Rocky Mountain Horror Show

(I found this sight after climbing out of a ten minute shower one day....hard to see, but a little girl had snipped her hair-- evidence at the bottom of the photo, and a little boy had gotten into my makeup, including sticking his whole hand into the Vaseline jar....but it got worse....a few days ago, I emerged to find Vaseline everywhere, all over the carpet, and laundry strewn across the room-- the work of a few minutes!  I'm still learning you see :) )  Good thing they are so adorable!  And I'm thankful its a sign they have a healthy dose of curiosity and energy!

We've had one of those weeks.  Not a bad week, per se, but a very interesting one.  It has been so fun having the kids home from school, and we've had a couple of adventures so far (on Monday, we went to Epic, and on Tuesday, we went to a reading thing at the library with a friend).

But laced among the adventures have been some, well, adventures.  Adventures with bodily fluids, mostly.  I have two kids with sinus infections, who have been coughing so hard they throw up.  One of them, in the car on the way to the doctor's office, in his cupped hands.  I was summoned to the bedroom of an entirely different child in the middle of the night to clean sheets and carpet from another such accident.  An hour of cleaning later (and multiple dry heaves suppressed), I went to bed, not thinking much of it, only to witness her have a similar accident all across the kitchen floor first thing this morning (sorry this is so graphic).  When a four year old recognizes she is having the urge to throw up, there is no running to the bathroom, it is happening NOW.  Poor girl.  She keeps asking me how she can make her tummy feel better.   Aw, so sad that the revelation there is nothing to be done for stomach bugs comes so young.  A different child has started getting sudden bloody noses in the night.  Since she lives on the top bunk it is also hard to get to the bathroom, so her bed cover and sheets looked like WWIII.  She slept with half a roll of toilet paper, all balled up, as a preventative measure last night.

Things I'm Learning About Teaching Kids Work

The sun was blazing down around a small group of parents gathered in the measly shade of a small tree.  I shielded my eyes from the sun as I watched another parent ask my son's new coach about a new training regimen.  I had an inner panic attack.  My son is getting old enough for "agility training?"  Part of me thought, he is getting older and I'm not ready-- I want to hang on to my little boy for a few more minutes, and another part of me thought-- I don't want my son to have to go through this.

Why was I panicking?  I had to wrestle with this little conflict inside me as we drove home in our blistering car, various little voices muted in the heat as I thought about my son and his future.

I thought about my urge to protect him-- an urge that started from the minute I discovered the tiny new life inside me.  No mercury-tainted seafood, no strenuous exercise, no soft cheese, no kayaking, no cough syrup.  :)  These sacrifices seemed relatively small as I considered protecting and nurturing this young, developing life.   Then as a tiny baby and later a growing child, protecting him from heat and cold and hunger, from anything that would harm his hearing, his development, his self-esteem?

Somehow I realized I've reached a point where the urge to protect him may not always serve either of us well.  If I shield him from anything bad that can happen to him (within reason, of course), then nothing good may ever happen to him, a la Nemo.   So instead of nurturing my protective instincts, or at least thinking them through before I use them, I need to suddenly change focus.  Because hard things make us better.  They prepare us for life.  They give us skills.  And self-esteem. 

In everything I've read recently about teaching kids work, it is emphasized that parents who do too much for their kids are actually crippling them.  And allowing them to have difficulties that they have to sort out helps them and gives them confidence, skills, and self esteem.  Giving them difficult tasks, it's hard.  I hate to watch mine struggle.  But I need to let go of that if I really love them-- love them by giving them learning experiences. 

In The Parenting Breakthrough, Boyack and her husband worked backward: they made a list of everything they wanted their kids to learn, then broke it up by year.  (they have a list of what they wanted their sons to do by age) 

For example, a few things a nine year-old should be able to do (taken directly from The Parenting Breakthrough):

mop a floor
clean pictures
bake cakes
bake cookies
fill car with gas
vacuum and wash a car

My ten year-old should be able to do laundry and mow the lawn.

(Here is a similar article with specifics by age.) 

I also found a religious article (not sure which religion, but it was helpful) that stated God commanded Adam to eat his "bread" by the "sweat of his brow."  No work, no eat.  Isn't that the way it works in the real world?  I thought about this-- in this case "bread" symbolizing money, and the article's author stating that children should not be given random money without work.  They need to learn the principle that things are a result of work, they don't just magically appear.

Another great article here, about why kids in this age don't work as hard as kids on the farm.  Her premise-- on the farm, if you don't work, you don't eat, because no crops are sown.  And on farms, families work together.

Here are some other articles I found interesting or useful.  This one is on the My Job Chart website-- great articles about teaching kids responsibility.  This one is good, too, about allowance and chores.  This one, called Helping Without Hovering, sums these thoughts up so beautifully and succinctly, I read it and cut it out of a magazine a while ago.  One more here about how "hard work trumps talent every time."  (I love the story of Harry Truman-- not college educated, yet one of the hardest workers I've ever heard of...he is one of my heroes for that reason alone)  I love the book Parenting with Love and Logic for teaching responsibility, which reiterates over and over that the younger a lesson is learned, the smaller a price one pays to learn it (ie, wasting money at age 7 has relatively small consequences, while wasting it at age 30 does).

I was reminded recently of this poem by William Ernest Henly called Invictus.  It inspired me during a hard time in my own life (here).

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


Henly couldn't have developed the resourcefulness, determination, strength, courage, and self-belief that oozes from this poem without having had difficult or hard experiences that helped him discover his true strength.  Qualities I want to help my kids develop.  And they're not going to get them sitting on a couch.  :)