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How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

382 points by curtis 8y ago

buckminster 8y ago
Plain text version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=616928895 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=616928895
vinceguidry 8y ago
My mom related to me a strange phenomenon. My sister's kids, who stay with my mom and who my mom raises, along with all their friends, have managed to gamify chores all by themselves. They compete to see who does more for their respective families. My mom says that this was due a couple pairs of enterprising parents who likely read about a technique on Facebook or somewhere. It cements my conviction that when you do parenting properly, you're not just making your life and the lives of your kids easier, but you're improving the whole neighborhood.
projectramo 8y ago
The secret is there is no secret: kids just want to help so let them. Curious to know if they're just modeling the adults. I mean, if I set them to work and sit around catching up on Game of Thrones, its not the same thing as if i am working all the time too.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  This isn't restricted to just children. Humans naturally want to help. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-to-get-the-help-you-need https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-to-get-the-help-you-need https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfish-proof-ego-humans-inherently-good https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfis... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-...
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Yeah, kids tend to mimic parents by default so if you are an helpful adult around they will just pick up that behavior. Add to that positive reinforcement loops and thats how you create habits.
gumby 8y ago
Resonating with a point in the article about telling kids "you're not involved in this task", I've noticed that my American neighbors are quite reluctant to allow their kids to use knives, light candles, fill glasses, and some cooking tasks that could result in a lot of mess. As what looks like a consequence those kids are rarely able to help get dinner on the table when they come over. An uncharitable explanation would be overprotectiveness, but I wonder if it's also simply a lack of time: if the kid is mixing a cake and the batter spills on the floor it is additional work; if they cut their finger it will delay everything. Whereas if you can help your kid become competent you can trust them to look after themselves in more and more situations.
- azernik 8y ago
  The article seems to think it's lack of time: ================================= Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let's face reality here. At first, they really can't do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess. For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler's offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says. "We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    People think it saves time and trouble to push their kids around in strollers instead of letting them walk (very slowly at first), set them in walled cribs for 12 hours per day instead of letting them move about, sit them in high chairs to eat, get them to play in small fenced places with no sharp corners, let them stay in little rolling walker chairs, pre-process all their food into mush, not let them climb up or down stairs, not let them climb up the slide, not let them throw things, rush over and smother them at every tiny trip, .... By the time the kids are 3 or 4 they are still insisting on being carted everywhere, are weak and uncoordinated compared to their less sheltered peers, are timid and less willing to follow their curiosity, and don’t know how to do anything. In the long run the parents are forced to babysit them much more closely for much longer, can’t rely on the kids to help with anything, deal with worse tantrums, etc.
keyle 8y ago
Very interesting. I thaught my toddler to help dad make his coffee in the morning... Puts the capsule in, pushes the long button, takes the capsule out... Then he smells the coffee and says 'nice' and feels the cup and confirms a job well done by saying 'hot'. It's surprising how quickly he learnt how to do it, and how keen he is to help dad do it, for no gain of his own. On the other hand begging him to eat, trick him, or entice him with rewards has had very little impact. I will try to involve him in most things now.
- nsxwolf 8y ago
  My 3 year old son is the only one in the house allowed to operate the Keurig now. He will throw a fit if anyone tries to make their own cup.
- JunkDNA 8y ago
  I did this with my almost 3 year old. Except I use whole beans and a drip coffee maker. He tares the scale, weighs the beans, dumps them in the grinder, grinds them, and puts them in the coffee maker. The only part he doesn’t do is get the water because he’s not strong enough to push the button for filtered water in the fridge. I made the mistake with my first two kids of not involving them early enough. Now they think work around the house is something only mom and dad do.
- PebblesRox 8y ago
  If anyone wants to see this in action, someone took a video of their two-year-old making coffee. It’s impressive! (And adorable) https://www.paulaspencerscott.com/single-post/toddler-making-coffee https://www.paulaspencerscott.com/single-post/toddler-making...
  - joesb 8y ago
    But, imagine, if the kids fucked up once and burns his face with that coffee, many of use would be blaming the parent for involving him in such a dangersous task for a two-year-old.
    - 8y ago
rossdavidh 8y ago
Reminds me of something I read from Jared Diamond, wherein he said that in traditional societies that he had investigated, the kids play is just small versions of the adults life, that gets more and more realistic until it's the real thing. So, a child gets a piglet to look after, if the adults raise pigs. This would make sense from a biological point of view; the young watch the adults and imitate what they're doing as well as they can, getting better and better by practicing it. It reminds me also of what I've learned about speaking a foreign language; you can't learn enough to be good at it first, then start speaking. You have to just start speaking it even though you're horrible. That's how you improve.
