Or maybe my kids didn’t trust that I’d actually let them do everything so they pushed the limits, but reasonably. Which is kinda smart on their part because had they decided, “Okay, let’s buy every Ninjago Lego set on Amazon and eat only Pringles for two days,” I would’ve screamed, “Abort mission!”

I was mostly worried about the screen time aspect. They assured me it would just be an hour, but I’m the actual adult here and know a thing or two about kids, like impulse control and temptation.

The experiment reminded me of Ralph from Lord of the Flies (I’m still traumatized from reading it in ninth grade). With no civilization or adult supervision, he tried to create a society. “Tried” is key here.

I’d have to wait till morning to see if it was going to be Jack’s or Ralph’s world. What would happen when they were actually in control? Can a nine-, seven-, and four-year-old run a home?

How It Went Down

Morning came. Guess who stayed in bed? Me! My ten-month-old was whining in his crib to be taken out. He needed a diaper change, and a bottle. Guess who wasn’t doing any of it? Me!

I wish I could say I basked in the glory, but I was too wary of my kids babysitting. From my room, I listened for every whump and bump and kvetch. Nothing significant. I stayed in bed.

When I made my grand entrance close to nine, I was impressed to find my house still standing (low standards, I know). The kids were dressed, cereal and bowls with leftover milk were on the table, so breakfast happened, and the boys were playing Lego.

Nine o’clock was time for my second son’s teleconference, and let’s just say he didn’t love them. I thought he’d ignore the clock, but no, at nine, my oldest nudged him.

“Call your rebbi,” he said, and my second son left his Lego building world, found a phone, and listened in his room.

A miracle. There’s no other explanation.

At 9:35 came the first real challenge: screen time. On a usual day my kids play ten minutes of Prodigy — an online math game. They take turns and watch each other play. (What’s so exciting about watching someone else do addition? Don’t look at me.) My question was, would they stick to ten-minute turns, or would the temptation of the screen sway them?

It did not. My kids are angels. So perfect, I must be the most amazing mother, raising kids like this — not just one, but four. I have achieved the elusive balance. Watch out, Sarah Chana Radcliffe, I’m after your column.

Then came snack time — well, not really snack time. One kid decided it was time for his first snack, and he announced, “I’m having my first snack.” At that moment, all the other kids decided, yes, right now is a great time for snack numero uno.

They all took granola bars. I resisted the urge to tell them to clean up their wrappers. My oldest was happy to boss everyone around and made everyone make a trip to the garbage, hooray!

But then my second youngest piped up, “I’m having my second snack.”

And he did. My oldest asked me, eyes twinkling, “Are we allowed to have more than three snacks?”

You’ll be so proud of me, I kept the integrity of the experiment and said, “You’re in charge, do you think you should have three snacks?”

He shrugged, then called out, “We can have as many snacks as we want!”

Remember Pandora and her box? Yeah, it was just like that.

My kids ask me sometimes, “Ma, when can we eat whatever we want?”

The right answer is, “When you can make good choices without me having to telling you.” The real answer is, “When there are bigger battles to fight than cake before dinner.”

Thank G-d I’m not there yet, but I know the day looms when my son will be a brooding teen. (Why do I assume he’ll brood? He’s my kid, of course he’ll brood. He’ll be the king of brooding — why, he’ll give a master class on it.) But until then, when they ask this question, I can point to this experiment and say, “When the day comes that you won’t eat me out of house and home if I don’t say anything.”

They did eat more snacks, but they didn’t touch the candy. And I can’t fathom why not. Maybe because I keep it in a separate cabinet and they didn’t see it? Maybe even they understood the sacredness of Shabbos party candy. Who knows?

My other kids called into their teleconferences, which is impressive, because if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have said a peep. Maybe my kids don’t realize how meshugeh I can be for a worthy cause. Their loss.

Lunch was looming and I was hungry.

“What’s for lunch?” I asked my boys.

“Be independent, make it yourself, Mommy,” my oldest told me.

I laughed. Encouraging my kids to do things on their own was coming back to bite me.

I made my own lunch like a big girl — a salad.

All this while my baby was, well, being a baby. He needed attention, wanted some holding, and feeding and holding and holding and holding. I turned to my kids blithely and said, “He’s on you.”

My second son is my mommy’s helper. He loves babies, and they love him right back, so my other kids were happy to dump baby duty on him. But he flamed out, because he’s used to being the helper, kinda like Bubby: play with the kids, and when they get cranky, it’s right back to Mommy. But now he was Mommy.

This was one area I was very intent on my kids being on charge. This Life Lab took place while we were still in serious coronavirus lockdown. I was missing my babysitter (I love you, Mechal!), and cherished every second (and I use the word second here literally) that my baby was happy without my intervention, which was about a millisecond every hour.

My baby has the worst Mommy syndrome ever. When I come into a room where he’s happily playing, the moment he sees me, he lets out a kvetch — more like an elegiac moan that conveys, “Mommy, how could you have abandoned me?” and he scurries toward me. First he’s a hem-clinger, and then when I lose patience or he’s about to pull my skirt off, he becomes a hip-hugger. Don’t judge me for wanting a few minutes of sanity.

When conferences were over for the day, it was screen time for the kids. Now, I’ll come clean here. Pre-coronavirus, my kids maybe saw a Jewish music video a week. Once lockdown hit, they started playing educational games on my computer, and yes, there was a bit of mindless fluff added in as well (mostly educational, not all). They probably watched about an hour a day.

