Going Green

A while ago, we had a family home evening about being wasteful or rather NOT being wasteful. This FHE was geared towards Jane who habitually throws out perfectly edible food, destroys toys, goes through an entire notebook of paper while coloring and leaves every single light in the house on because she needs to make sure there are no monsters anywhere. She got a bit confused when we told her that she was wasting power by leaving the lights on, so we explained to her that "Mommy and Daddy have to pay the company for power and when she leaves the lights on, it costs us money that we can't spend on other things, like ice cream." We have followed up by reminding Jane to turn off the lights whenever she leaves a room. She NEVER does it without being told and generally cries when we make her turn them off because how on earth will she see the monsters if the lights are off? It's definitely an uphill battle.

Lizzy, however, has responded quite differently.

I don't know how much she really understood, but the part about making sure the lights are turned off has certainly appealed to her moderate-severe OCD tendencies. Much to her dismay, she is still too small to reach the light switches, so she goes out of her way to tell us when there are lights left on, but this isn't quite enough. She has made it her personal mission to make sure that ALL the lights are turned off whenever someone leaves the room. I have never noticed exactly how many things we have in our house that produce light. Night lights, stereos, humidifiers, heaters must all be turned off... and don't even get her started on alarms clocks. Problem is that some things, like her heater, don't cease to produce light, even when they are turned off. This is completely unacceptable to Lizzy. For a while she just cried and tried to make me stay in her room, certain that between the two of us, we'd be able to make it entirely light-free. One day she became frustrated to tears with her night light, it has a light sensor on it so that it automatically turns on and off based on how much light reaches the sensor. She couldn't get the thing to turn off and finally, in an effort to get her out of her room and move on with my life, I unplugged it.



That was it: the solution she'd be waiting for.

Now, every time I come to get her in the morning or after her nap, I find that she has unplugged every single thing in her room.



The best part is the relief that I see on her face. I walk in and instead of finding myself frantically harassed to get the lights off of her CD player, she proudly shows me the "lights off." The worst part is that she is starting to use her solution to create other entirely light free areas of the house, including MY room and MY alarm clock. That won't fly with me. It just so happens that setting digital clocks is a pet peeve of mine.



Part of me is a little worried for her. It isn't normal for a child so small to get so stressed about something like turning off lights. Jane sleeps all night with her lamp AND overhead light on and Lizzy has literally shed tears when I couldn't immediately get in there to turn off the lamp, it's plug is behind the dresser and she can't reach it. It is, perhaps, a small thing for now, but I don't know what might torment her in the future and I'm SO not the kind of person to let that sort of thing get to me that it seems like it must be a miserable existence.

Brent and I love our little OCD girl. It really is surprisingly endearing and cute for a child so small to be that way... and with Jane walking around trying to ensure that our house is visible from neighboring galaxies, it's nice to have Lizzy doing some damage control.