I think it is important for all children to have chores. I do not want to raise spoiled children who feel as though they should be given everything without giving anything back in return. I am learning, however, that I should give L chores that I really don’t care about because chances are pretty good that they will either be done wrong or somehow end up causing me more work than if I just did them myself.
One prime example of this is grocery shopping. L has found that he likes to bag my groceries. This can be problematic if there is a long line behind me, because he is not the quickest bagger. Some of this is out of his control because he is not tall enough to grab everything off the belt. Some of this is due to the fact that he has the attention span of a flea, and while bagging is often distracted to stare at a box or something on the ground, or focus on anything but taking the groceries and actually putting them in the bag. Another issue is that he does not fully grasp the concept of how to bag groceries. I often end up with a bag so overflowing that half of the contents spill onto the ground as he tries to put it back in the cart. We also experience a high casualty rate for my purchases. At some point I am hoping he will learn that bread does not go on the bottom of the bag. Neither do cookies.
I have learned to watch him while he unpacks the bags. This is to prevent him from forming a pile in the middle of my pantry floor of food he has designated as “his.” It is also to know where everything is so I don’t end up searching frantically for an item while getting dinner ready. I learned this important lesson when we were ready to head out the door for his Thanksgiving feast at preschool.
“L, where did you put the cranberry sauce I signed up to bring?”
“In my secret hiding space.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t remember.”
His secret hiding space ended up being the cargo hold in his power wheels where we found it several weeks later. That morning, however, I ended up being more rushed than normal as we had to throw in an emergency stop at the grocery store.
We are a family with dogs, and L has always been good about “helping” to take care of them. I still remember when he first began to understand that they needed to be let out to go potty, and tried to help. The problem was that he never remembered which door led to their play yard, and kept letting them out the front door instead. While one seemed too scared to leave the front porch, the other was bound to go off exploring. My neighbor even found her at the bus stop one morning. At least if she was going to run away, it was to further her education.
No comments:
Post a Comment