Broken Windows
BY Elizabeth Yeter
“Your room has some broken windows,” I say to my seven year old son at breakfast this morning. He peers at me over his bowl of Lucky Charms. Yes, I give in and buy him that sugary stuff every once in a while, but I tell myself I’m not such a lenient mom because I make him eat the boring cereal part and not just the marshmallows.
“No it doesn’t,” he replies, dabbing a napkin over a few drops of milk that slid from his spoon onto the table. That’s just a snippet of the kind of atypical attention to cleanliness this boy has. Which makes his broken windows all the more noticeable. “Yes, it does,” I say emphatically. “Follow me.”
He throws away the old napkin, takes a clean one, and places his spoon on top of it exactly perpendicular to his bowl. Then we trudge up the stairs to his usually immaculate sleeping quarters. The last time he had a friend over for a play-date the other little boy said, “Wow, it looks like no one lives here. Where’s all the toys?” That’s how clean his room usually is.
“Look,” I say, pointing to a stack of clean laundry he placed on top of his dresser. “You need to put that away properly.” He blushes. I get down on the floor and reach under his bed. Three tissues and an empty Goldfish bag. “Ok, Mom, but Austin’s got bigger broken windows!” Deflect. I like his style. “Fix this,” I say before heading for his older brother’s room.
I first learned about the “Broken Windows Theory” in Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. Although he did not come up with the theory, he relates how it reduced crime in New York City in the 1990s. Basically, the theory says that if a building has a broken window that doesn’t get fixed, this leads to people thinking nobody really cares about that building and more vandalism occurs. Pretty soon people are committing crimes on a wider scale in the neighborhood. What started off as a small cosmetic issue turns into a community of crime.
When I read about this theory, I knew it had more than one application in my life. Where was I letting something slide when I should really be fixing it before it turned into something worse? My kids’ rooms were the most obvious place to start.
So I introduced the theory of broken windows to them and started implementing it daily. “ I see some broken windows over here,” is something they totally understand now. It means, “I see some small, seemingly insignificant things wrong that you need to fix before they become bigger issues.” Shoes left haphazardly by the door. Bed not made. Empty plastic water bottles left in the car.
For now I’m using this theory to get my kids to clean up after themselves, but in the future I hope to apply it on a broader scale too. Not only to their lives but also my own. Looking back, I can think of more than a couple times when I wish I had applied this hypothesis. Like when I just didn’t have time to get new tires but I knew they were bald and I ended up blowing one on a hot Arizona summer day. Or when I was in high school and was stressed but wouldn’t slow down and ended up losing my hair in patches.
Where are the broken windows in your life? Don’t let the little things that you could easily fix today snowball into way bigger problems down the line. Take hold now. Write them down and come up with a plan to install some new glass.