The Lightbulb Incident

“Hey, Omar,” I said to him when he walked by me in the kitchen. “Can you reach that lightbulb?”  

“Where? Which one?”

“The burned out one?” I was washing dishes at the sink as usual so pointed up with my elbow at the darkened bulb in the recessed light behind me.

He stood on tiptoe but only his fingertips touched the bulb so I asked him to get the step ladder and help me. Nick stood in the corner of the kitchen taping some packages together. Omar brought the ladder and began twisting the bulb. I dried my hands on the tea towel while I watched his progress.

“It won’t come out,” he said.

“Yes, it will. Keep turning it.”

“Is this the right way?”

“Yes, that’s the right direction, counter-clockwise.”

“Is this counter-clockwise? It’s not working.”

I could see the bulb turning and turning. He tried turning it the other way then went back to the original direction.

“It’s bound to work, Omar, keep trying.”

“Here, let me do it, Omar,” Nick said. Both of us stood right under Omar, watching him work.

“No, let Omar do it,” I said to Nick. “He’s almost 21 years old. It’s time he learned how to unscrew a lightbulb.”

“Ha ha, Mom. I know how to unscrew a lightbulb. Am I turning it the wrong way?” Omar asked.

“You’re turning it the right way. Do you know the saying, ‘Righty tighty, lefty loosey’? Try pressing up on it while you’re turning.”

“Yeah, Mom, I’ve heard of it. Got it!”

“Good job, Omar,” I said, handing him a fresh bulb to replace the old one. I tried to pat him on the back while he folded the ladder up, but he ducked, hurrying to get away from me before I asked him for any more favors.

I was running errands an hour later when my friend, Amy called. “Hey, what’s going on?” she asked. I told her I was leaving the grocery store and asked her what she was up to.

“I just got off a coaching call with a client who’s having trouble with his 16-year-old son. He’s worried because the kid doesn’t show much interest in participating in family life and he just stays on his video games and phone all the time. 

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I said.

“I know this kid and I know that he’s a very emotional person. The whole family just relocated out of state and the parents are expecting Max to adjust immediately like the rest of the family did. The mother and father and brother are matter-of-fact people and they’re all happy about the move. Max had a bunch of friends and played team sports. He’s having a hard time and probably doesn’t feel like his feelings are honored. That doesn’t work for kids like him.”

“Yeah, I have one of those too,” I said, thinking about Omar as she was speaking.

“Then they criticize him for not acting like the rest of them, and it just goes downhill. I told his Dad, ‘He’s an emotional kid. You tell a different kind of kid that what he’s doing is wrong, it’s okay, they don’t take it personally. But an emotional kid will just shut down.’”

This was starting to sound familiar. I thought of my exchange with Omar and wondered if he was feeling criticized.

“I was trying to help the Dad get into his leadership. They tell the kid that his only job is to make good grades. Then when he doesn’t participate in family life, they’re surprised. I mean, you have to teach kids responsibility. They need to learn how to be in a community like a family. When you set the bar low, the kid doesn’t have any incentive. If you don’t expect anything out of them and do everything for them, why would they step up? I’m sure they’d rather just play video games.”

Uh oh…. Amy had coached me on this very same issue when Omar was in high school. Amy had decades of experience working with kids of all ages and could see clearly the way parents kept the bar low. She had pointed out the ways in which I did this with Omar. Nick and I tended to take on responsibilities that should have been his, believing that Omar was incapable of success in certain areas, like math. We said things like, “We won’t let you fail.” And we couldn’t figure out why he had no investment himself.

And here I was doing the very same thing. Instead of expecting an almost 21-year-old to participate in the running and maintenance of the house he lived in, I figured it was easier to just do it myself. Then, when I discover that he doesn’t know how to change a lightbulb, I ridicule him. I meant for it to be teasing, but Omar, too, was a very emotional kid and it was possible that he felt criticized. As soon as I hung up from my call with Amy, I dialed Omar.

“Yeah, Mom?” he said into his car speaker. He couldn’t sound more bored. “I’m driving. What’s up?”

I told him I was thinking about the lightbulb exchange from earlier and I was worried that I might have sounded like I was ridiculing him and I was sorry if it came across like that. “Did you feel like I was being critical or making fun of you?”

“No!” he yelled into his speaker. “And don’t put it in your stupid blog!”

“Oh, come on, please?” I asked, laughing. I was glad he didn’t feel like I was picking on him. I realized that I am feeling a little bit nervous about Omar turning 21 in February. In addition, Nick and I are planning on spending extended periods of time away this year, leaving Omar in charge of the house. If he can’t unscrew a lightbulb, what other basic things had we neglected to teach him? What other things had we not allowed him to try? How low had we set the bar? I guess we’ll find out. It’s how he learns best anyway, trial by fire.

When Chloe was little, she hated when I told funny stories about her, but they were so cute, I couldn’t stop sharing them. So I started paying her fifty cents per story. Wonder how much Omar would accept for a blog post? When I asked for his permission to write about the lightbulb incident, his answer:

“Just don’t make me look like an idiot.”