the two words?”

“I thought it was like a website or something.” He was quite serious. And suddenly, it made sense.

It occurred to me, for the first time ever, that the problem was not Shane and his inability to think. The problem might just be my constant and consistently overly specific instructions. My forceable control over every movement he makes, my dictating every single step in order to “help,” was actually hindering his progress – and not helping anyone.

So I started over completely, I got the phone back to the home screen and then I handed it back to my incredibly smart son, who most certainly was capable of handling this simple task.

I said, “Okay, Shane. I have an idea. Go to GasBuddy.com and find out what the gas prices are in this city.”

And he did. Within two minutes, he was able to tell me what the gas prices were in our rural location.

All I had to do was back off, and let him think for himself.

And while I do hate resolutions, I consider it essential that I create one now: I will back off and let my kids think for themselves. Not just for 2015, but for the rest of time.

It will take a lot of practice. I am a control freak. But if it means that my kids will be better equipped to handle life, then it is worth the effort.

And also, gas prices were 13 cents per gallon cheaper at home, so we got gas later.