Ahwatukee Living’s Ask the Experts

« Self Care Celebration! | Index | The Onion Filled Pinata »

Help Children Help You

Having your children home from school means more work for you, right? Not necessarily. If you are not prepared for having your children home, it probably will mean more work for you. However, if you approach it correctly, it can actually mean more work gets done around the house; that is, more work DONE for you, not more work for you TO DO. Instead of seeing the children as being additional work for you, begin to view them as additional helpers for you. Consider it your duty to find them enough interesting work to keep them busy, rather than thinking it is your duty to entertain them. If you spend an afternoon teaching them how to do tie-dying, perhaps they could spend the next 2 or 3 days making themselves some nifty clothes for the upcoming year. If you make chocolate chip cookies with them, it won’t be long before they can make them without your supervision and when they want cookies for their lunches, they can make them without your help. Declare one day devoted to painting the living room and use all your helpers to get the job done in one day. Award a prize to the person who can find the most misplaced objects in the family room and return them to where they belong. Some people resist these ideas because they think it’s just faster and easier to do the tasks themselves rather than taking the time and energy to teach the children how to do them. On the surface, that appears correct. It takes longer to teach someone how to do something than it does to just do it. Further, it is generally easier to just do something yourself when you’ve already done it a number of times than it is to be patient enough to work with someone who is just learning. However, all the time you invest in teaching the children is eventually paid back to you when you can finally let them do the various jobs themselves. When they can do their own laundry, that gives you an extra hour a week at least. The next resistance I generally hear is that it’s not worth the mess that the kids will make when they do a task and that the parents would rather do it themselves to avoid the mess. Change your thinking there, too. It’s part of the task to do the clean up. Make sure to teach them that part, too. If you follow this advice, you will get more done around the house over school breaks, you will have fun with your children, you will build the children’s self-esteem, you will provide your children many hours in your company during which they can talk to you about any problems they might have, and you’ll be working to produce independent adults that one day will leave your home.

Posted on December 21, 2004