Posts by SusanArico:
Chores and Character for Children
February 15th, 2012Chores and character for children
Every night it was the same exhausting song and dance. I’d stand over them, half-dressed and goofing off, and chide them to finish getting ready for bed. They’d maybe get a bit further with donning their PJ’s (or not) – and them, same thing. I’d be prodding them again toward teeth-brushing and the rest of the rigamarole. Oh, they got it all right, my 4- and 6-year olds. They knew what to do, how to do it, that they need to get it done. They were just unmotivated, inefficient, forgetful.
Beyond the repetition, my annoyance stemmed from hands full with the two babies (2 months and 2 years), the ones who really couldn’t do it by themselves. And my grace and patience had inevitably waned thin by 6:45 as we’d enact the nightly ritual.
The old saying, “God helps those who help themselves” isn’t the Bible, and it isn’t (in many ways) true. God’s pretty much all about helping us, we who literally can’t (because of sin and its effects) help ourselves. He’s the strong, capable, willing Helper of all who come to him and ask. That’s why Jesus came and died.
But even so, we are supposed to honor God with our lives and work, doing our best with the life He gave us. Be diligent. Steward our gifts and talents. “Carry our own load” in our daily tasks as we walk through life. We’re to work wholeheartedly as if we were doing it for God Himself. And the way I see it, the earlier and more thoroughly everyone learns these lessons, the better.
I love this Proverb, which boils the concept of hard work to the thumbnailversion: “Slack habits and sloppy work are as bad as vandalism.” (18:9, The Message)
That kind of gets to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? Imagine how upset you’d be if you found out your kid was responsible for a huge, hideous swath of graffiti on the local highway bridge. No run-of-the-mill misbehavior there – vandalism’s kind of a big one. And here’s the writer of Proverbs saying that laziness and a poor work ethic are just as serious as that kind of activity.
Bottom line: an industrious spirit is important – for us and for our families. And instilling good work habits in our children matters. It’s no use pushing it off, making excuses for them because of their age, or doing the work yourself because it goes faster and gets done better that way (which it does). Another proverb says that “diligent hands will rule,” and if we want those hands to be our kids’, we have to do the work of cultivating that diligence as they grow.
When I stepped back from the inefficient-evening-routine we’d fallen into, it was pretty obvious that we had a boundaries problem where I was bearing the consequences of my children’s poor work habits instead of them. That needed to change. I was failing them by not holding them to a high enough standard of work. This failure was hurting both them and myself – them by allowing sloppy work (and the character problems Proverbs implies), and me because of the frustration and lost time it caused me.
There are probably a hundred tools out there a mom can choose from to facilitate chores and daily tasks for kids, if she’s ready to make a change (as I was). I picked the Accountable Kids program, with which I’ve been pretty happy; today we’re gobs better about evening routine, and chores in general, that we used to be. The specific program is less important than the motivation and the consistency to implement it. Because the point isn’t bootcamp or a graceless, rigid environment – we’re not talking child labor here. We’re talking helpful children regularly performing age-appropriate tasks they know how to do. The point is a teamwork atmosphere where everyone – parents and kids alike – internalize the reality that family members are responsible for attending to their own tasks; that we each carry our own load. And ultimately (and this part requires more time, likely years, to really get) we do so willingly, to the glory of Jesus and for His honor.
So here’s to the opposite of “slack habits and sloppy work” in your household and in mine!
Next Week’s Author: Jeanine Cook
Celebrating Kindness
November 15th, 2011
I was feeding my two-month old daughter in the doctor’s waiting room with my three other young kids in tow when a woman with six children sat down to chat. Kind-spirited, she seemed on a mission to encourage me, saying how well she remembered the challenges of the early years. I surmised by the Bible verse memory flashcards one girl held that they were believers. As they walked out, the littlest girls picked up the flashcards her sister had forgotten, and her mother said encouragingly: “Sweetheart! You did a kindness for your sister, without even being asked!” The little girl beamed.
That exchange stuck with me. I loved that the woman noticed the act so readily, referred to the favor as “a kindness,” and so intentionally celebrated her daughter for it. My kids squabble and bicker regularly, and I could stand to address this dynamic with more front-end proactivity and less back-end reactivity and correction. The doctor’s-office family thought about kindness, talked about kindness, and reinforced kindness when they saw it; they made me want to be that intentional about recognizing kindness.
So we made and prominently posted a kindness chart on a big piece of butcher block paper. It was basic and un-fancy: the word “Kindness” across the top in colored-in block letters with a short Bible verse about kindness beneath it [“God our Father is kind; you be kind,” Luke 6:36, the Message.] Every night at dinner the kids told us one kind thing they did that day, or one kind thing a sibling did for them, and up it went on the chart. When the whole chart was full of kindnesses, we’d read them all aloud and have a kindness celebration.
The chart’s presence and our evening practice injected the concept of kindness into the conversation where I never would have used it before. “Can you do a kindness for me and pick up that bib?” I’d ask my daughter. Or if my son is clearing the table while his sister’s in the bathroom: “Why don’t you clear all of the dishes as a kindness for your sister?” The acts weren’t entirely selfless since the recognition provided by the chart was a big motivator, but it was great as an initial motivator. It practically displayed the fact that performing kindness feels good and is a choice we intentionally make. A praiseworthy choice. A Christ-like choice. Talking about these kindness and noticing individual acts sets the tone that I – and of course God! – want in my home.
Two months in, we held the long-awaited “Kindness Celebration.” The kids were beyond ecstatic, having asked about it for days — “Is the paper full? Can we have our Kindness Celebration now?”
The format was simple. Here’s what we did:
–Spent dinner talking about what kind of sundaes everyone was going to have. In between, read the first half of the items on the list, praising the kindness of the do-er in each case.
-Reviewed our kindness Bible verse: “God our Father is kind; you be kind!” (Luke 6:35, The Message)
-Announced the pending Kindness Celebration, suggesting homemade ice cream sundaes.
–Read the second half of the items on the Kindness Chart aloud, again praising the kindnesses shown.
-Went to the store, bring the ingredients home, and make the sundaes
–Allowed each child to share which kindness documented on the list s/he most enjoyed doing and which s/he most enjoyed receiving. Finish by having everyone at the table recite the Bible verse together.
It was almost startling to see how exuberant the children were about the party and every little aspect of it. They adored it. And when we read the recorded kindness that they’d done, they both beamed in turn. And beamed again. And again. Our son, almost 6, actually said at one point: “It made me feel so good when you read that!”
We all know that positive reinforcement is important, and that it takes seven spoken praises to balance out on spoken criticism. But this exercise was an amazing opportunity to remember and specifically call out right actions performed by our children and actually celebrate them. To encourage the good and selfless moments that take place in sibling interactions, even if they seem rare. It was a chance to reinforce the good my husband and I see in our children, and to make a big deal about it. It was a perfect example of the kind of “building others up” that Paul talks about in Ephesians 4:29. Our kids were very built up by our little party and its events. And they got to experience how good it can feel to be kind – both in the service and in its remembering.
