In the late 80s, early 90s I was a Trekkie.
Hey, there are worse things to be.
Star Trek The Next Generation was a big show at the time, Emmy award winning and everything.
I loved the way Captain Picard would ask his “Number One” (his first officer, not his urine) for options on what should be done. After getting the recommendations, Picard would say, “Make it so.”
We actually adapted something from Starfleet to fit our own family needs: The Prime Directive.
In Star Trek (in case you had a life under the rock you must have been living under, or if you’re too young to remember) The Prime Directive was their most prominent guiding principle. In a nutshell, they could not change the natural course of any society they came in contact with.
Our Prime Directive was a little different, since our family was pre-warp, and interstellar spaceflight wasn’t an option to us. Our Prime Directive was: Be WHERE you’re supposed to be, WHEN you’re supposed to be.
That was our most prominent guiding principle. And it covered a lot of stuff.
PoP #5: Keep It Simple
We really only had two rules for our kids. There was The Prime Directive, of course. And the other rule that didn’t have a fancy name, but was pretty simple – Never, ever lie.
Those two rules covered pretty much anything we wanted to enforce in our household. And I’m telling you the honest truth, if you ask either of my kids RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE what rules they had growing up, they will recite what I’ve just written, almost verbatim.
Violation of The Prime Directive was instantaneous death.
Not really. I’ve already told you what a handful Zach was. I would be serving my fifteenth year of a life sentence if death were really the punishment.
We actually had real world penalties for whatever the violation was.
For instance, missing the bus was a violation of The Prime Directive. At least until Jen was old enough to drive, then I didn’t care. But BEFORE that, if it inconvenienced me, it was a violation.
In the real world, if you miss the bus, you have to call a taxi. Taxis cost money. Oh, you don’t have money to pay for your mom to taxi you to school? Then you can do an extra job to pay for the ride. See how it works?
In the real world, if you’re constantly late to work, you get fired. Well, I could hardly fire Zach from being my son. So when he kept missing curfew, I docked his pay. And by pay I mean how long he got to stay out the next time he went out.
For every five minutes he was late, he had to be home a half-hour earlier the next time.
Curfew was midnight. If he got home at 12:15, the next time he went out his curfew was 10:30. Unless, of course, I spoke personally to the police officer that pulled him over so I could verify the reason he was late.
The never ever lie rule had a much simpler punishment. It was called The Favorite Position.
I didn’t name it that.
The Favorite Position is a Roberts family tradition, and frankly it’s a misnomer, since NO ONE favors it at all.
Let me see if I can describe it.
Sit on the floor facing the wall with your legs straight out in front of you. Now place your feet flat against the wall about six or eight inches above the floor. Back straight. Hands on top of your head. Straighten those legs!
Now sit like that for at least five minutes, or until you decide to confess the truth.
The beauty of the favorite position was that I could go about my business, watching Star Trek or what have you, while the kids were being severely punished. I didn’t even have to yell! But it hurt so bad to sit that way, they’d cry like they were being beaten.
Oh, stop judging me. The ONLY time they had to sit that way was if they lied. And they KNEW going into the lie that they’d get in more trouble for the lie than whatever it was they were trying to cover up. So it was self-inflicted pain. Save your pity.
The only lie they didn’t get The Favorite Position for was when one of them confessed to something they didn’t do to save the other sibling’s butt.
Like the time I came home and could smell someone had been playing with matches. At first, no one would fess up. After a few minutes of The Favorite Position, Jen took the fall to put an end to their misery.
I knew it was Zach playing with the matches. He was (and is) a giant pyromaniac. Maybe enough time has passed now that Jen will tell me the real reason she confessed. I KNOW it wasn’t because she loved her brother too much to watch him suffer alone.
My kids hated The Favorite Position so much they figured out how much easier it was to just tell the truth. Easier for them anyway. It was sometimes hard to keep our promise that they’d be in less trouble if they told the truth.
I have a whole summer of truth telling I’ll write about another time, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a miracle I didn’t kill them both and bury them in the backyard.
But the important thing is that they told the truth and I DIDN’T kill them. My children are all alive and well (as far as you know.) And as I’ve mentioned before, they grew to trust me with all sorts of truths about their lives.
Maybe the two-rule edict in our house was more for me than anyone. I was never any good at remembering a bunch of rules. Or keeping them for that matter.
Beyond those two rules, if anything else needed to be enforced, all Dave had to say was “Make it so.”
And warp-drive or not, if they were smart, they moved fast.
PoP #1: A Little Practical Magic
PoP #2: Fall In Love With a Vampire
PoP #5: It takes a Starfleet to Raise a Child
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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