Friday, February 26, 2010

Chores

Lucas informed us last night that he wants to learn to play the guitar. I have no problem whatsoever with this. I like the idea of my children learning a musical instrument. The guitar is as good as anything else. Of course, Ruanita has a gently used flute from her middle school band years. Try as I might, I couldn't convince Lucas to choose the flute over the guitar. The flute could be a masculine instrument, don't you think? Chicks dig flute players, right? Ok...ok...no flute.

There is one problem with Lucas taking up the guitar....he doesn't have a guitar. Nicholas has a guitar, but he informed Lucas last night that he couldn't use it. Lucas tried arguing that Nicholas never plays with it. However, Nicholas didn't buy that argument. His exact words were, "It's mine and I can do whatever I want with it." Touche!

So we proposed a plan to Lucas. He could earn a guitar and guitar lessons by doing some chores around the house. If he did the chores we outlined for him, we would buy him a guitar and sign him up for guitar lessons. Sounds reasonable, right? So the first chore we proposed was cleaning out the cat's little box. This suggestion was met with loud exclamation of "No way! Gross!" He absolutely in no uncertain terms would even consider emptying the litter box. Ok...fair enough. Lucas isn't a fan of the cat anyway, so that probably was not the best chore fit for him. How about taking out the trash? "But it's cold outside....and the trash is full of gross stuff." Not quite as strong an argument. But let's see what else we can come up with. How about taking the laundry to the laundry room for mom? "Downstairs? In the basement? By myself?" Ok...Lucas does have some anxiety issues, so maybe sending him to the depths of the house alone was not a good idea. How about helping fold laundry and putting it away? "But that's momma's job." Hmmm....very weak argument there, Lucas. That's the type of argument that will get you smacked in certain circles. Ok...let's try one more time. How about setting and clearing the table when we have dinner. "Eeeewww...the plates have gross food on them. I don't want to touch the gross food you and mom eat."

I give up. Apparently the things that I do on a daily basis are all "gross." As if I wasn't already well aware of that! Sometimes it is just easier to do the household chores myself. In Lucas' defense, however, he does pick up and put away his own toys every day. For the most part, I don't pick up toys. Aside from that though, I am afraid we are raising pampered, privileged children. I believe that the time has come to introduce manual labor into our household. I think it is high time the kids get introduced to drudgery. Life as they know it is coming to an end. We'll see how well this goes over....

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Both of my boys have to help out and they each have "chores" to do each week. They have to do their own laundry, every other week they have to clean "their" bathroom, one vacuums and the other takes out the garbage. And recently, Jeanne and i decided to start making them load and unload the dishwasher. We are of the mindset that we are raising "men" and they will be self sufficient men by the time they FINALLY leave the nest! There is nothing wrong with starting them out with small "chores" at his age. I think him having to earn the guitar and the lessons is a great thing to teach him. He will be even more proud when it's all said and done. (Just my two cents worth on the topic).

Mariah

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