- itronitron 8y ago
  Yes exactly, I give my children mini-screen devices so that they will be ready for their career of sitting in front of an adult-sized screen for 8 hours a day.
  - ponchotek 8y ago
    This is easily the best thing I have ever read in HN
- dkarl 8y ago
  Yes, kids have a great appetite to become more adult and take great pride in it. I suspect what the psychologist was observing was that children were eager to start doing the things that earn appreciation among adults. This doesn't translate at all to the affluent west where housework is taken for granted and doesn't earn anybody respect. I think kids are sensitive enough to intuit that it's because there's no social reward in proportion to the effort, and as a result people do as little as possible and pursue other ways to establish their social worth.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    I think all humans deserve respect and a decent wage, but treating housework (and its ilk) with contempt is the source of the great progress of recent centuries, automating work to increase productivity and wealth and leisure time for those who want it.
agotterer 8y ago
My wife and I stumbled across this thinking recently. We have an 18 month old and we started putting him to work. I rarely open or close a cabinet, microwave or dishwasher if he’s around. We plop him on the counter when we cook and he holds ingredients and utensils. Just today I was hanging something on the wall so I had him hold the screwdriver for me. We found that he’s thrilled to help and we never force him. Our initial intention was just to keep him busy but I’ve seen two similar posts on HN recently and I’m now realizing there’s a bigger social, reaponsibility, and familial lesson here.
- derekbreden 8y ago
  A video of toddlers wanting to help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J32iF6djMd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J32iF6djMd8
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  My Dad was like this with me. As I got older I got to support bits of wood he was sawing, bleed radiators, drill holes, mix concrete, and even wire plugs (under supervision, of course). These are some of my most fond memories growing up. Now I do all of the building and decorating work in my house myself. I was up on the roof repointing ridge tiles yesterday, for example. My friends don't understand but it's all just second nature to me. It saves a huge amount of money and is very satisfying to live in a house that you've worked on yourself. These are definitely great skills to have, and even in this day and age of being able to Google anything, just having the confidence to handle power tools and the knowledge of what's possible makes all the difference.
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klon 8y ago
Interesting not a single male show up in this article
okket 8y ago
I find it a bit disturbing that there is always the general case 'children' in the headline and in the article, but no mention of boys, only girls doing the work and in the pictures.
- sudhirj 8y ago
  There’s plenty of mentions of sons in the article, just no pictures.
  - okket 8y ago
    Plenty? I read the article again and found only one.
    - sudhirj 8y ago
      Sorry, misread. Only the dish washing example is a boy, but I don’t think this is inherently gender specific.
      - okket 8y ago
        Mexicos (and many other) current culture is not exactly known to be gender neutral on most (all?) things. Sorry, but I am a little skeptical about your assumption...
        sudhirj 8y ago
        Probably isn’t, neither is India where I’m from. Boys would be heavily discouraged from doing kitchen or clean chores even if they tried. But the principles and techniques in the article seem to be gender neutral, even if their application in the cultures studied isn’t.
        deleted 8y ago
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vincengomes 8y ago
>>Even small tasks, like raking leaves, can give kids a sense of pride and accomplishment A line lifted straight from EAs PR Agency?
- Bakary 8y ago
  After 18 or so years of grinding you can unlock the Adult trait for your character.
theBobBob 8y ago
I remember when I moved away for college I was so shocked at how quite a few people basically couldn't look after themselves at all. I ended up teaching one guy I lived with how to do the most basic things. I actually had to show him how to put a duvet cover on, how to boil rice, how to use a washing machine, the fact that if a chicken fillet is 50% pink on the inside is not yet finished. He had never done any of these things himself before. I should have seen the warning signs when he moved in and his mother was unpacking and folding his underwear and putting them in his wardrobe for him. He was the worst that I seen but there were plenty more that weren't that far off.
- wott 8y ago
  > He had never done any of these things himself before. Not only he had never done these before, but he had never paid attention for a single minute how they were done by his parents, he did not care, things appeared, ready done, that was the natural way of things (like cargo cult in a way) and he had no interest in the process. I had a friend like that (to make things worse, he then moved straight from his parents' to his girlfriend's, so it went on like this until he was 27...) On the other hand, I almost never had anything to at home because my folks were of the kind who like to do everything themselves and do it quick, so there was nothing to be done, but I spent all my time questioning and above all observing them. Children are curious in general, but I have always been much more than average. So, whenever I was left alone (it happened frequently) or when I was later dropped in real life, I never had any difficulty, I could just reproduce their way of doing things. -------- I think that in a same country/culture, there is also a difference between countryside and cities. I grew up in the countryside and all my school mates were living in farms, and they were more than happy to help their parents after school (or event to miss school to help with field work sometimes). I mean, it is much more interesting (and for some of it, it gives a feeling of responsibility like an adult) to feed the poultry, bring the cattle back to the stable, drive the tractor, help fixing tools, work a bit of wood and metal, discover mechanics, move and arrange straw bales (in the times when they could still be moved and arranged) and a hundred other things; than doing house chores (laundry, dish washing, floor weeping, OK you do them once to try, but then it gets boring as soon as the second time comes...). And there is not much more to do when you live in an apartment.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Until the kids all got smartphones... what chores? Raise your kids in a single shared room without any convenient forms of unlimited entertainment, where they must either witness all the work they're not helping with while bored and guilty or participate, and see how magically helpful they are.
