Don’t Slam the Door

Our family has had a fraught relationship with doors. Yes, doors. When Reina was younger - much younger, she can remember being asked, “Were you born in a field? . . . Then close the door.” We’re not sure if it’s genetic, but our boys have also had great difficulty remembering to close certain doors. They’ve also had problems opening doors and even keeping them intact.
When they were young and spent their days dashing in and out of the house - particularly in the spring and summer, they would always have to be reminded to close the screen door. As they rarely did, we often had mosquitoes, wasps, moths, and - most feared of all - June bugs in the house. We even worried that the occasional squirrel might slip in, given how they liked to romp across our deck in unusually dry summers. Mind you, we also had difficulty when the boys did remember to close the screen door. I’ve tried to walk through it on more than one occasion, forcing Reina to embroider Watch Out! at my eye level on the screen.
Closing other doors has also been a challenge for our kids. They still have great difficulty shutting a door quietly. They don’t seem to understand that a doorknob is used to retract the latch, not to give the door extra propulsion and shake the whole house as the door slams behind them. In the past, they’ve tried sneaking out of the house without saying goodbye or giving their mom a hug, but the rattling windows were always a give away. In attempts to prevent splintered doorjambs and broken windows, we’ve tried calling them back and making them close the door quietly. We’ve even tried fining them for particularly loud exits but to little avail.
While we haven’t yet discovered an effective antidote to slamming external doors, we did discover that when one of the boys slammed his bedroom door (often because he was been sent to his room for fighting with his brother(s) and/or annoying his parents), taking the door off the hinges for a few days was a very effective way of reducing door slamming - especially in the short term!
The other challenge our kids have had with their bedroom doors is that, on rare occasions - especially in the teen years, they would forget that they needed to turn the doorknob to open the door. Doors may open with a punch or a kick in the movies, but in reality, especially when the door is hollow-core, the result is likely to be splintered veneer, a sore hand or foot, and very annoyed parents. Neither is it just screen doors, front doors, and bedroom doors that have challenged our kids. They’ve also learned that body checking a sibling into a louvered closet door leads to a heap of sticks on the floor and exasperated, vociferous parents.
The result of our family’s difficulties with doors is that we have lived for many years - probably since Tristan was in his early teens - in a house without closet doors and where several bedroom doors come with their own ventilation. Reina, though, recently declared that she has had enough of this kind of interior design and would like to live in a house with closet doors and intact bedroom doors. I think she also hopes that now the kids are older and we only have two at home, the risk of further door damage is slim. To realize her new vision for our home, she requested closet doors for her birthday and bedroom doors for Christmas. What could I do but oblige?
The closet doors are now installed and Reina is delighted to stuff the closets full and close the doors on the chaos. Nick, on the other hand, complains that all his hard work on interior design as a child has been undone. The bedroom doors are currently sitting in our basement (I know it’s February) waiting for a free weekend. The delay in installing these doors may also be due to my trepidation about hanging them so they open and close properly and won’t have to be slammed shut. I don’t want to have to take them off their hinges!

- Dave and Reina Green live in Fall River with two of their four sons and a hairy dog named Maya. They suspect that other families may have similar problems with doors.