About Kids and House Chores
Our 12.5yo Levi asked me recently, ‘Why do we iron our own school uniforms?’
One, because our helper is away for 2.5 weeks, and mommy cannot survive handling everything by herself.
When you’re someone’s husband one day, you need to be helpful and know how to do basic house chores yourselfTwo, because you need to know how to do it. You don’t have to love doing it, but you need to be able to do it when it needs to be done. You won’t be with us all the time, and when you’re someone’s husband one day, you need to be helpful and know how to do basic house chores yourself, too.
…
Here’s the reality:
Training our 3 kids, and building up habits from the home is not as simple as it seems, because it realistically does involve:
– repetitions
– encouragements
– listening to complaints (esp. At the beginning stage of any training of skills)
– dealing with delays
– scolding
– mental exhaustion
– giving reminders
– letting them try, fail and try again
– teaching with patience (very challenging)
– etc.
And it takes consistency and a LONG time to train our young ones.
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Frankly I think it’d be so much easier if everything is done by the helperFrankly I think it’d be so much easier if everything is done by the helper. Less headache for the parents, and the kids are spared from doing house chores at all.
But, easier doesn’t always mean better, no?
And in this case, we believe sparing our 3 kids from such training of daily habits will rob them off necessary ‘adult skills’ they need later in life.
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Sparing our 3 kids from such training of daily habits will rob them off necessary ‘adult skills’ they need later in lifeAs they say:
‘If you wish your spouse can offer more help around the house … if you wish your spouse can be more verbally considerate when he/she is angry … if you wish your spouse apologises upon making mistakes … if you wish your spouse wakes up earlier instead of waking up at 10am or 11am, … then make the effort to train up our own kids to be THAT kind of spouse for someone else one day.’
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Food for thought?
