8 years ago
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
To be a Kid, or not to be a Kid
The other day Brent and I had a fairly lengthly conversation about our children. He feels very strongly that they should be aloud to be children. He doesn't want them to be over burdened with too many chores during the week during school days. He felt like we were yelling at them too much. As far as the yelling goes, I have to agree with him. Then we both agreed that we needed to relax and let the kids play in the house. If they are being loud, but not hurting each other or breaking something, we need to just let them be. I have been putting this into practice. One of my kids favorite past times is to slide down the stairs going into the basement. Normally I would yell at them to stop because someone is going to get hurt. It took everything in me to just shut the door and let them be. I have to say, since I've just been letting them be kids, they are much much happier. The atmosphere in our home is beginning to change. And as far as chores go, this was very important to me that they still have chores. If they don't learn those life skills from me now, they will never learn them. So they still have to make their beds and clean their floors everyday, and the big chores are left for Saturday. So far, so good.
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2 comments:
I like this.
We do something similar, except that the kids do have one small household chore each day, which is one will clean off the counters and table, one will empty the dishwasher, and one will load...the little ones will rotate in as they get old enough (and I am assuming that the bigs one will rotate out as they get too busy).
We also try not to do too many things. One music and one sport. And this year we took a break from sports because moms should get some time off when they have a baby (hint, hint).
I think it's all about finding out what works for you and being consistent.
You know what I do... we've talked about it and it works for us.
Since our converation at lunch I've thought a lot about kids' free time. But I'm unwilling to lessen the work they do around the house so I took a different spin. We talked about time management. I showed them how much free time they currently have with the way they were doing their snack, homework, and chores after school. It was barely over an hour a day. On my plan (my super-efficient, don't stop for nothing plan), they can have almost 3 hours a day! Put simply- it means, buckle down and get to work. I illustrated this by having Ed time me putting away 3 loads of laundry and told the kids they could try and distract me any way they wanted. Well 8 minutes later, the laundry chore was done and I figured out that if I ever wanted to have my own Huhtala Family Haunted House that we would make lots of mula! :)
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