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Tearing my son off a strip

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Dr. Slack

Sun Jan 19 2014, 09:42PM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

My adult son tends to come in very late, and take the dinner we've left out for him upstairs to eat before collapsing into bed. Repeat each evening for a week, and there are 5 dirty dinner plates in his room. For Sunday lunch today, we were down to only 2 plates left in the kitchen. 'You must tell him that's not on' said the mrs. We insisted he brought his stack of plates down and washed them before we served lunch.

He did physics at uni, and I knew that he knew at least the basics of QM. As he helped himself to gravy, I started my speech. 'In this house, dinner plates are now going to obey Fermi-Dirac, rather than Bose-Einstein statics when they're raised from the ground floor up to your room. If you promote another plate to your energy level when there's already one there, the situation must not persist for more than a delta_t, whose product with the delta_E, the energy it's going to cost you to take it downstairs, must not exceed h_bar. What we suffered from today is a population inversion, more plates in your room than in the ground state.' I suddenly spotted where this could go next, and managed to get there without breaking stride. 'Now normally a population inversion is what allows lazing action to take place, however it's your lazing, being too damned lazy to bring them back down, that has created the inversion.' Of course, the humanities majors sitting round the table were going 'uh? wtf?' by now, so I finished off with 'DON'T HOG ALL THE CROCKERY!'

Will it work, will it alter his behaviour? Time will tell. Like most of us he tends to be a bit AC coupled. I reckon his time constant will be about 1 Ms, which is nearly 2 weeks.

2Spoons

Mon Jan 20 2014, 12:07AM

Registered Member #2939 Joined: Fri Jun 25 2010, 04:25AM
Location:
Posts: 615

Put his dinner in a paper bag until plates are returned.
I have a similar issue with my kids (14 and 16). My solution is to choose the most inconvenient time for them, then drag them away from their fun and force the clean up.

Mattski

Mon Jan 20 2014, 12:26AM

Registered Member #1792 Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527

If this strategy works maybe I'll have to try it out on my roommate, keep us posted ;)

Ash Small

Mon Jan 20 2014, 04:58AM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

We had this same problem with my 'better half's' eldest. In the end we banned all food from 'upstairs'....did it work?...of course not, we found plates etc. hidden under the bed.....In the end, when one of his friends was visiting for the weekend, they were both obviously 'flaunting the rules'. We'd arranged to drop the friend at the station later on the Monday afternoon, his mother gave her son two hours notice to pack his bags and told him she'd decided to drop him at the station along with his friend. That was nearly two years ago.

Now when he visits he complies with 'house rules'.....(We'd told him he couldn't visit until he had a place of his own, as he initially went to his dad's, and 'took over' the sofa.)

Maybe you should show this post to your son?

Sigurthr

Mon Jan 20 2014, 07:34AM

Registered Member #4463 Joined: Wed Apr 18 2012, 08:08AM
Location: MI's Upper Peninsula
Posts: 597

First of all, that was brilliant, Dr. Slack. Had me laughing, hehe.

I've always been fond of the equivalent exchange system; take one plate up with food, you can't get another until the first one come back down and has been CLEANED. This is basically what you were proposing, except that I'm not sure if the ground state for a plate is that of being dirty or clean.

Shrad

Mon Jan 20 2014, 08:30AM

Registered Member #3215 Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
Location:
Posts: 780

this is social engineering at its best!

Uspring

Mon Jan 20 2014, 10:16AM

Registered Member #3988 Joined: Thu Jul 07 2011, 03:25PM
Location:
Posts: 711

We didn't get into this problem since we imposed a finite lifetime on dinner plates beginning with "family dinner time". When the plate decayed (pun intended), it was removed from existence.
My better half didn't really like this procedure, but it helped.

tobias

Mon Jan 20 2014, 11:42AM

Registered Member #1956 Joined: Wed Feb 04 2009, 01:22PM
Location: Jersey City
Posts: 172

Just place a big screen TV, a laptop with high speed internet access and a powerful sound system all at the kitchen. I do not know about him, but I may not even go upstairs :)

Or you could just stop leaving food for him (give it to the poor!) and tell him to arrive home already full.....

HV Enthusiast

Mon Jan 20 2014, 01:15PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Does your son pay rent and contribute to the household bills and food? If not, then a lock on the refrigerator can usually solve this problem very quickly!

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