In a beautiful story that highlights the effectiveness of communicating with children as if they’re whole people, 26-year-old Isabel Aurelian is very calmly and kindly teaching her adult male friends how to wash their sheets.
Aww! Gentle parenting works!
“I just knew they wouldn’t respond to an authoritative, angry approach,” Isabel told reporters gathered at the scene, where she was supervising her two adult male friends – Brandon Kiery and Jacob Fine – as they ran around in the living room. “If I was going to teach them how to wash their sheets, I had to broach the topic gently.”
Isabel decided on this approach during the first time she told Brandon and Jacob to wash their sheets and they lashed out, calling her a “raging bitch who should mind her own fucking business.”
“Tantrums like that really shut down the learning process,” Isabel continued. “And can you blame the boys? It’s not their fault they don’t understand this yet!”
To clarify, Isabel blames a patriarchal society that doesn’t expect men to take care of themselves.
She found that the best way to get Brandon and James to wash their sheets was to gently walk them through every step of the process. She asked each when they’d washed their sheets last, listened without judgment, then helped them take the sheets off their beds, and supervised as they walked to the basement to throw the sheets in the washer.
“But Isabel, someone else is using the washer right now,” Brandon whined, clearly getting a little teary. “I don’t want to!”
Rather than responding to this outburst with annoyance or a firm hand, which had proved unsuccessful in the past, Isabel calmly said, “That’s okay, Brandon! We can wait until the cycle is over, right? And then we can put the sheets in?”
Brandon nodded and went back to scrolling though Hinge profiles.
“The key is to use ‘we’ statements instead of ‘you’ statements,” Isabel whispered to reporters. “And to phrase things as a question. It really helps their self-esteem – you know how hard it can be to learn the basic rules of hygiene at this age.”
While Brandon struggled with the washing machine situation, Jacob excelled, excitedly showing Isabel his clean, navy sheets, and running to put them back on his bed.
“Now Jacob, how often are we going to wash these sheets?” Isabel asked, while Jacob had a snack.
“Every two weeks,” he said proudly. As a positive reinforcement, Isabel promised to set him up with her hot friend.
As of press time, both Jacob and Brandon had spilled things on their newly clean sheets but were pretty sure they could still make it to the two-week mark before they technically had to clean it up.
