When you did it for them again

It's Thursday, you were late, and you did the shoes. Or it's three weeks in, and you look up one morning and realise you've been packing the bag again for a week and didn't notice starting. This chapter is about that, because it will happen, and what you do with it decides whether the job's gone.

The first thing to say is that one takeover isn't the habit back. Lally's volunteers, from chapter 22, missed days and carried on, and the missed day didn't materially cost them. A child whose bag was theirs for a fortnight and yours for a morning still has a fortnight of bag-packing in the record, and the record is what this book is about. What matters is the next morning, not the last one.

The second thing is to say it. "I did your bag yesterday. It's yours today." Out loud, plainly, without an apology, which would make it into an event, and without a lecture, which would make it into a fault. The habit gets back in silently. It goes out again when somebody names it.

The third is to ask which belief did it. Every takeover has one behind it, and it'll usually be one of the chapters in the middle of this book. Was it "quicker", because you'd lost the margin? Then the fix is chapter 21, and probably ten minutes. Was it "I can't stand watching", because the strap was going through the wrong loop again? Then the fix is where you stand. Was it "they'll do it wrong", because the note came from school and it stung? Then the fix is chapter 23, and letting the note teach. The takeover isn't random. It's an argument you lost, and losing it once tells you which argument to have with yourself before tomorrow.

The fourth is not to take the week back. If you've been doing the bag for a week, don't decide that the method didn't work and that Leo's not ready. Decide that the job slid, which jobs do, and hand it over again, with the announcement, on a Saturday. The second handover is shorter than the first because he's done it before. The fortnight is more like a weekend.

And don't add it to a list of things you've failed at as a parent. The takeover is the most ordinary thing in the book and it's the thing every parent reading it does, and the difference between the ones whose children end up doing things and the ones whose children don't isn't that one group never took over. It's that they noticed, and said so, and handed it back.