Chores

OK, I'm back on house cleaning.

My daughter loves to help me out around the house.  She and I make her bed and my bed every morning.  She helps me cook.  She sorts silverware into the right compartments in the drawer.  She loves to swish the toilet brush around in the toilet.  She sprays off windows.  I've never really tried to enforce chores with her--I've taken more of a "Let's do this together!" approach, and she seems to respond to it really well.  I think she just also has a really strong desire for order in her surroundings.

My son really resists when we ask him to help.  He can be incredibly hard-working and helpful when it's his choice to help and the work seems interesting to him--like at our harvest days out at the community supported farm, he works as hard as any grown-up picking and cleaning veggies and loading bags.

A part of me would love to just trust that given time, encouragement, and lots of modeling from us, he will learn to be more helpful, in the same way that I trust that he will learn everything else he needs to learn without being forced or manipulated in to it. 

But a part of me just doesn't quite buy the wait-and-see approach, I think because of my own experiences as a kid and young adult.

When I was a child, my house seemed to get clean by magic while I was away at school.  Clean clothes appeared neatly folded in my drawers and hung in my closet.  My bed was made when I got home.  The house was always pristine and picked up.  That was my mom, of course--no magic there.  

My dad died when I was twelve, and suddenly, shockingly, my mom was a widow, a single mom, and sole breadwinner for our family at 33.  She needed more help from us, but we hadn't built up the habits of helping.  We just didn't notice when dirty dishes were strewn all over the house, our rooms were carpeted with dirty clothes, and our bathroom was a disaster.  Or if we noticed, I guess we were still expecting a little cleaning magic to come in and take care of it all for us.  We were young teenagers, interested in watching MTV for hours to wait for a Duran Duran video to come on--not cleaning our rooms.  I don't want to make excuses for our lack of helpfulness.  I just want to note that by the time I was twelve, it was very difficult for me to switch into a helpful mode.  

My mom often got horribly angry with us, and I can understand why.  I can't even imagine the stress she was under those years.  Her anger usually made me do better for a little while, but I always eventually slacked off again, once my fear and shame had worn off.

After I left home, I continued to be a slob, and it sometimes made life more challenging for my roommates and embarrassing for me.  At college, my roommate put up a Post-It note to remind me to wash my towel when it got smelly.  A housemate had a dream about strangling me in the bathtub because I never cleaned it and she always ended up doing it.

When Bridger was about three, I went through a phase of trying to use rewards and punishments to encourage him to pick up his toys--this was before I really started to finally kick my own addiction to our society's reward/punishment parenting paradigm.  If he helped clean up, he could watch a half-hour of a video.  If he didn't, I, uh, bitched at him and threatened him with no video until he did help.  No wonder he resists it when I ask him to help out, all these years later.

Eventually I came to my senses.  I realized that I was creating a situation that wasn't good for our relationship and probably would lay the foundation for him to resent and resist housework.  I ran across Sandra Dodd's ideas about an unschooling approach to chores, and they radically shifted my perceptions:  http://www.sandradodd.com/chores/

Since Cassidy's birth, the little bit of Waldorf theory I've read has really reinforced what my heart tells me is true:  it's a wonderful thing if families can start early with involving children in being helpful, and if it can be a pleasurable, easy-to-remember routine--just part of the day.

These days, I'm working on finding ways to involve Bridger more in the chores while being true to my non-violent, non-coercive parenting values--because I think it would be good for him, good for our family, good for me.  I also don't think it's a good idea to let the girl-child do all the work.  It just doesn't quite ring true to how I want us to live our lives and be in the world.

I'll keep you posted on how it all goes. . .