3 ms·

Wait, 12 yo in the US don't know how to do chores or do not understand how a house is set up? Ok, I'll give you the Maya method, or the French method, or the J

by Iv 5y ago

Wait, 12 yo in the US don't know how to do chores or do not understand how a house is set up? Ok, I'll give you the Maya method, or the French method, or the Japanese method, or the Hacker method, or wherever we figured out parenting from in our household: make kids feel they are part of the adults group. Share tasks, concerns, information, understanding. My 7 yo is (clumsily) washing his dishes because the rule is that if you don't cook, you wash dishes. That before going back to play, we clean the table. It is the rule for everyone, adults or kids. We don't fake enjoyment of the chores, we explain its usefulness, we (well, I) do complain a lot about them, and my kid sometimes does it too, but still does it without being told. Kids learn by imitation and they want to belong to your group. Give them what they want there. Set the example, be fair, be honest.

kaitai 5y ago
This is part of a larger divide between "childhood" and "real life" that we set up to a great extent in the US. Childhood innocence is fetishized in the US in a particular way, edging very much into what we allow to be taught in schools or consider inappropriate in schools. There is a deep emphasis on trying to not have kids feel bad and adults project all kinds of their own s*(& on that. It contrasts with a different point of view, that kids are just people, and people need to 1) take part in chores and work to make life function, and 2) sometimes feel bad because life is hard (either feel bad because they messed up, or because something happened to someone else). Chores can be fun, chores can be a drag, attitude matters -- but in the end food needs to be cooked and dishes need to be cleaned, no way around that. I think our culture in the US tries to avoid these realities and wants children to live a dream. From my point of view, though, it is a gesture of respect to include my child in the important work of running a house. Moreover, this child will be better-prepared for life if they can prepare food, manage a budget, fix clothing and mechanical problems, build some basic items, etc. I met too many folks in college who couldn't cook rice or wash their own laundry. That is not a setup for success. You can have a lot more fun if you can make a fancy ramen dinner and have your friends over to your crappy apartment that is decently furnished because you can manage curtains and bookshelves than if you need to pay $$ for all of the above. I have as much book learning as a person in the US can expect to have, but I really respect the lessons I learned from my elders about cooking, cleaning, preparing items from nature/fabric/wood, fixing stuff. Those lessons came from childhood involvement in chores. They carried over quite well to an engineering school education and then into the corporate world (see "tech debt"). My kid spent the weekend playing, learning how to change tires on the car, mixing pizza dough and getting toppings together, cleaning the living room, watching Disney music videos (no no no), and planting seeds for our seed starting. Just do stuff as part of life and include the kid to the extent they can participate.

by Iv 5y ago

kaitai 5y ago

This is part of a larger divide between "childhood" and "real life" that we set up to a great extent in the US. Childhood innocence is fetishized in the US in a particular way, edging very much into what we allow to be taught in schools or consider inappropriate in schools. There is a deep emphasis on trying to not have kids feel bad and adults project all kinds of their own s*(& on that. It contrasts with a different point of view, that kids are just people, and people need to 1) take part in chores and work to make life function, and 2) sometimes feel bad because life is hard (either feel bad because they messed up, or because something happened to someone else). Chores can be fun, chores can be a drag, attitude matters -- but in the end food needs to be cooked and dishes need to be cleaned, no way around that. I think our culture in the US tries to avoid these realities and wants children to live a dream. From my point of view, though, it is a gesture of respect to include my child in the important work of running a house. Moreover, this child will be better-prepared for life if they can prepare food, manage a budget, fix clothing and mechanical problems, build some basic items, etc. I met too many folks in college who couldn't cook rice or wash their own laundry. That is not a setup for success. You can have a lot more fun if you can make a fancy ramen dinner and have your friends over to your crappy apartment that is decently furnished because you can manage curtains and bookshelves than if you need to pay $$ for all of the above. I have as much book learning as a person in the US can expect to have, but I really respect the lessons I learned from my elders about cooking, cleaning, preparing items from nature/fabric/wood, fixing stuff. Those lessons came from childhood involvement in chores. They carried over quite well to an engineering school education and then into the corporate world (see "tech debt"). My kid spent the weekend playing, learning how to change tires on the car, mixing pizza dough and getting toppings together, cleaning the living room, watching Disney music videos (no no no), and planting seeds for our seed starting. Just do stuff as part of life and include the kid to the extent they can participate.