My boys said they only planned to watch for an hour because watching “fries your brain.” That’s what I tell them, anyway. My little one got scared once when I said that, so instead I told him it squashes your soul and steals your creativity — I’m not sure that was much better.

I watched them watching and waited to see what would happen. It was three o’clock, they should be done by four. While they watched, the baby kept crawling up to them demanding attention, drowning out the audio.

“Ma!!” my boys called.

“He’s yours,” I told them, and hid in my room.

The boys took turns standing and holding the baby and trying to put him down, all the while trying to follow the screen. Am I evil that I took pleasure in watching the maddening dance, seeing them grow more and more frustrated?

Four o’clock came and went. I broke the rules maybe sorta and pointed at the clock in the living room.

“One more,” my boys told me.

I shrugged and said, “You’re the boss.”

And the boss they were, they just sat and continued watching. Five o’clock came and went and I started getting worried about supper.

“What’s for supper?” I asked, hoping to get them moving. No such thing.

My oldest even tried this trick: “Make supper, Mommy. We’re in charge, you have to listen to us.”

“I can help, like you help me, but I’m not going to do it,” I responded.

My boys nodded like they’d heard, but their eyes were still on the screen.

At 5:15 I tried again. “Supper?”

“Soon,” my oldest said, not taking his eyes off the screen for a moment.

At 5:30, I made another comment. If they didn’t start soon, we’d all starve. Including my husband, and I didn’t think it was fair for him to suffer for my mine and the kids’ narishkeit.

I nudged and nudged the kids. (Was that against the rules? I could just be a nagging kid. Pester all day, asking “what’s for supper?” and once it’s in front of me go, “Yech, pech, gross.”)

Finally, close to six, they were able to regain a modicum of self-control to throw together supper. They served pasta and tuna and cheese and cut-up veggies. They were so excited to use a knife, and fought over who was cutting what.

Chill out, I had taught them how to use knives properly the week before; I didn’t just stand back and let them hack off fingers for the benefit of this column. I also helped drain the pasta, and I was present if they needed direction.

My second son nearly canceled the tuna. “It’s too hard to mash, it’s going everywhere.”

I didn’t let him give up. Again, not for me, but for my husband. (Am I making him the villain here? He was really my excuse.)

After supper, they all took showers.

“Yankel, you’re first,” they said, pointing to my four-year-old, who had acted like a spoiled prince all day. Then they proceeded to follow him, one after the other. I was bamboozled. Seriously.

They hate taking showers. It’s always the same old, same old “I’m last, you’re first, I’m always first, you never listen,” blah, blah, blah. I hope you don’t mind me taking some credit here. I’m such a good mom, I’ve instilled such excellent routines in my kids that they’ll do them even if they don’t have to. (Or maybe because they don’t have to…)

Bedtime was set for nine — “and we’re going to listen to a sleep story.” What would they do until then, though? We’d often play Rummikub together as a family, but that was not in the plans for tonight. Should we bother with guesses? You know what they did. They watched some more.

They stayed up until eleven, because “just one more” is a cycle that’s hard to break. I actually messed up here. At nine o’clock, my four-year-old who has eyes the size of dinner plates on a usual day — and they looked like chargers after being glued to a screen for hours — came over to me and asked, “Mommy, can you put me to bed?”

And foolish me told him, “One minute, I just want to finish this, you go into bed in the meantime.”

That one minute (more like five) passed, and when I went to go find him, he was right back with his brothers and sleep was no longer on the table. So they continued watching.

“I’m going to sleep at eleven,” I informed them at 10:45, and only then did they shut it down. (I didn’t tell them to, but hoped they would. There was no way I was going to sleep with them up and screen timing — that crazy I’m not.)

Next morning they had a late start. Shocker.

“It’s ten o’clock!” my oldest bellowed.

My seven-year-old had missed his nine o’clock conference. The day was a repeat of the previous except everyone was grumpier.

“The baby is driving me crazy!” was the day’s mantra. That night they only stayed up till ten. Wow, what self-control. Round of applause for my boys.

For those curious, supper that night was meatballs. I showed my kids the recipe, gave directions, showed them how to make the balls, and they basically took care of it from there. (Mothers of girls: My boys come housebroken. I’ve trained them well — they vacuum, and scrub down cabinets, and polish silver. Just letting you know.)

Results

The day after, I asked my kids if they wanted to do it again.

“I don’t like cooking,” my oldest said. (Right there with you, m’dear.)

“I don’t like watching Yosef Tzvi,” my seven-year-old said.

“Yes, I would!” my four-year-old said. “I liked watching videos.”

No wonder, he didn’t help at all. He had his cake and ate it too, although his brothers were very resentful and yelled at him to help. I’ll be sure to remind them of this attitude when they get married. (Like I said, housebroken.)

As time passed and I kept polling, the older two changed their minds. They forgot what they didn’t like, and only remembered the good. “I like watching,” said both. Which, for you students of sociology, matches up perfectly with the research.

I found it interesting to see that my kids know what’s good and right for them, but when it comes to follow-through, they’re too young and impulsive to live up to their values — especially when the consequences and stakes are negligible.

Also, surprisingly enough, my kids didn’t want to do things any differently than I do, despite their regular protests of “Why do we have to…?” or “Why can’t we…?” Does that mean they agree with me? Have I imparted values? Or do they have no imagination?

What I’d really love to do is have them take over for, say, a week. Then the day-to-day pressure and responsibilities will build up, and they’ll feel the repercussions of their actions (or non-actions.) And then I’ll get to watch them try to revamp and retool to make everything work again.

You think they’ll appreciate me more then?

Ha! I’m so funny, right?

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 700)