Were you as unqualified to live on your own as I was when I got married? My husband and I were both full-time college students when we married, and I had never lived on my own before that. I had had chores to do around the house growing up -- dusting, cleaning the bathrooms, mopping the kitchen floor -- but I had no idea how to run a household. I had never been responsible for buying groceries, cleaning the entire house, cooking dinner, or regularly cleaning the kitchen. So many frustrations that first year of marriage stemmed from me having to learn immediately so many of those basic household tasks.
My mother knew that I would need scholarship money in order to attend college, and she rightly focused my attention on my grades and building an academic resume so that I could get those scholarships. I am so grateful for that. However, I would like my children to have more life-skill preparation than I had. Since we homeschool, it is easier to build the learning of these skills into my children's lives than it was for my mother to build them into mine.
A great book to help in this area is Kay Wills Wyma's Cleaning House: A Mom's 12-month Experiment to Rid her Home of Youth Entitlement. In this book, Wyma documents how she had her children work on a different task each month that she felt was important for them to learn for adulthood.
Month 1: A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place. This month the Wyma Family focused on keeping their rooms clean. Kay kept a jar of 30 quarters for each child. If the room was not up to standard, a quarter was removed for that day. The kids got to keep any quarters left in their jars at the end of the month.
Month 2: Kitchen Patrol. Each child had one day per week in which he was responsible for shopping for, preparing, and cleaning up before and after dinner. (Our family has done this a different way, partially because I hate cleaning the kitchen by myself and don't want to make my kids do that. I make a menu list for two weeks. Each of my children has a particular night that is his to cook dinner from the options available on the menu. That night, he also must do the dishes that need washed by hand. His siblings take care of putting the leftover food away, loading the dishwasher, wiping the surfaces, and sweeping the kitchen.)
Month 3: Groundskeeping. Wyma's plan for teaching her kids about yard work was to keep a job posting board with extra outdoor jobs that needed done and the amount that she would pay for each one.
Month 4: Working for a Living. I can't remember at what age she set the requirement, but at some point, she required her children to have summer jobs. Some of the jobs were just volunteer "jobs," but the goal was to have them be accountable to someone besides mom.
Month 5: Dirty Jobs. She taught them to clean the bathrooms. Definitely necessary for life.
Month 6: Laundry. Again, basic necessity here.
Month 7: The Handyman Can. We bought our son a toolbox when he was maybe 8 years old. Since then, he has always been happy to do anything that requires his tools -- even a job as simple as changing the dog's tags each year.
Month 8: The Entertainers. Wyma had her children each plan and host a party within budget. I had never considered this before (family of introverts, need I say more?), but my kids did this and it was kind of fun. All of their parties were different and reflected their personalities.
Month 9: Team Players. The children learned the value of working together on a big project, such as cleaning out the garage.
Month 10: Runner's World. Wyma had her teens run errands. Make sure to include pumping gas -- both my drivers were afraid of doing that, so I have had to make sure I made them practice it. My husband had a great idea when our kids' first got their licenses. He made the deal with them that if they drove for us as much as they drove for themselves, they didn't have to pay for gasoline. We got asked a lot if we needed anything from the store or if younger siblings needed rides anywhere.
Month 11: Serving Others. The Wyma children worked on keeping their eyes open to the needs of those around them. They served others anonymously when possible.
Month 12: Minding Your Manners. Manners are a simple way of reminding ourselves to think of others' needs before our own.
Of course, as we are talking about kids doing chores and learning these life skills, the most important thing to remember is that we can send our kids a very wrong message about themselves. When we hover, race in to save them, arrange their success, or redo a chore after they have done it incorrectly, we send a very clear message to them. That message is, "I will do it for you because you can't." Wyma reminds us that the better message to send is, "I believe in you and am going to prove it by putting you to work." Sometimes we may need to take some time to explain or reteach, but it is worth it in the long run.
There are so many benefits to our kids working at home. They realize that they have an important place in the family. They learn to think of others' needs. They learn the life skills that they will need one day. It makes our load lighter as moms. Who know? Perhaps it will even save them some fights that first year of marriage.