- sudhirj 8y ago
  Raising my kid in a house full of books, massive TV, most iPads, iPhone and MacBooks released lying around. The ideas still work. Cleans the floor, takes a great interest in making sure we’re all well fed, keeps stuff tidy, tries grooming, and stirs my coffee and blows on it if it’s too hot. A year and a half old.
  - PebblesRox 8y ago
    My floors are the cleanest they've ever been because my 17-month-old nags me to vacuum. I've been meaning to get him a little Dirt Devil or something, so he can do it himself. (He tries with ours but it's just a little too big for him to manage.)
    - newnewpdro 8y ago
      Sounds premature for either of the parent comments to be making any kind of claims to success, but I wish you all the best of luck.
      - sudhirj 8y ago
        Think we're listing it more as anecdata to support the approach mentioned in the article. The article is validating the approach as much as something that's not a controlled decades long study can, which I suppose we're happy enough with.
3rdAccount 8y ago
There's a relevant Paul graham essay about how teenagers are basically neurotic lapdogs because throughout much of history they would assist with everything and would be an apprentice..etc, but now are locked away at school (similar to a prison or daycare where their parents drop them off so they can work). It's a great essay that I can't do justice if someone can find it.
- PebblesRox 8y ago
  I believe it’s this one: http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html Some relevant excerpts: “Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.” “If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.”
  - M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
    I think he's spot on here. The culture clash between a society where the young are to be incarcerated in some kind of padded safe space and a society where the young are junior members of adult society is all too apparent in Western Europe. Youngsters from my neck of the woods are lining up to enter the wealthy European countries and the politicians and anatomists have been whipped up in a panicked frenzy trying to determine from X-rays who is over and who is under the arbitrary age of 18, while any culturally sensitive person will plainly who are grown men of military and marrying age where they come from and who aren't. And what do the ones who qualify as "children" or successfully lie on their applications get? They may be grown men where they come from, but men who are too naive to realise what they are lining up for is to be castrated by the welfare state. They are asking to become incarcerated children, and when they realise where they have been lured, who can blame these strapping young fighters for embracing gang culture and shooting up their host neighbourhoods in endless retaliation between the various lord-pretenders of the flies?
PebblesRox 8y ago
I’ve found Montessori blogs to be a great resource of ideas for how to involve my toddler in meaningful work. Here’s one of my favorites: http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2017/04/practicallifebabytoddler.html http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2017/04/practicallifebabyt...
- nkg 8y ago
  Would you mind sharing more links to these blogs ?
  - PebblesRox 8y ago
    How We Montessori is a great one. I've read her entire archive! http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2018/05/fostering-independence-montessori-baby-at-eight-months.html http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2018/05/fos... Nicole Kavanaugh also has some really good stuff: http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2016/06/practicallife2.html http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2016/06/practicallife2.htm... And I like This Merry Montessori, though Lindsay is no longer posting actively: http://www.thismerrymontessori.com/?p=901 http://www.thismerrymontessori.com/?p=901 "Practical Life" is the phrase Montessorians use for the kind of real-world meaningful work described in the article. A google search for "practical life" plus a specific age will turn up tons of great ideas and really expand your conception of what kids at that age are capable of!
jordigh 8y ago
I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly exposed to Christianity and its cultural heritage, read the same books and watch many of the same shows as Europe, the US, and Canada, I use sit-down toilet, not squat toilets, and I eat mostly with forks and knives, not with chopsticks or with my fingers. While it is true that the culture of the Mayans in my country is slightly foreign to me (as it is to most Mexicans, since most of us are not Mayan, and the Mayans have always had separatist tendencies to begin with), I still feel like the Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world than any other part of the world. We shouldn't be so foreignised. My resentment, of course, comes because "Western" is being used here in the sense of money-having, with a certain air of superiority, however well-intentioned or benign this air may be. True that culture and wealth go hand-in-hand, but I think we're all more alike than different. I didn't like doing chores as a kid and I don't know a lot of Mexicans who did. We're more alike to those who self-apply and exclude us from the "Western" label than we are different.
- euske 8y ago
  I think the term "Western" is often mixed up with "Westernized", which has a rather different connotation. I live in Japan that is not technically Western at all, but very well Westernized.
