This was Jonah Saturday.
All he wanted to do was get up on a Saturday morning, play on his tablet, eat some breakfast, and enjoy his day.
But the tablet…
His FOURTH tablet (mind you)…
…was completely dead.
It wouldn’t charge, reset, or anything. It was basically a $500 paperweight.
Jonah came absolutely unglued. He can typically manage the tablet dying because he knows that there is a simple solution to fix it (plug it in).
…But the fact that it wouldn’t turn on AT ALL when his solutions failed…was unacceptable to him.
And that’s really all it took to trigger a behavioral regression. Jonah’s anxiety skyrocketed.
Morning meltdown… and his anxiety didn’t abate.
He screamed and cried. He got physically violent. He ran over and started hitting and kicking me over and over.
At that moment, I could do a couple things as a parent.
I could relent. I could go out and buy another tablet for him, essentially rewarding the escalated behavior…
…or I could turn it into a “teachable moment” and wait it out, just enduring the meltdown until he calmed down because life isn’t always fair. Sometimes things break. Sometimes we are disappointed in life. We don’t always “win.” Sometimes we don’t get what we want.
Yeah…
We went out and bought him another tablet.
Do you know how many “teachable moments” Jonah has had to endure since 2020? How many anxieties are STILL persisting as a result of the pandemic?
I REFUSE to let Jonah’s anxiety levels return to what they were; when he couldn’t manage life. When he would scream non-stop in the car. When he would scream if I coughed, whistled, sang, or just sat down at my computer.
Yes we bought him yet ANOTHER tablet. (What is that now, 5?)
I don’t care what your stance or philosophy is on screen time, I care about Jonah’s happiness and well-being.
Because even after we brought his new tablet home, it took nearly ALL DAY for his apps and updates to load.
He proceeded to pick up his NEW tablet for which we just paid yet another small fortune and made like he was going to throw THIS one across the room.
When I stopped him, he again started hitting and kicking me and screaming.
This went on most the afternoon until Jonah finally realized that the anxiety was just more than he could bear and asked us to put his tablet away until it finished updating.
😳
It was nearly 5pm when it finally finished.
And then, Jonah was happy as a clam. He opened his tablet and started playing. That’s all he really wanted to do since he got up the at morning…9 hours earlier.
I mean…It’s a perfectly reasonable expectation to be able to play with his tablet on a Saturday morning. That has been Jonah’s routine all year.
But when that routine is broken without a remedy in sight…
😳
Some days, that’s just how it goes.
One little thing can completely obliterate the plans for the day.
The whole mood of the day was set by one dead tablet.
Oh well, there’s always tomorrow…
🤷♂️😳
#ausome