My house used to be so much cleaner when I wasn't working full time. Now much of that responsibility falls on the kids; kids who would much rather spend time surfing the internet, playing guitar hero, sleeping, or hanging out with friends. When they do get to their chores it is doing the bare minimum to get by with having done it.
When does that desire to do things at a better or higher level kick in? Does that come with being solely responsible, having your own place and no one else to do it? Because I sure haven't found a way to instill it in my kids yet. And if I have, they sure aren't letting me in on the secret!
It makes me wonder if they are ready to be adults on their own. I wonder what kind of employees, mothers, wives they will be.
If I could go back and do anything differently while raising them it would be to let/make them do more earlier. My biggest failure with that was I either thought they were "too little to do that" or they couldn't do it to the way I (being a perfectionist) liked it done or it was easier to do it myself than to spend the time teaching them to do it "right".
The problem with this is they grow up thinking that mom will do everything and if we ask them to clean their rooms we are so mean and unfair. When my oldest was about 4 years old we told her to go and clean her room. She turned around and looked at us and said "but mom is the worker".
Wow, talk about straight to the heart!
We can joke about that comment now but the underlying message of the statement still holds true. So I want to know. How do you get that work ethic kick in? That is one torch I want to pass on.
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