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Why Don't Kids Do Chores Anymore?
The recommendation is to not let children mow grass because of the danger of
cutting off limbs and/or accidents. -- Sue (mom to three girls) "fgoodwin" wrote in message ups.com... Why Don't Kids Do Chores Anymore? http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/wor...01-opdyke.html http://tinyurl.com/gwrn8 By Jeff Opdyke From The Wall Street Journal Online When I was growing up, I spent many summer days struggling to shove a bulky Toro mower through the thick mat of grass that was my yard. That was my main weekly chore. I pushed that same mower around the neighborhood with my buddy, Mike, hawking lawn-cutting services for $10 a yard. I mention this because I've noticed something peculiar while driving around town in recent weeks: Though it's summer, I've yet to see a single kid out mowing a lawn. I don't see any kid-produced signs offering mowing services. I see teams of lawn-maintenance workers neatly tending yards...but no kids. It's not just lawns, mind you. During our time in New Jersey, I don't recall seeing any kids raking leaves in the fall. In three years not a single kid stopped by our house offering to shovel the snow off the driveway. I never hear my son's friends lamenting the chores they're charged with after school or on weekends. All they ever do is ride bikes or dash off to this practice or that game or some camp. I don't blame the kids. I blame the parents. To put it bluntly: We've gone soft. Partly, I think, we remember how much we hated the chores when we were younger. Partly we feel guilty about all the time we spend working. Partly we're just too lazy and it's easier to hire somebody than force our kids to do it. Whatever the reason, many of us are slacking off when it comes to imposing on our kids the same sorts of obligations our parents required of us. In watching my son water some plants for me the other day -- meaning, watching him barely sprinkle the plants amid his goofball antics with the hose and an anthill -- I realized that it's time to reverse the trend. Child-labor laws be damned, it's time my son went to work. * * * I don't recall how old I was when my grandfather -- who, with my grandmother, raised me -- started asking me to cut the grass, though I'm pretty sure I was about 9 or 10. I remember in second grade helping him in the garden and with odds and ends around the house. I also remember hating it: I would much rather have been down the street playing with my friends, or inside watching Scooby Doo on a Saturday morning. Occasionally, he might give me a couple of dollars for my effort, though usually he just patted me on the back and said, "Good job, buddy." Looking back on those days, I realize now what my grandfather was trying to teach me then: that you must establish a work ethic; you must learn to take care of your property; you can't always expect money for simply helping the family; and you must earn through an honest day's work what you want in this life. I can't say that I've sent an equally meaningful message to my own son up to this point. In fact, the message I'm sending is pretty much the opposite. For instance, we have a lawn-service guy who cuts the grass and edges the yard for $35 every week or two. I hired him because I don't have the time on weekends, between writing and rehabbing an old house I bought with a friend. The amount of money I can make on those activities far surpasses what I pay the lawn guy to cut my grass. Yet I'm beginning to see that the cost of hiring somebody to cut my grass goes beyond that $35. This is the first house we've owned -- and we've owned six -- where I haven't done the yard work. What my son sees is his mom and me paying someone else to do what we could do instead. So, I imagine he figures: "Why should I do what Mom and Dad won't?" Traces of that come out when he's assigned a small chore. He gets bored quickly and begins to play, and soon drops the task all together. It isn't a priority for him because I haven't instilled in him that it should be a priority. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I asked him to water some day lilies we had just planted. I watched him through the window: He spent about a minute on that duty, then began spraying an anthill, stirring up the ants and watching them busily try to preserve and rebuild their mound. When that lost his attention, he turned off the water, left the hose splayed across the yard and came inside to watch cartoons -- while the day lilies wilted in the heat. I know I've got company here. Not only do I see it in the absence of kids cutting grass and raking leaves and shoveling snow, but I also hear it from friends I talk to. Lots of parents don't force their kids to do much work around the house. Why, though? Why do we let our kids shirk the same responsibilities we once had? I can think of a few reasons... * * * Perhaps the key reason is that we live in an age that's more touchy-feely. Many parents -- and I concede that I am one of them -- are more lenient and less authoritarian than were our parents. When I was a child, my grandparents gave me a chore and they expected me to do it. Period. These days, Mom and Dad aren't so much setting the rules as they are negotiating with their kids. And kids learn to negotiate themselves out of tasks they don't want to be burdened with at the moment. But that isn't the only