Sandi has a great post up at her blog, asking whether she is too strict with her boys. 16 comments, and everyone agrees that she's doing awesome, giving them responsibility and having them share in the running of the household. (Two of the comments are mine, toward the bottom.)
This reminds me of a discussion we were having in Sunday School a few weeks ago. We were talking about parenting, and how do we raise our children to be responsible, loving, caring people. There was a pause, and I said "I don't know . . . I'm a big fan of manual labor."
I got some stares from that, but then I explained that when kids are given responsibility and chores and work to do, it builds character. It makes them realize that a house doesn't stay clean by itself, that dinner doesn't magically appear on the table, that it is THEIR job to keep track of their shoes. The only way to develop a good work ethic is TO WORK. When you work it into your child's everyday life, it just becomes second nature to be helpful, to be considerate, to realize they are partially responsible for any space they inhabit.
It really bothers me how much this generation of kids is coddled. Working on a college campus, I see extreme examples of this -- and it gets worse every year. Student who have no idea how to do laundry. How to write a check. How to plunge a toilet. How to do dishes -- or even load a dishwasher! How to budget their money or their time. How to be considerate of the people who are helping them -- the maintenance workers, the landscapers, the security workers, the secretaries. They have a severe lack of empathy and an absurd attitude of entitlement. (And this REALLY makes me crazy.)
When Jake is with my mom at her house, he does all sorts of work. He helps water the garden. Heck, he helped PLANT the garden. He takes a plastic bag out and picks the tomatoes and peppers and squash -- he was doing this when he was two years old! (He's actually better at gardening than I am!) He helps unload the dishwasher and put things away. He helps take out the trash. He helps with the dog and cat. But the thing is, he doesn't REALIZE he's doing work. It's just one more fun activity that Nana and he are doing together.
And that's the thing about work. It doesn't have to suck. It doesn't have to be something that makes you miserable. It's just something that has to happen for the household to function properly. You're setting your children up for failure later in life if you never make them do anything for themselves.
Just something I deeply believe.