There aren’t many jobs out there tougher than motherhood. Child rearing is a full time job, and the fact moms often do it on little sleep and with very limited resources is truly remarkable.
Not to mention all the manual labor involved!
“Momming” itself is work enough, but when you add housecleaning, laundry, meal planning, cooking, and errand running to it, it’s a pressure cooker of responsibility that is enough to drive any woman out of her senses, even if she has a spouse who shares the work.
But I do think we moms often make it harder on ourselves. How? By not allowing, (or forcing, if necessary,) our kids to help us.
It’s a mistake I’ve often made myself. I have needed help and wanted it, and yet I have refused it from the most obvious and available source: My own children. And I know from conversations with other moms that I am not alone in this!
So why don’t we get our kids to help more often than we do? We know it teaches them responsibility and gives them a better sense of ownership and teamwork, and of course it helps get things done around the house! But I think there are a couple of primary reasons why we don’t take advantage of their help more often.
I know many moms who look back at their own childhood and feel they had too much responsibility thrust upon them too early in life. I’ve had more than one friend tell me of being expected to keep house, cook meals, and tend to younger brothers and sisters alone from the time they were as young as 8 or 9 years old. No wonder moms like this struggle to put much responsibility on their kids! They don’t want to rob their children of the happy, carefree childhood they wish they could have enjoyed themselves.
But it’s still a mistake not to give kids some responsibility around the house, even though it’s an understandable mistake in this case.
I think sometimes, too, we have such nice things we are afraid to hand their care over to our children. For a lot of our grandparents and great-grandparents this wasn’t an issue because they didn’t have much of value! They didn’t spend a lot of time stressing over a child washing their designer clothes or putting away their expensive dishes. They didn’t have those things! Meals were simpler, too, and there were no electronics or digital devices to protect.
I also think we don’t give kids responsibility because it seems like more work for us. And, initially anyway, it often is! But how do kids learn to be helpful — to find what works and what doesn’t — without being allowed to help?
I’ll be honest, it’s tough to stand back and watch a child fold clothes when they aren’t doing it my way. It’s hard to allow a child to cook when I know how easy it is to make an ENORMOUS mess in the kitchen!
But kids, just like adults, learn by doing, and if they are never allowed to DO, they will never be able to learn!
I have always loved to cook, but in recent years it seemed I had come to dread and even resent it, primarily because of the mess I was left with when it was over! I was usually exhausted before I even started cooking, and then when it was all done I was left with a tremendous mess that would take another hour or more to clean up to my satisfaction. I felt like every night was being spent entirely in the kitchen. And that was pretty much the case!
Yes, I would get the kids to help some, but the control freak in me just refused to hand over the job entirely. When I finally let go and began trusting my kids with the responsibility, what a blessing! Yes, in the beginning I had to be very specific and a little bit critical, and I had to supervise constantly, but in no time at all my kids had figured things out and even established assigned duties. What I had feared would be a long and tedious, (and messy!) process of learning was actually easier and faster than I ever dreamed.
Sometimes, mamas, we are tired and stressed and overworked because we don’t allow our children to help us. Sometimes it’s because we want things our way, done by our system, when our way and our system are totally unnecessary. Sometimes it’s because we have nice things that we want to protect, but at what price to both our physical bodies and our sanity? And at what price to our kids? They need to learn responsibility and how to care for a home and family. And the earlier they start learning the basics, the better!
The BIGGEST reason our kids don’t help out more around the house? We don’t let them.
Start letting go, moms. Let those kids help, and start making your own life a little easier while knowing you’re teaching your kids lessons they will need throughout their lives.
