SLAM!

One of the boys had done it again: run upstairs and slammed the bedroom door behind him.

Parents Kenny and Sam Evers decided this was enough. They were tired of reminding their sons Zach, 11, and Tyler, 9, to stop making so much noise with that door.

So Kenny calmly walked upstairs and took the door off the hinges. He and Sam had threatened to do it before, but their words clearly hadn’t sunk in. Their older son, Gavin, 13, never had a problem closing his bedroom door quietly, but the slamming had become a habit with the younger boys, and it often woke the toddler, Bella.

Initially, Zach shrugged off the missing door.

“Oh, I don’t care,” he said to his father.

A couple of days later, he told his dad that it was kind of annoying not to have a door.

“I bet,” Kenny said. “Do you want it back?”

“Nope,” his son replied.

A couple of more days passed, and Zach came back with another request: “Can I put up a sheet where my door was?”

“Well, you can’t slam a sheet, so go ahead,” said Kenny.

Within a few more days, the boys had had enough: “Can we please have the door back? We will never slam it again.”

The door went back up a couple of months ago, and the lesson seems to have stuck, their parents say. It’s a punishment that’s been around for generations, and many parents swear by its effectiveness.

I reached out to Katherine Reynolds Lewis, parent educator and author of “The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever -- And What to Do About It,” to get her take on this approach. Reynolds asked me to consider the purpose of discipline. The goal is not just to make kids behave, she said, but to make them active participants in how to get along and live considerately with others.

She cited the “four R’s” that can transform punishment into learning: The consequence should be 1. Related to the action, 2. Revealed in advance, 3. Reasonable in scope and 4. Respectfully delivered.

In this particular case, she suggested the parents could have implemented this approach by asking the children to brainstorm ways to help them remember to stop slamming the door and what possible consequences would be.

“Does anyone have an idea on how to have less door-slamming?” she suggested. “When (children) have a voice and buy in, they see themselves as actors with responsibility ... and that is the goal we want,” Reynolds said.

Some kids will simply respond they will “try harder” to make whatever changes the parent wants. That’s not a good enough answer, Reynolds said. The parent should help the child break down what “trying harder” looks like in action -- small, concrete steps. She advocates “a total change in mindset” about punishment that moves from fixing one problematic behavior to building lifelong social skills through collaboration.

“It’s not that the (punishment) is necessarily bad,” she said. “It’s how you arrive at it.”

This sounds great in theory, and is the type of parenting I aspire to. But sometimes you’re exhausted and just need the door to stop slamming. I get that, too.

It was the Evers’ next move that took the traditional door-off-the-hinges punishment to another level. About an hour after the door was removed, Sam had an idea. They put the door on the coffee table, and she and her husband re-created the lifeboat scene from “Titanic.”

“You can see Zach in the background (of the picture) with a look on his face, ‘That’s our door,’” she said. They also re-created scenes from “Monsters, Inc.,” “Frozen” and “The Parent Trap,” with the door as the pivotal prop.

Even the two who had just lost their door privileges eventually got into the re-enactments, she said. Tyler ran upstairs to bring his father a robe to borrow for the “Monsters, Inc.” scene.

A week later, he closed the door behind him.

Quietly.

Louise Zdellar was 103 this past November, when she fell in her kitchen the day before Thanksgiving.

She refused to push the Life Alert button she wears. She was afraid of being forced to leave her home if her family thought she couldn’t take care of herself. She knew they would be coming the next day to spend the holiday with her.

So, she spent the night on the kitchen floor.

Her family eventually convinced her that she would be safer in a nursing facility.

“I always thought I was going to stay in my home,” she said. “But there comes a point when you have to go.”

Her family gathered recently to celebrate their four February birthdays. Zdellar, who goes by Weezie, turned 104 this month; also celebrating are her daughter, Judy McGrath (turning 73), her granddaughter, Kristen Statler (turning 37) and her great-grandson, Killian Statler, (turning 2).

They sang “Happy Birthday,” and the four of them blew out the candles on the cake together.

Kristen Statler, who hosted the party in her home, said it reminded her of joint birthday celebrations growing up.

Weezie, born in 1916 in south St. Louis, has lived here her entire life. She reflected on the changes she’s seen in her lifetime. She remembers when a lamplighter would illuminate the streetlights in the days when her neighborhood street was made of brick. During Prohibition, she made “home brew” with her father. She went to Roosevelt High School, then transferred to a vocational school. Shell Oil Co. hired her as a messenger girl when she was 16. She would take the streetcar to work downtown. She met her future husband, Peter, at a dance hall when big band dances were the rage.

