The Power of Motivation

Universe Man recently spent a week with his grandfather. He doesn’t start school until next Monday and Mr. Personality started the day after Labor Day, so the extended visit made my life a whole lot easier. (Of course, LSH’s car troubles this week have made my life more difficult, but that’s another story).

In any case, Universe Man is definitely a night person. Of the, “I hate morning, I’m cranky, don’t wake me up, I’m not getting dressed” variety. He is not a morning person. I feel the same way about mornings, so I can relate and usually empathize and we get through those tough mornings somehow.

But when he was visiting Grandfather, Universe Man turned into a morning person, or at least a reasonable facsimile of one. The alarm went off at 6:20 am and by the time Grandfather had gotten to his room to let Universe Man know that it was time to get up, Universe Man was up and dressed and ready to go. This is shocking. It was not shocking when Mr. Personality did it during his visit with Grandfather. Mr. Personality is a morning person and the reason we have “no earlier than” rules at our house and are very, very grateful for the precocity that allowed us to convey this concept to the boys at an early age.

So Universe Man is up and ready to go and when he called me to tell me about his day, I asked why he was getting up so early. I figured he wasn’t going to let his little brother show him up. That may have been part of it, but it turns out that wasn’t the official reason why. Why? “If I didn’t get up, we’d have to go to late minyan. I didn’t want to have to go to late minyan.” So I asked him if he’d be getting up and getting himself dressed for school when he was at home. He said he wouldn’t be doing it then (I can dream, can’t I?), but that “if we had to go to late minyan we’d miss out on a lot of the day.”

On the other hand, he’s really anxious to start school this year, so maybe he will get himself up and ready, at least for a little while.