I'd always thought that in most parent-child relationships the parent would direct the child and the child would perform as directed. Kathleen quickly disabused me of this notion. She's rather independent for nine and somewhat opinionated. But, being nine, she's not quite ready to rebel against her dad's authority -- just her mom's. Obviously, if our four month term together
before joining Wayde in California was to be survived, some sort of agreement would have to be reached.

Our service level agreement negotiations began about two weeks before my husband's departure. I first set out to outline what was expected of her during our time alone by appealing to her goal-oriented nature. A spreadsheet of tasks -- brush teeth, make bed, do homework, those sorts of things -- to be performed every day appeared on the front of the fridge. As each task was performed, Kathleen would check off its completion. At the end
of each day, she could apply a sticker to the matrix if all tasks had been successfully completed.

Stickers are integral to the successful implementation of a parent-child SLA.

With a goal of applying stickers to her task matrix firmly
established in her mind, I now needed to address the reward portion of the agreement. That means allowance. For every weekly task chart that showed at least six stickers, Kathleen would receive five dollars.

Now that my expectations of her contribution to the household operations had been dealt with, I needed to establish her expectations of me. I had two primary concerns. First, Kathleen tends to dawdle. This is not necessarily a bad thing but dawdling in the morning can mean being late for work -- especially when our family vehicle would be several thousand miles south of us and we'd be relying on public transit for transportation.

My second concern was sleeping. Despite her usual sense of bravado, the moment the sun goes down, Kathleen turns into a typical little girl. I knew she'd want to sleep in my bed with me while Wayde was gone. I'm not one of those parents that has a problem with children sleeping with them but Kathleen is an incredible bedhog
-- even worse than the dog.

My goal in our SLA negotiations was to ensure not only that Kathleen did not make me late for work too often but also that I got to have some quality sleep (i.e., alone) over the next eighteen weeks. This would take a little business finesse -- I'd have to sell her on this.

About a week before Wayde left, Kathleen and I had a heart-to- heart talk as I tucked her in for the night. I wanted to let her know that I was pretty scared about becoming a single parent and hoped that that knowledge would make her a little more sensitive to my needs, especially my need to get to work on time.

"Kathleen, I'm kind of scared about Daddy leaving."

"Me, too. What if he has a car accident on the way to
California?"

"I'm not worried about that. He's a good driver and he'll be careful on the way down. I'm scared that I won't be a good mom without Daddy around."

"Oh."

"Will you be able to help me out? Especially about getting ready for school in the morning?"

"You'll do fine, Mom. Just do what Daddy does now -- when you take the dog out in the morning, just holler in my room to get up. 'Kathleen, it's time to get up.' That's all you need to do."

"Okay, I can do that. But, you know, if you wake me up every night, I might be pretty grumpy in the morning and yell at you too much. How about if we make one night a week our night to have a sleepover in my room?"

"Okay."

"All right, then. Every Saturday night, you can sleep with me."

I left it at that and hoped that, come our first night alone
together, our service level agreements would stand the test.

Last night was that test. I tucked Kathleen into bed, gave her a kiss and told her that I would be taking the dog out for a minute. She suggested I holler at her on the way out as practice for the next morning -- a sort of pilot test of our new processes.

As I buckled the dog into her harness and slipped on my boots, I called into her room, "Kathleen, it's time to get up." She popped straight out of bed, cheery and ready to go. I could only hope it would work this well in the morning.

The test of our sleeping arrangement agreement came later that night. Ten minutes after being tucked in for the night and just as I was about to settle into a relaxing bath, Kathleen appeared in my bathroom, sobbing.

"I'm scared without Daddy here. Can I sleep with you?"

I reminded Kathleen of our agreement and told her to read for a little while longer, at least until I got out of the bath. I tucked her in again, gave her another kiss good-night and, once again, turned out the lights.

Thirty minutes later, just as I was beginnning to drift off to sleep myself, I heard my bedroom door open. It was Kathleen. Once again, I reminded her of our contract and sent her off to bed.

Finally, I could get some sleep.

Another thirty minutes passed and the sound of the bedroom door opening woke me again. This time she was crawling along the floor, trying to stay out of my visual range as she snuck into the room. I quickly added a penalty clause to our agreement -- if she didn't stay in her room, I was going to lock my bedroom door. (I can add a clause like that because I'm the mom.)

It worked! At last, I was able to fall asleep. This morning when I woke Kathleen by hollering in her door, she woke up just as cheery and pleasant as she had the night before during our pilot procedure.

With the successful implementation of our parent-child service level agreement, I'm confident that the next four months will be survived. So confident, in fact, that I'm thinking about re-engineering our housework processes.