  - Izkata 8y ago
    Pretty sure it's this above all else. The US is also not in "The West", but it is in a sense "westernized" (it just never had a period where it wasn't "westernized" because of its origins). The two terms are holdovers from centuries ago, when "The West" really did mean Europe and "The East" meant east Asia (and The Orient was in between, the Middle East + west Asia). There's even an XKCD about how confusing it can be from the US (or, really, the Americas in general): https://xkcd.com/503/ https://xkcd.com/503/
DoreenMichele 8y ago
"The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average," It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article. So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents don't have the resources to supply you with a TV, a video game system, a tablet, a computer, a cell phone, etc ad nauseum, then you can either sit around twiddling your thumbs and dying of boredom or you can involve yourself in whatever the nearest human is doing as a means to occupy yourself. The other piece of that is that poorer cultures wind up naturally more people centered than richer cultures, which wind up more thing centered. When my kids were little and we didn't have much, they learned to take turns and share not because of some kind of cultural magic, but because we didn't have a lot of stuff, so they basically had to share. In a family wealthy enough to have one of X for each and every family member (or whatever), then you don't need to learn to share or take turns. You just use your thing and leave their thing alone. I'm all for promoting more real involvement with kids so they are better socialized, etc. But I think there are very big problems with acting like culture evolves separate from material wealth and details like that.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  There are some other important differences: (1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old. (2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of people farming, minding sheep, weaving, washing clothes by hand, milling grain, cooking, chopping wood, making furniture, foraging for mushrooms, hunting rabbits, ... can easily get kids involved in small tasks. (3) People spend much of the day talking to each other, gossiping, cracking jokes, singing together, eating together, ... instead of reading or doing other solitary activities, spending time at remote jobs, driving around in cars, etc. But yeah we definitely shouldn’t romanticize rural poverty. Having years where nobody has enough food and all the old sick people die, commonly getting hit by disease epidemics, spending a whole life on hard menial labor and ending up with a totally wrecked body by age 50, sitting in small totally smoke-filled rooms over a wood cookfire every day (this is as bad or worse for health than the heaviest cigarette smoking), sleeping on a board or on a dirt floor with a blanket covered in fleas, needing to make your own cloth from scratch for anything, needing to carry water long distances on foot every day for all washing and drinking, .... are all pretty unpleasant. And let’s not even start on the part where rural peasants are constantly getting beat up and having stuff stolen from them (or worse) by colonial overlords, foreign corporations, local thugs, ... There’s a reason that when given the choice a large proportion of people flee rural peasant villages and move to (sometimes distant) cities, even when further exploitation awaits there.
mmjaa 8y ago
I found it infuriating to read this article and realise there was no mention of Dad. Maybe his absence is an overlooked part of it? As a father, I do chores with my kids, and the trope that only mothers and house-wives do chores is really tiresome. Maybe there's another way to get kids involved in chores - make sure Dad doesn't get away with not being involved, too. The family that cleans together (that means Dads too), live happily together.
- avip 8y ago
  The parenting industry generally ignores the implied existence of "dads", because they (we) are a failed useless target group that buys nothing.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  If your wife is a house-wife (i.e. doesn't have any other job, while you have a fulltime job) why would she not just do all the chores that she can do?
  - scotty79 8y ago
    Because she does not want to. Then either you do it or if you too don't want to do it just leave it undone. Most chores are optional anyways.
    - Double_a_92 8y ago
      If you are a house-wife or -man doing chores related to your home and family is literally your job. How can you argument with "don't want to"?
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        Some people mop the floors every day. Other people don't do that every day. Can we say whose decision is wrong?
        8y ago
Moru 8y ago
"We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says. I see some women do this but exchange the "toddler" with "husband". The husband will ofcourse see this and not try to help in the future because he feels insecure or just happy that she is happy doing it herself. It isn't too late to train new things just because you aren't a toddler any more. This focus on getting your toddler learning algebra or play the violin as early as possible isn't productive, let the kids be kids. This includes letting them help at home ofcourse.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  If you don't help your wife around the house you're not a "husband", you're a "man child".
lbriner 8y ago
Excuse me while I just go and write a motivational talk about your Developers encouraging "acomedido": "It's not just doing what you're told, and it's not just helping out. It's knowing the kind of help that is situationally appropriate because you're paying attention." Gold dust!
gregknicholson 8y ago
Is there a version of this article that isn't behind a “consent”-wall?
fiatjaf 8y ago
Maya?
manuu80 8y ago
Maybe in this case is because of some aboriginal custom. However, in poor communities near the big south american capitals, these behaviors are often a result of not having many chances when growing up. These, and other reasons as the sense of belonging, are widely studied in teen pregnancy field.

