Ready Kids › On Your Own, Out There › Badge 1 › Lesson 1.2
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Rooms with doors that close
Leave any room at somebody else's house the moment the Feeling Dial moves, without needing a reason.
1Look
The basement
The basement
A basement den at a friend's house: a sofa, a console, snacks on the floor, and a closed door at the top of the stairs.
This is where the good stuff is. There is nothing wrong with this room, and this lesson is not going to tell you there is.
2The idea
You are allowed to leave a room
Nobody is telling you to avoid rooms with doors. That is most of the rooms you will ever be in. You are allowed to leave any room, at any point, without a reason that would stand up in an argument. You do not need to explain, and you do not need anything to have happened.
Most kids know this and still do not do it, because leaving feels like making a thing of it. So the whole skill is leaving in a way that is not a thing. That takes one line and about four seconds, and you are going to learn both.
3The idea
The dial, the line, and the three steps
Check the Feeling Dial: Fine, Funny, Twitchy, Scared, Angry. Twitchy is enough. You do not wait for it to turn into something with a name.
1. Stand up.
2. Say: I’m going to go find the others.
3. Walk out and shut the door behind you. Tell tonight if the dial moved.
One exception to the calm version. If a door gets locked with you on the wrong side of it, even as a joke, you use two of the Four Moves in a row: Say it, once, normally. Then Be loud, loud enough that the whole house hears. A locked door is somebody else deciding when you leave.
4Build it
The dial, three scenes
Feeling Dial, three scenes
Three short scenes in the same house. After each one you turn the dial to where you actually are, and the card shows where most kids put it. Scene one: four of you gaming with the door shut. Scene two: a cousin shuts the door and says, don't tell anyone about this. Scene three: somebody locks the door as a joke.
There is no right answer for the first one. There is for the other two, and it is not Fine.
5The idea
Watch it work once
Scene two. The cousin shuts the door, says don’t tell anyone, and reaches for his phone to show you something. The dial goes to Twitchy. You do not know why yet, and it does not matter. You stand up. I’m going to go find the others. You are out and the door is shut behind you. Four seconds.
Nobody says anything, because there is nothing to say to that line. Tonight you mention it: he shut the door and said don’t tell anyone, so I left. That is Tell tonight, and it takes one sentence. You have not accused anybody of anything. You have just told your own parent about your own evening.
6Decide
Somebody locks the door from the outside. Everyone is laughing.
Pick one to carry on.
7Say it
The line that gets you out of any room
Say it like it is nothing, because it is nothing
“I'm going to go find the others.”
It works when there are others. It works when there are not. Nobody asks a follow-up question.
8Find them
Which of these are worth mentioning to a parent tonight?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Stand up from wherever you are right now. Say, I'm going to go find the others, walk out of the room and shut the door behind you. Do it twice: once normal, once like you are bored.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
You can leave any room, at any time, for no reason. Twitchy is enough.
Next lesson: Older siblings and their friendsBadge 1 · Somebody Else's House
1.1Is a grown-up home?1.2Rooms with doors that close1.3Older siblings and their friends★Badge Challenge