More Insight on Chores

As you may know, we've been working on the basics this year for our family goals.  Those basics include teaching the gospel (i.e. scripture reading), family responsibilities, hygiene, and any other practical life skills that we consider essential. 

I've been trying to figure out a bit of a mystery in our house.  Trevor is really obedient when I ask him (and him alone) to do a chore, but if I ask both boys, Trevor will balk and drag his feet.  When I ask Conrad (whether alone or not) he complains and doesn't want to do what I've asked, which is why Trevor does the same thing when I ask them both at the same time to help.  Trevor sees Conrad acting that way and thinks that chores must be pretty awful and that he can get out of it if he does what Conrad does.

I thought back to what we did with Trevor, because Trevor really does obey when I only ask him.  I realized that we did several things different for him:

1. We didn't require him to do any chores start to finish on his own until he was about 5. 

2. We made chores into play for him and he was allowed to help with a few things and stop whenever he wanted.  It was never compulsory at that age.

3. We always did chores with Trevor before he was 5.  I really believe it's important for kids not to be commanded all the time.  They need to be shown and guided, not ordered around, especially when they're really young.  I don't like it when I hear moms say, "I don't know why they won't obey me!" Maybe it's the stubborn, willful, (and maybe sometimes disobedient) part of my personality, but why in the world should parents set themselves up as a dictatorial authority?  Most of the time, I do believe it's okay for my kids to question me, and I will answer their questions kindly (while still being firm if it's something I know I shouldn't move on). There's nothing wrong with a little dialogue about why they should be obedient to this or that rule.

So that brings me to my own problem: I don't know why they won't obey me!  Okay, so the previous thinking exercise helped me to see why Conrad is having a hard time obeying when it comes to chores.  He's too young!  He's just too young to be required to do chores.  Really, I already knew this, but I look at the boys play together and they seem so...equal.  Physically, they can do so many of the same things.  Conrad is witty and wily.  And so I've felt unfair when I've required something of Trevor that Conrad doesn't also have to do.  Conrad is only 3 and Trevor is 6!  Of course I shouldn't expect the same things from them yet.  Sheesh, mom, get a clue!

So I've been trying to not feel guilty when I require Trevor to do something and not Conrad.  I'm also trying to make work fun for Conrad and not be too strict with making him finish a job he starts.  He still needs a lot of help with things over his abilities.  I feel more relaxed already! 

Improving

So that's a lot of good news in the last post. Something that is not going so great that we need to work on is finding happiness in the basics, the things we do every day, no matter what else is going on. There have been not a few complaints about scripture time and chores and things like dressing in the morning and brushing teeth. Maybe it's the kid in me that will never really grow up and disappear, but I still don't believe duties HAVE to be un-fun, even things that have to be done. I've heard plenty of people say that "kids need to learn that some things in life that just have to be done."  Yeah, but what about Mary Poppins' "element of fun"? Don't tell my mom, but to this day I still enjoy cleaning toilets. Toilets! (Maybe that's why my boys fight over who gets to do it!) And there's something very soothing about washing dishes by hand in a sinkful of warm soapy water. And on the days when I push through a few boring verses of scripture, I am always rewarded with something inspiring before I'm finished. To me, it is more an issue of attitude than one of duty. Yes, there are things that need to be done, but how we feel about them is up to us.

You can always find something negative in a task, but you can also always find something positive, even if it's the tiniest little good thing, it's there. In fact, we make clean-up a game every time if we can, and we're always thinking up new ways to play clean-up. Sometimes the boys get tongs from the kitchen and pretend that the clutter is hot lava rocks and they have to carefully pick the items up with the tongs to put away. Other times we do Tornado Clean-up, where we clean as fast as we can, sort of crazy like a tornado. We also do Box Clean-up, where we put a box in the center of the room and throw everything in the box as fast as we can, and it's instant gratification for us because it looks clean immediately, and then we put everything away from the box. Every now and then we do a competition, where the first person to clean up 4 things gets a chocolate chip, though I don't like this one as much, the boys sure do! Another way we haven't tried yet is to tape a line accross the room and have a competition to see who can get their side clean first.  I try not to be the one who invents the games, because it's also important for the kids to learn to find their own element of fun.  One game the boys made up is using their construction toys (dump truck and the like) to clean up, or they use their stuffed animals and pretend the animals are doing the cleaning.  Edit: Trevor just made up another game after I posted this. We played I Spy Clean-up: one person spies something on the floor that needs to be put away, and when another person guesses correctly, they put it away and get to spy something next.

Of course, I prefer that we don't get to the point where we have a whole room of junk to clean up and we strive to instead clean up as we go, but big messes are inevitable and it's better not to dread clean-up.

With scriptures, I just need to continue introducing variety.  Trevor is great with doing things the same way every time, but Conrad will start to crawl all over us and be very distracting if he's bored, which has been a lot lately.  We usually take the gospel art book and Trevor's large-print scriptures and use those to do scripture time, but I think Conrad needs more interaction still.  Role-play is usually his favorite.  If he gets a choice, Samuel the Lamanite is the story he chooses because he loves acting out the scene on the wall with arrows and rocks flying.  It's so simple and doesn't need any preparation, but is very effective.  We could also use the children's version of scriptures, which we haven't utilized in a long time.  I want my kids to love reading scriptures and to develop that love early on.  So we'll keep trying new things and finding that element of fun wherever we can.