Life Skills

I was talking with a group of moms this last week about helping your children to develop life skills. 



It would seem most in our culture under-estimate their kids' abilities for a given age, myself included. 



It requires so much effort and energy at the forefront to teach small children to do household tasks, that it's tempting to blow it off completely.

 

...but giving in to that temptation is no good, in the long run. 



It seems to breed resentment in everybody, and it certainly doesn't produce hard-working, capable older children. 
 

So I've been making an effort, here and there, to see more potential in my kids' abilities and to spend a little more time training them in tasks that I would otherwise like to be done with as soon as possible. 



It's amazing how much they like doing some of these things! 
 

Lucy's job is to clean out the silverware. 
 

She's only really done it a handful of times, but I can tell she feels proud of herself for getting to help, and she actually is learning how to sort the silverware properly and not just dump it all into the silverware drawer. 
 

I know before long whether she has to do the silverware will be yet another battle. 
 

But for now, it's an exciting new responsibility she enjoys. 



I would like to keep my mind on that -- appreciating her enthusiasm while it lasts and not already dreading the battles ahead. 



Both Lucy and Elliot enjoy "having a turn" with the carrot peeler when I'm peeling carrots.  This has resulted in my trying to peel carrots in secret.  We only have one peeler, and if I have to give them each a turn, that substantially increases the amount of time it takes me to peel a big pile of carrots.  But in spite of that, they each usually get a couple of turns with the carrot peeler. 



(Why don't I just buy another carrot peeler?)  And Lucy had a particularly pleasant time the other day peeling her carrot into the front end loader.  You will not find that activity on any of the Pinterest "toddler activity" pages, but it sure kept her occupied for a good 10 minutes. 



Time well spent, in my opinion--even if it slowed down dinner preparations by a good 10 minutes.