reason. It's also a question of money: Many of us have more of it than our parents did when they were raising us. If we can hire somebody to cut the grass every two weeks for less money than we'd spend on one dinner out, why not? Also, so many kids are overscheduled these days. They have soccer practice and tennis lessons and dance class. By the time they get home, there are barely enough hours for homework and dinner. Who has time to weed the garden? And then there's guilt. More couples both work nowadays, often logging long hours. That leaves us anxious not to waste those precious hours we do have for our kids. Chores, we rationalize, are inconvenient when we could be doing something as a family. So there are lots of reasons, many of them valid. But I'm convinced that none of them are good enough, and I'm going to change things around my house. My son isn't quite old enough to push a lawnmower across the yard yet, but he is old enough to help me weed the many flower beds we have. He's also old enough to rake leaves in the fall, to help me change the oil in the cars and to help me wash the dishes at night -- all of which will soon be on his to-do list. I may decide to pay him a little something for a few of those chores, since some of them are beyond what I view as weekly obligations. For the most part, though, I'll just pat him on the back and say, "Good job, buddy." -- July 01, 2005 |
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Why Don't Kids Do Chores Anymore?
"Sue" wrote in message news:LJqdnU1ig5wokMjZnZ2dnUVZ_sydnZ2d@wideopenwest .com... The recommendation is to not let children mow grass because of the danger of cutting off limbs and/or accidents. I think the recommendation is that kids under 12 not be allowed to use them. Unfortunately, not all people follow the recommendations, resulting in more injuries than is necessary. Jeff |
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Why Don't Kids Do Chores Anymore?
"fgoodwin" wrote in message
I began mowing lawns when I was about ten years old, and never had a problem, even with equipment (early 60s vintage) that wasn't nearly as safe as today's models. I think parents today don't give kids enough credit -- if taught how to use mowers & trimmers properly, there's no reason a boy 10, 11 or 12 couldn't handle them safely. If we could it do it back then, why can't they do it now? This recommendation came from Wright and Fillipis who make prosthesis for people who have lost limbs. They were very adament that children under 12 (I believe) not mow the lawn. Lawn mowers are extremely heavy and children cannot manage them properly, nor do they have the maturity to handle themselves in an emergency. We used to drive in cars without seat belts when we were kids, does that mean we shouldn't put our kids in seat belts anymore? -- Sue (mom to three girls) |
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Why Don't Kids Do Chores Anymore?
We do have kid teams in the area who come by and offer their services on
mowing lawns, but given the risk of damage to the child, and the inherent liability if a child injures himself doing someting dangerous under my employ, I wouldn't hire one. Those lawn services are licensed, bonded professionals with contracts which cover injury so that the homeowner doesn't risk a lawsuit if they try to unjam a blade and get cut or a rock flies up out of the mower blade and hits an eye. A lot of the chores I did related to gardening and processing produce-while my parents didn't have a farm anymore, we still grew a large percentage of our vegetables, and bought much of the rest from local farms, then canned or froze it ourselves. I'm not doing that as an adult-so it's unlikely my daughter will ever be faced with making gallons of applesauce from apples, picking up apples off the ground as they fall from trees every weekend for the entire growing season, or snapping bushels of beans. My gardening is confined to a few small flower beds, where weeding is a minimum (certainly not the bugbear of my childhood), and since we don't have large numbers of trees, picking up sticks after pruning is a much smaller task, one done once a year if that. Similarly, I washed dishes as soon as my head was tall enough that I could reach over the sink standing on a chair or stepstool. Well, in graduate school I got an apartment with a dishwasher, and the number of dishes I've washed by hand since then is probably less than I washed after one thanksgiving dinner as a child-and is limited to the things which could be damaged in the dishwasher and require special care-which means that my daughter won't be washing them at the age I started washing dishes. I don't scrub floors by hand-I have swiffers and similar assistants for that purpose. So, pretty much, the reason my daughter won't have as many chores as I did as a child is that, well, _I_ as an adult don't do as many chores. And you know what? My parents, who were both farm raised, regularly pointed out how much easier my brother and I had it than them-after all, we only had a quarter acre or so of garden and assorted trees to tend, not acres of farmland and multiple animals. -- Donna DeVore Metler Orff Music Specialist/Kindermusik Mother to Angel Brian Anthony 1/1/2002, 22 weeks, severe PE/HELLP And Allison Joy, 11/25/04 (35 weeks, PIH, Pre-term labor) |
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Why Don't Kids Do Chores Anymore?