382 points by curtis 8y ago

Plain text version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=616928895 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=616928895

My mom related to me a strange phenomenon. My sister's kids, who stay with my mom and who my mom raises, along with all their friends, have managed to gamify chores all by themselves. They compete to see who does more for their respective families. My mom says that this was due a couple pairs of enterprising parents who likely read about a technique on Facebook or somewhere. It cements my conviction that when you do parenting properly, you're not just making your life and the lives of your kids easier, but you're improving the whole neighborhood.

projectramo 8y ago

The secret is there is no secret: kids just want to help so let them. Curious to know if they're just modeling the adults. I mean, if I set them to work and sit around catching up on Game of Thrones, its not the same thing as if i am working all the time too.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
This isn't restricted to just children. Humans naturally want to help. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-to-get-the-help-you-need https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-to-get-the-help-you-need https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfish-proof-ego-humans-inherently-good https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfis... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-...
ekianjo 8y ago
Yeah, kids tend to mimic parents by default so if you are an helpful adult around they will just pick up that behavior. Add to that positive reinforcement loops and thats how you create habits.

gumby 8y ago

Resonating with a point in the article about telling kids "you're not involved in this task", I've noticed that my American neighbors are quite reluctant to allow their kids to use knives, light candles, fill glasses, and some cooking tasks that could result in a lot of mess. As what looks like a consequence those kids are rarely able to help get dinner on the table when they come over. An uncharitable explanation would be overprotectiveness, but I wonder if it's also simply a lack of time: if the kid is mixing a cake and the batter spills on the floor it is additional work; if they cut their finger it will delay everything. Whereas if you can help your kid become competent you can trust them to look after themselves in more and more situations.

azernik 8y ago
The article seems to think it's lack of time: ================================= Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let's face reality here. At first, they really can't do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess. For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler's offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says. "We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  People think it saves time and trouble to push their kids around in strollers instead of letting them walk (very slowly at first), set them in walled cribs for 12 hours per day instead of letting them move about, sit them in high chairs to eat, get them to play in small fenced places with no sharp corners, let them stay in little rolling walker chairs, pre-process all their food into mush, not let them climb up or down stairs, not let them climb up the slide, not let them throw things, rush over and smother them at every tiny trip, .... By the time the kids are 3 or 4 they are still insisting on being carted everywhere, are weak and uncoordinated compared to their less sheltered peers, are timid and less willing to follow their curiosity, and don’t know how to do anything. In the long run the parents are forced to babysit them much more closely for much longer, can’t rely on the kids to help with anything, deal with worse tantrums, etc.

keyle 8y ago

Very interesting. I thaught my toddler to help dad make his coffee in the morning... Puts the capsule in, pushes the long button, takes the capsule out... Then he smells the coffee and says 'nice' and feels the cup and confirms a job well done by saying 'hot'. It's surprising how quickly he learnt how to do it, and how keen he is to help dad do it, for no gain of his own. On the other hand begging him to eat, trick him, or entice him with rewards has had very little impact. I will try to involve him in most things now.

nsxwolf 8y ago
My 3 year old son is the only one in the house allowed to operate the Keurig now. He will throw a fit if anyone tries to make their own cup.
JunkDNA 8y ago
I did this with my almost 3 year old. Except I use whole beans and a drip coffee maker. He tares the scale, weighs the beans, dumps them in the grinder, grinds them, and puts them in the coffee maker. The only part he doesn’t do is get the water because he’s not strong enough to push the button for filtered water in the fridge. I made the mistake with my first two kids of not involving them early enough. Now they think work around the house is something only mom and dad do.
PebblesRox 8y ago
If anyone wants to see this in action, someone took a video of their two-year-old making coffee. It’s impressive! (And adorable) https://www.paulaspencerscott.com/single-post/toddler-making-coffee https://www.paulaspencerscott.com/single-post/toddler-making...
- joesb 8y ago
  But, imagine, if the kids fucked up once and burns his face with that coffee, many of use would be blaming the parent for involving him in such a dangersous task for a two-year-old.
  - 8y ago

rossdavidh 8y ago

Reminds me of something I read from Jared Diamond, wherein he said that in traditional societies that he had investigated, the kids play is just small versions of the adults life, that gets more and more realistic until it's the real thing. So, a child gets a piglet to look after, if the adults raise pigs. This would make sense from a biological point of view; the young watch the adults and imitate what they're doing as well as they can, getting better and better by practicing it. It reminds me also of what I've learned about speaking a foreign language; you can't learn enough to be good at it first, then start speaking. You have to just start speaking it even though you're horrible. That's how you improve.

