Here’s a big part of our parenting philosophy:
We do our best to not be blatantly unfair in how we treat our children, but we rarely go out of our way to change unfair situations that happen to our kids outside of the family.
Life isn’t fair.
Hubby and I know that it’s better to deal with a situation than to complain about how unfair it is. We know because we’ve been alive more than three 0r four years.
Thankfully, it seems our kids have somewhat accepted this life philosophy.
We’re still going on the Family Kitchen Clean Up Time that we started back in January. The newness has definitely worn off, and it still isn’t automatic, but most nights we get it done.
Right now, though, someone is gone most nights
We’ve entered the craziness that is baseball season. We love it, but almost every night, one kid has to leave right after supper to head to church or baseball practice.
Soooo, we’re rarely all there to do our fair share.
It’s a perfect opportunity to teach (and learn) the life lesson that certain things just have to be done. If there’s someone there to share the work, great. If not, it still has to be done.
Being there, being able . . . that’s all that’s needed to qualify you as tonight’s kitchen cleaner-upper.
We could leave the kitchen cleaning until everyone is home, but by then we’re all tired, we’re prepping for bed, and Scatter-brained Mama is overly likely to completely forget.
And we can’t risk that.
Because the kitchen has to be cleaned.
That’s life.
And now, a few pictures that happen when one of the nine-year-old’s jobs for the night is to take pictures for Mom’s blog:
Following your lead we’ve begun family kitchen clean up. My kids are 5&6 so to encourage them I hand out stickers for “happy helpers”. The first week they were amazing! Now, not so much but we are still doing it. More than anything it pushes me to do a better job – sometimes they give me a sticker :O)
Ahahaaha! Your and husbands’ pictures!
I agree, there is stuff that has to be done, even if you already had your unfair share of doing stuff today.
i tell my kids this all the time!! you do want to be fair with your kids but the fact is, when something’s got to be done, you may be the only one available to do it. just because there is no one there to share the load, does not make it OK for you to blow it off. GREAT LESSON for kids. thanks for writing this.
True about the Life Lesson that Stuff happens & we must trudge on with the interruptions & irregularities. However it can feel very unfair to the siblings who don’t get to rush out to participate in something fun while they get left behind to pick up their chore slack. Same between spouses, but that’s another topic on another level. How about trading off the chore for something that CAN be done before dinner so that if yes, one child does have after dinner obligations that take them away from doing part of the post-meal cleanup, then have them do a stand-by backup task that still contributes to the running of the household [kitchen cleanup or otherwise] such that everyone still must contribute as is age/skills appropriate, and no skating out just because they are scheduled to be/do/go elsewhere. There is still much to be done somewhere in the household that could be done before dinner that would contribute overall. Can you tell I was an only child & never had siblings to help share the chores? I learned early on how not to create unnecessary messes to begin with. I’m not a super fast learner on most things, but with my parents’ 100% consistency about responsibility & hard work being just a part of life, from early on I caught on that if you don’t contribute to a mess you will have less of the boring stuff to do in the long run. By the way, most things my parents told me turned out to be lies in the “real world.” But it did make me compliant, as well as extremely resilient and tenacious in the face of some very cruel obstacles and events.
Won’t let MY 9 year old see this as she would think it was an opportunity to ditch the sweeping for the shutterbug task! LOL!
Wow, I’m so glad I found this site! I was googling pictures of messy houses to use as motivation for our much needed house clean up project tonight! I hate cleaning and in turn, my kids do too. The kitchen is the least favorite chore of everyone and the kids feel like they are being punished for washing dishes. I have the same issue with busy kids and I feel bad for one kid to always have dishes because the other has practice. I love your idea. We will ALL be doing the kitchen (a very small apartment) kitchen together tonight. What a great idea. Thanks for sharing
I’m so glad you found me, too!
After reading this, I kinda feel bad for your youngest, as she’s the one who ends up always being there…I would guess! 🙂
She is. But right now we’re “blessed” to be spread out over four nights, so there’s always someone home to help too!
What a great philosophy, we are not at that stage yet (bub can’t be trusted to hold a glass, let alone put several away, and no siblings yet either) but it’s a good approach to teach that some things just have to be done.
Goodness knows it’s something I’ve learnt this year – you simply cannot NOT wash / hang the nappies (daipers) each night if you want to use cloth. And you can’t use an alternative if you don’t have a clean bottle for baby’s milk.
This is an on-going struggle for us! Posting a link to my page. <3 Thanks!