"Donna Metler" wrote:
We do have kid teams in the area who come by and offer their services on mowing lawns, but given the risk of damage to the child, and the inherent liability if a child injures himself doing someting dangerous under my employ, I wouldn't hire one. Those lawn services are licensed, bonded professionals with contracts which cover injury so that the homeowner doesn't risk a lawsuit if they try to unjam a blade and get cut or a rock flies up out of the mower blade and hits an eye. When I was a kid, I mowed the lawn with a non-powered lawn mower. When I was a freshman or sophomore in hs, sometimes boys would come and mow the lawn for me (for free). I once had a 'boyfriend' who came to mow the lawn and actually brought his friend to do the mowing (for free) because he didn't want to actually do it. When we moved to Louisiana we were living in a former sugar cane field with fire ants, and it took dh two days on the weekend to mow. So we bought a power mower and my parents were aghast because they'd only had a power mower themselves for about two years. They thought we were spending money recklessly etc. But it cut the mowing time down to about two hours. When we moved here, we, we had over an acre of lawn, so we got a tractor mower, and ds used to mow with that. DD#1 does her own lawn and so does dd#3. But dd#3's oldest is only 8. DD#2 who lives in Florida hires it done. A lot of the chores I did related to gardening and processing produce-while my parents didn't have a farm anymore, we still grew a large percentage of our vegetables, and bought much of the rest from local farms, then canned or froze it ourselves. I'm not doing that as an adult-so it's unlikely my daughter will ever be faced with making gallons of applesauce from apples, picking up apples off the ground as they fall from trees every weekend for the entire growing season, or snapping bushels of beans. My gardening is confined to a few small flower beds, where weeding is a minimum (certainly not the bugbear of my childhood), and since we don't have large numbers of trees, picking up sticks after pruning is a much smaller task, one done once a year if that. I don't ever remember weeding as a child. Similarly, I washed dishes as soon as my head was tall enough that I could reach over the sink standing on a chair or stepstool. Well, in graduate school I got an apartment with a dishwasher, and the number of dishes I've washed by hand since then is probably less than I washed after one thanksgiving dinner as a child-and is limited to the things which could be damaged in the dishwasher and require special care-which means that my daughter won't be washing them at the age I started washing dishes. I washed (actually I usually dried) dishes when I was a kid and also in college it was one of the jobs we did. I got a dishwasher when my first couple of children were born, and then I moved to a house with a dishwasher (in California) so I gave my dishwasher to my mom. That was the first one she had. And we don't have a dishwasher on the boat. I don't scrub floors by hand-I have swiffers and similar assistants for that purpose. There are still floors that I'd prefer be done by hand. I don't think you can get floors really clean with swiffers. That just works for surface dirt. And we did always have vacuum cleaners for the rugs (never had wall to wall carpets except in rental houses). We didn't hang them on the lines and beat them anymore. My sister dusted because she was smaller and closer to the chair rungs, and I ran the vacuum. So, pretty much, the reason my daughter won't have as many chores as I did as a child is that, well, _I_ as an adult don't do as many chores. And you know what? My parents, who were both farm raised, regularly pointed out how much easier my brother and I had it than them-after all, we only had a quarter acre or so of garden and assorted trees to tend, not acres of farmland and multiple animals. My grandchildren's chores are mostly things like putting out the trash, and feeding various animals (which some of them have quite a lot of animals - dd#2 has a dog, two cats, a guinea pig, and several tanks of fish, and ds has two dogs, three cats, some budgies, a rabbit and a fish tank) grandma Rosalie |
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