itronitron 8y ago
Yes exactly, I give my children mini-screen devices so that they will be ready for their career of sitting in front of an adult-sized screen for 8 hours a day.
- ponchotek 8y ago
  This is easily the best thing I have ever read in HN
dkarl 8y ago
Yes, kids have a great appetite to become more adult and take great pride in it. I suspect what the psychologist was observing was that children were eager to start doing the things that earn appreciation among adults. This doesn't translate at all to the affluent west where housework is taken for granted and doesn't earn anybody respect. I think kids are sensitive enough to intuit that it's because there's no social reward in proportion to the effort, and as a result people do as little as possible and pursue other ways to establish their social worth.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  I think all humans deserve respect and a decent wage, but treating housework (and its ilk) with contempt is the source of the great progress of recent centuries, automating work to increase productivity and wealth and leisure time for those who want it.

agotterer 8y ago

My wife and I stumbled across this thinking recently. We have an 18 month old and we started putting him to work. I rarely open or close a cabinet, microwave or dishwasher if he’s around. We plop him on the counter when we cook and he holds ingredients and utensils. Just today I was hanging something on the wall so I had him hold the screwdriver for me. We found that he’s thrilled to help and we never force him. Our initial intention was just to keep him busy but I’ve seen two similar posts on HN recently and I’m now realizing there’s a bigger social, reaponsibility, and familial lesson here.

derekbreden 8y ago
A video of toddlers wanting to help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J32iF6djMd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J32iF6djMd8
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
My Dad was like this with me. As I got older I got to support bits of wood he was sawing, bleed radiators, drill holes, mix concrete, and even wire plugs (under supervision, of course). These are some of my most fond memories growing up. Now I do all of the building and decorating work in my house myself. I was up on the roof repointing ridge tiles yesterday, for example. My friends don't understand but it's all just second nature to me. It saves a huge amount of money and is very satisfying to live in a house that you've worked on yourself. These are definitely great skills to have, and even in this day and age of being able to Google anything, just having the confidence to handle power tools and the knowledge of what's possible makes all the difference.

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klon 8y ago

Interesting not a single male show up in this article

okket 8y ago

I find it a bit disturbing that there is always the general case 'children' in the headline and in the article, but no mention of boys, only girls doing the work and in the pictures.

sudhirj 8y ago
There’s plenty of mentions of sons in the article, just no pictures.
- okket 8y ago
  Plenty? I read the article again and found only one.
  - sudhirj 8y ago
    Sorry, misread. Only the dish washing example is a boy, but I don’t think this is inherently gender specific.
    - okket 8y ago
      Mexicos (and many other) current culture is not exactly known to be gender neutral on most (all?) things. Sorry, but I am a little skeptical about your assumption...
      - sudhirj 8y ago
        Probably isn’t, neither is India where I’m from. Boys would be heavily discouraged from doing kitchen or clean chores even if they tried. But the principles and techniques in the article seem to be gender neutral, even if their application in the cultures studied isn’t.
        deleted 8y ago
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vincengomes 8y ago

>>Even small tasks, like raking leaves, can give kids a sense of pride and accomplishment A line lifted straight from EAs PR Agency?

Bakary 8y ago
After 18 or so years of grinding you can unlock the Adult trait for your character.

theBobBob 8y ago

I remember when I moved away for college I was so shocked at how quite a few people basically couldn't look after themselves at all. I ended up teaching one guy I lived with how to do the most basic things. I actually had to show him how to put a duvet cover on, how to boil rice, how to use a washing machine, the fact that if a chicken fillet is 50% pink on the inside is not yet finished. He had never done any of these things himself before. I should have seen the warning signs when he moved in and his mother was unpacking and folding his underwear and putting them in his wardrobe for him. He was the worst that I seen but there were plenty more that weren't that far off.

wott 8y ago
> He had never done any of these things himself before. Not only he had never done these before, but he had never paid attention for a single minute how they were done by his parents, he did not care, things appeared, ready done, that was the natural way of things (like cargo cult in a way) and he had no interest in the process. I had a friend like that (to make things worse, he then moved straight from his parents' to his girlfriend's, so it went on like this until he was 27...) On the other hand, I almost never had anything to at home because my folks were of the kind who like to do everything themselves and do it quick, so there was nothing to be done, but I spent all my time questioning and above all observing them. Children are curious in general, but I have always been much more than average. So, whenever I was left alone (it happened frequently) or when I was later dropped in real life, I never had any difficulty, I could just reproduce their way of doing things. -------- I think that in a same country/culture, there is also a difference between countryside and cities. I grew up in the countryside and all my school mates were living in farms, and they were more than happy to help their parents after school (or event to miss school to help with field work sometimes). I mean, it is much more interesting (and for some of it, it gives a feeling of responsibility like an adult) to feed the poultry, bring the cattle back to the stable, drive the tractor, help fixing tools, work a bit of wood and metal, discover mechanics, move and arrange straw bales (in the times when they could still be moved and arranged) and a hundred other things; than doing house chores (laundry, dish washing, floor weeping, OK you do them once to try, but then it gets boring as soon as the second time comes...). And there is not much more to do when you live in an apartment.

