Tolstoy's opening line to Anna Karenina is famous: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Based on my observations my corollary to that is: "Hard-working kids are all alike; every lazy kid is lazy in his own way."
Growing up my brothers and I were given a steady supply of chores. (By the time my sister Maura was old enough to do work around the house it wasn't needed, somehow, so she was spoiled rotten, and she knows it.) My dad, the ex-Navy guy, organized our household work on a "Watch, Quarter, and Station Chart" that was kept on the fridge. Although we didn't have to stand watch very often, and our quarters were always our own rooms, and there was more vacuuming than one would do aboard ship, I imagine. There were a few things each of us had to do each day, and they got done, or there would be consequences.
Maybe that's the problem now -- I have yet to come up with consequences (either positive or negative) that really motivate, or I'm not consistent enough in applying them. Whatever the case, trying to get chores done is really, well, a chore.
Fiona is very agreeable when it comes to work -- she simply says "OK" when assigned. But then (more often than not) she doesn't do anything. It seems "OK" means "I recognize that words are coming out of your mouth; please stop." This is true not only for chores, but for instructions like "Bedtime, Fi -- lights out."
When there's work to be done, or in progress, Emmet has the uncanny ability (like Jeeves in the P. G. Wodehouse stories) to sort of shimmer and disappear. We'll all be out raking leaves, and I'll be looking right at him, and then suddenly the rake is on the ground, and he's inside watching TV. It's eerie.
And then there's Conor. He has a two-step approach to chores:
1. Argue and negotiate as long as possible.
2. Do such a half-assed job that he won't be assigned again.
If I drag him back to re-do or finish something, his approach is "Repeat Steps 1 and 2." Example: Around Christmas he had left some paper scraps on the kitchen floor; when I was later doing some cleaning I had the trash can out, and told him to throw his scraps away. After a brief argument he picked up the papers and dropped them in the direction of the trash can, where they hit the edge and fell back out on the floor, and he started to walk away. I told him again to throw them away, and he said (I kid you not) "I did."
Amazingly this incident didn't end in violence, and he's gradually learning that I'm every bit as stubborn as he is. But he's raised half-assed work to an art form.
So it's a simple picture: my brothers and I were hard workers when we were young, and my kids are as lazy as could be. Simple pictures offer the clearest lessons, of course, so we don't need any "revisionist historians" telling more nuanced versions of how things were way back when. (That means you, Dad.)
Pat
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5 comments:
i really loved your post on your kids and how you deal with the chores and stuff. you really sound like a loving and involved parent with a tremendous sense of humor and love for your kids. i think they are a gr8 bunch of kids and reflect their dads sense of humor!
I don't know if this will help or not but I have found that taking away the electronic toys works wonders. After the first infraction they loose the IPOD, the second is the Weii, and lastly its the cell phone. These punishments last for 24 hours.
Eventually they realized I meant business with the IPOD.
"Chores are part of the Gig" - I tell them. I work, you clean up!
Not really negotiable, but laughable. Some kids get them done right away, some kids leave them until the last moment and then do a half donkey effort.
What I did as a kid pales in comparison to what they are assigned to. But they have a lot more homeowrk - right?
In the end it really dioes not matter. What matters is how much we love them, how much they love back.
It's not about chores, it's about love.
A recollection from the Harrigan boys' childhood: I vividly recall, in the Westerville house, one morning when Dad placed Rob, Pat, and me in a line abreast in the upstairs hallway and had us slowly crawl backward on all fours and pick up carpet lint as we went. I can't recall why he did this. Perhaps the vacuum cleaner was broken. Perhaps he perceived that we weren't sufficiently grateful that things such as vacuum cleaners existed. Perhaps we were, in our way, expressing solidarity with those families who had no vacuum cleaners. Whatever the reason, we all came away with handsful of carpet fuzz.
I told my son to shovel the walk and by end of day it was done.
He said "Dad, doesn't it look great" and asked for a nominal fee. Later I found out the sun had melted it. I was mad in a "Clark Griswald" way.
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