“My tummy hurts!” That was my perpetual excuse from my childhood years to my teenage years. This usually happened right after we had lunch or dinner together as a family. What triggered it? I didn’t want to do the dishes.
It is a bit humorous when I think about it but now that I am no longer a child, I realize the importance of teaching our children how to do basic house chores. We were not rich but we were comfortable. Our parents taught us everything around the house – from doing the dishes to doing the laundry and even basic plumbing and electrical work!
Today, I realize that not many children know how to do even the most basic of household work. I was talking to a friend of mine about this and he said that he does not care whether or not his children help out at home as long as they did well in school – that was their job. I do see where he is coming from but I also know that I prefer my children to know how to take care of themselves in the house.
I was reading this blog post on Mum-Mum, a web site dedicated to kids and parenting, which aggregates blog posts from all over the web (yep, they do link to our posts, too – thanks!). I like how the writer outlined different chores that children of all ages could do at home. Maybe I’ll talk more about specific chores for kids in the next post.