newnewpdro 8y ago

Until the kids all got smartphones... what chores? Raise your kids in a single shared room without any convenient forms of unlimited entertainment, where they must either witness all the work they're not helping with while bored and guilty or participate, and see how magically helpful they are.

sudhirj 8y ago
Raising my kid in a house full of books, massive TV, most iPads, iPhone and MacBooks released lying around. The ideas still work. Cleans the floor, takes a great interest in making sure we’re all well fed, keeps stuff tidy, tries grooming, and stirs my coffee and blows on it if it’s too hot. A year and a half old.
- PebblesRox 8y ago
  My floors are the cleanest they've ever been because my 17-month-old nags me to vacuum. I've been meaning to get him a little Dirt Devil or something, so he can do it himself. (He tries with ours but it's just a little too big for him to manage.)
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Sounds premature for either of the parent comments to be making any kind of claims to success, but I wish you all the best of luck.
    - sudhirj 8y ago
      Think we're listing it more as anecdata to support the approach mentioned in the article. The article is validating the approach as much as something that's not a controlled decades long study can, which I suppose we're happy enough with.

3rdAccount 8y ago

There's a relevant Paul graham essay about how teenagers are basically neurotic lapdogs because throughout much of history they would assist with everything and would be an apprentice..etc, but now are locked away at school (similar to a prison or daycare where their parents drop them off so they can work). It's a great essay that I can't do justice if someone can find it.

PebblesRox 8y ago
I believe it’s this one: http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html Some relevant excerpts: “Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.” “If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.”
- M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
  I think he's spot on here. The culture clash between a society where the young are to be incarcerated in some kind of padded safe space and a society where the young are junior members of adult society is all too apparent in Western Europe. Youngsters from my neck of the woods are lining up to enter the wealthy European countries and the politicians and anatomists have been whipped up in a panicked frenzy trying to determine from X-rays who is over and who is under the arbitrary age of 18, while any culturally sensitive person will plainly who are grown men of military and marrying age where they come from and who aren't. And what do the ones who qualify as "children" or successfully lie on their applications get? They may be grown men where they come from, but men who are too naive to realise what they are lining up for is to be castrated by the welfare state. They are asking to become incarcerated children, and when they realise where they have been lured, who can blame these strapping young fighters for embracing gang culture and shooting up their host neighbourhoods in endless retaliation between the various lord-pretenders of the flies?

PebblesRox 8y ago

I’ve found Montessori blogs to be a great resource of ideas for how to involve my toddler in meaningful work. Here’s one of my favorites: http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2017/04/practicallifebabytoddler.html http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2017/04/practicallifebabyt...

nkg 8y ago
Would you mind sharing more links to these blogs ?
- PebblesRox 8y ago
  How We Montessori is a great one. I've read her entire archive! http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2018/05/fostering-independence-montessori-baby-at-eight-months.html http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2018/05/fos... Nicole Kavanaugh also has some really good stuff: http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2016/06/practicallife2.html http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2016/06/practicallife2.htm... And I like This Merry Montessori, though Lindsay is no longer posting actively: http://www.thismerrymontessori.com/?p=901 http://www.thismerrymontessori.com/?p=901 "Practical Life" is the phrase Montessorians use for the kind of real-world meaningful work described in the article. A google search for "practical life" plus a specific age will turn up tons of great ideas and really expand your conception of what kids at that age are capable of!

jordigh 8y ago

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly exposed to Christianity and its cultural heritage, read the same books and watch many of the same shows as Europe, the US, and Canada, I use sit-down toilet, not squat toilets, and I eat mostly with forks and knives, not with chopsticks or with my fingers. While it is true that the culture of the Mayans in my country is slightly foreign to me (as it is to most Mexicans, since most of us are not Mayan, and the Mayans have always had separatist tendencies to begin with), I still feel like the Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world than any other part of the world. We shouldn't be so foreignised. My resentment, of course, comes because "Western" is being used here in the sense of money-having, with a certain air of superiority, however well-intentioned or benign this air may be. True that culture and wealth go hand-in-hand, but I think we're all more alike than different. I didn't like doing chores as a kid and I don't know a lot of Mexicans who did. We're more alike to those who self-apply and exclude us from the "Western" label than we are different.