She became a homemaker, and they raised two children. She remembers how amazing it was when the family first got a television.

“It was a wonderful invention,” she said.

She finally got her driver’s license when she was 52. The officer asked her why she waited so long, and she explained that her family had one car, which her husband drove to work. She was able to walk where she needed in the neighborhood.

Once she started driving, though, she didn’t want to stop. Even at the age of 102, she went by herself to get her license renewed, and still drove her 1993 Ford Tempo to the grocery store and nearby appointments. When she finally gave up her wheels in 2018, the 25-year-old car had 80,000 miles on it.

“I sure miss when I could get in the garage, hop in the car and go to the store,” she said.

At 104, she still has a valid driver’s license.

Weezie has been on her own for quite some time now. Peter died nearly 50 years ago, when he was 61 and she was 55; they were married just shy of 30 years. She says she had a lot of suitors when she was single, but she didn’t go steady with any of them.

“It had to be the real thing,” she said, and that’s what she had with Peter.

“I was happy all the time with him,” she said, and wishes he could have lived to see his grandchildren.

Now, she’s on hospice care with the service where her granddaughter, Kristen, works. If Weezie thinks this might be her last birthday, she doesn’t show it. She poses with her family for numerous photos. She tosses a ball (while sitting in her chair) to her 3-year-old great-granddaughter, who chases after it.

“I’m still here, and He’s letting me keep my wits about me, and that’s important,” she said, referring to God.

Weezie may not have her car or live on her own anymore, but she still has her independent spirit.

After last year’s Thanksgiving dinner, the family brought out Scattergories.

Despite her fall and the night spent on the floor, Weezie won two rounds.

The organizer of the event I was covering rushed over when I entered, and said one of the students there claimed to know me.

“She says you changed her life,” said Debra Kennard, a board member of the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis, the nonprofit hosting the event. About 300 people had gathered to recognize students who had benefited from the organization’s work.

I had no idea who Kennard was talking about, but followed her through the crowd. As soon as I saw Andrea Perez and her mother, there was no hesitation.

“Oh my God!” I shrieked as I threw my arms around the mom. (Perez asked me not to use her parents’ names.) It had been several years since we’d seen each other. When my children were younger and needed constant chauffeuring, she would come over once a month to help me keep up with household chores. Over the years, we developed a friendship. Her children were only a few years older than mine, and she reminded me of my own mom: an immigrant woman working incredibly hard for her family.

Her English was still improving, but we spoke that common language of parental worry and angst. She was particularly concerned about Andrea, then a junior in high school. Her daughter was smart, but more interested in her boyfriend and friends than in her schoolwork, she told me. My eldest child/auntie instinct kicked into overdrive.

“Let me talk to her,” I said. Her mom promised to bring her over soon for a heart-to-heart. True to her word, she showed up with a teenager who seemed mildly annoyed at the prospect of being lectured by a stranger.

Fair enough. What teenager wouldn’t be?

I told Andrea that I was also the oldest child of working-class immigrant parents, and that I knew how hard it was growing up in a nearly all-white, affluent community. Andrea’s attitude immediately changed.

“That was the first time I talked to someone who I could relate to like that,” she said. Looking back, she admits that she had been far more concerned with fitting in with her white peers than her education. Her GPA from her first couple of years of high school was around a 2.0. I told her she was capable of better.

It’s funny how the teenage brain will reject this kind of feedback from a parent, but is willing to consider it from an outsider.

I advised Andrea to ask the school counselor if she could enroll in Missouri’s A+ Scholarship Program, which gives qualified students an opportunity to earn two free years at community college after graduation. She took our conversation to heart. She ended her senior year with a 3.5 GPA and met all the requirements for the scholarship. She would be the first person in her family to go to college.

A month before her classes were scheduled to start, the community college contacted her and told her she was not eligible for the grant because of her DACA status. Republicans in the state passed legislation that required public colleges to charge DACA students international student fees. She had to come up with $4,000 to attend that semester. Her mother picked up more houses to clean in an already packed schedule, and her father took on additional hours of lawn care.

Andrea studied hard, applied for scholarships and transferred to Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, which allows DACA students to pay in-state tuition. She plans to graduate next year with a degree in sociology and apply to law school.

I was touched that Andrea remembered that conversation in my living room from nearly six years ago. But we know who and what really changed Andrea’s life.

Her parents, with their sacrifices and love, changed her life. A scholarship changed her life. Her own persistence and hard work changed her life.

“Can you imagine how proud I am?” her mom asked me as we hugged, that night I unexpectedly reconnected with her.

Yes, I can imagine.