euske 8y ago
I think the term "Western" is often mixed up with "Westernized", which has a rather different connotation. I live in Japan that is not technically Western at all, but very well Westernized.
- Izkata 8y ago
  Pretty sure it's this above all else. The US is also not in "The West", but it is in a sense "westernized" (it just never had a period where it wasn't "westernized" because of its origins). The two terms are holdovers from centuries ago, when "The West" really did mean Europe and "The East" meant east Asia (and The Orient was in between, the Middle East + west Asia). There's even an XKCD about how confusing it can be from the US (or, really, the Americas in general): https://xkcd.com/503/ https://xkcd.com/503/

DoreenMichele 8y ago

"The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average," It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article. So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents don't have the resources to supply you with a TV, a video game system, a tablet, a computer, a cell phone, etc ad nauseum, then you can either sit around twiddling your thumbs and dying of boredom or you can involve yourself in whatever the nearest human is doing as a means to occupy yourself. The other piece of that is that poorer cultures wind up naturally more people centered than richer cultures, which wind up more thing centered. When my kids were little and we didn't have much, they learned to take turns and share not because of some kind of cultural magic, but because we didn't have a lot of stuff, so they basically had to share. In a family wealthy enough to have one of X for each and every family member (or whatever), then you don't need to learn to share or take turns. You just use your thing and leave their thing alone. I'm all for promoting more real involvement with kids so they are better socialized, etc. But I think there are very big problems with acting like culture evolves separate from material wealth and details like that.

jacobolus 8y ago
There are some other important differences: (1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old. (2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of people farming, minding sheep, weaving, washing clothes by hand, milling grain, cooking, chopping wood, making furniture, foraging for mushrooms, hunting rabbits, ... can easily get kids involved in small tasks. (3) People spend much of the day talking to each other, gossiping, cracking jokes, singing together, eating together, ... instead of reading or doing other solitary activities, spending time at remote jobs, driving around in cars, etc. But yeah we definitely shouldn’t romanticize rural poverty. Having years where nobody has enough food and all the old sick people die, commonly getting hit by disease epidemics, spending a whole life on hard menial labor and ending up with a totally wrecked body by age 50, sitting in small totally smoke-filled rooms over a wood cookfire every day (this is as bad or worse for health than the heaviest cigarette smoking), sleeping on a board or on a dirt floor with a blanket covered in fleas, needing to make your own cloth from scratch for anything, needing to carry water long distances on foot every day for all washing and drinking, .... are all pretty unpleasant. And let’s not even start on the part where rural peasants are constantly getting beat up and having stuff stolen from them (or worse) by colonial overlords, foreign corporations, local thugs, ... There’s a reason that when given the choice a large proportion of people flee rural peasant villages and move to (sometimes distant) cities, even when further exploitation awaits there.

mmjaa 8y ago

I found it infuriating to read this article and realise there was no mention of Dad. Maybe his absence is an overlooked part of it? As a father, I do chores with my kids, and the trope that only mothers and house-wives do chores is really tiresome. Maybe there's another way to get kids involved in chores - make sure Dad doesn't get away with not being involved, too. The family that cleans together (that means Dads too), live happily together.

avip 8y ago
The parenting industry generally ignores the implied existence of "dads", because they (we) are a failed useless target group that buys nothing.
Double_a_92 8y ago
If your wife is a house-wife (i.e. doesn't have any other job, while you have a fulltime job) why would she not just do all the chores that she can do?
- scotty79 8y ago
  Because she does not want to. Then either you do it or if you too don't want to do it just leave it undone. Most chores are optional anyways.
  - Double_a_92 8y ago
    If you are a house-wife or -man doing chores related to your home and family is literally your job. How can you argument with "don't want to"?
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Some people mop the floors every day. Other people don't do that every day. Can we say whose decision is wrong?
      - 8y ago

Moru 8y ago

"We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says. I see some women do this but exchange the "toddler" with "husband". The husband will ofcourse see this and not try to help in the future because he feels insecure or just happy that she is happy doing it herself. It isn't too late to train new things just because you aren't a toddler any more. This focus on getting your toddler learning algebra or play the violin as early as possible isn't productive, let the kids be kids. This includes letting them help at home ofcourse.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
If you don't help your wife around the house you're not a "husband", you're a "man child".

lbriner 8y ago

Excuse me while I just go and write a motivational talk about your Developers encouraging "acomedido": "It's not just doing what you're told, and it's not just helping out. It's knowing the kind of help that is situationally appropriate because you're paying attention." Gold dust!

gregknicholson 8y ago

Is there a version of this article that isn't behind a “consent”-wall?

fiatjaf 8y ago

Maya?

manuu80 8y ago

Maybe in this case is because of some aboriginal custom. However, in poor communities near the big south american capitals, these behaviors are often a result of not having many chances when growing up. These, and other reasons as the sense of belonging, are widely studied in teen pregnancy field.