Thursday, April 3, 2008
Learning Or Lazy?
Seems I do quite a bit of pondering and talking with God when cleaning up the dog kennel and cutting the grass in it. Today I was thinking about how hard I have to push at the children to do a proper job of picking up the dog messes. I usually have to send them back at least two more times for piles they have missed and it drives me crazy. This is across the board behavior. ALL of the children suffer from ididntseeitits. It is SO frustrating. All you have to do is LOOK. You can see it THERE and THERE and THERE. My children are being outright LAZY. Or, are they? Once again, God reminded me that I am an adult who has had 35 years to learn how to see where the dog messes are. How can I rightly expect that people who have lived less than half of that time would have the same experiential knowledge or developmental skills that I do to be able to focus on the task at hand and do it thoroughly the first time? And haven't I been spending the last 5 1/2 years in the swamp learning who I am in Christ; that I was made special and different specifically for the tasks that God has for me on this earth and that He has made us ALL differently? Although it is my job to teach them these things and yes, at least part of it is just good old fashioned lazy - I can't expect them to be so skilled at it and approach it in the same way, JUST because I do. So much more learning I have to do about this thing called parenting. Currently I am feeling lazy about the whole thing.
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3 comments:
Children are actually little mercenaries in disquise. If that chore is on their do to for an allowance list, try putting a 'value' to each mess. For everyone they pick up - that's worth X cents. For each one they miss - that's X cents deducted. It's amazing, suddenly their eyes (and noses) are opened to a whole lot more mess.
Honestly, there really is spiritual value to teach them to work for their money and to do their work well. There are somethings like attitude that should not have a price tag on them, but an actual chore around the house, remember you are training up America's next workforce generation.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
Hang in there, don't be so hard on yourself. You're basically a single parent home right now.
You're so right about not expecting perfection from others who haven't had as much time to learn how to do the job as well as we have with our years of experience (I see this in Christian circles, too with longtime Christians expecting perfection of brand new believers)...and also that some of it is the natural tendency to be lazy. I've been guilty of all of this.
I have to agree with Marsha, though...a lot of what you're feeling sounds like plain old exhaustion from shouldering the whole parental load on your own for such long stretches of time.
When my mom went to work when I was in Middle School, our former SAHM family went through some drastic changes. Out of necessity she gave each of us four kids jobs that had to be done each day for things to function smoothly around the house. It wasn't an option...we knew we had to do these jobs because others were depending on them getting done and we'd get in big trouble if they weren't done daily.
Being the oldest, I was responsible for all the family laundry (except my mom's delicate work clothes), gathering, sorting, washing and folding (everyone had to put their own folded stuff away). My next younger sister had to keep the dishes done and the kitchen clean. We were each responsible for keeping a bathroom clean. The two younger siblings were given jobs of keeping the trash taken out daily, vaccuming and dusting, and feeding and cleaning up after the pets. My parents basically took care of shopping and cooking.
That worked really well for us (though in early years, there was a lot of calling my mom at her job at a bank and tattling on each other, lol) but it helped everything to run pretty smoothly for years, even after my folks divorced (when my sister and I assumed the cooking, too, getting home much earlier than our harried mom). My mom always knew who to get after if something wasn't done. It was just expected of us that we had to do our part by keeping our chores done.
Every so often, my sister and I would trade off jobs for a week or two, but we usually went back to our originally assigned tasks having become pretty good at managing them.
well, i am feeling a little lazified too.
you COULD follow all the good advice above,
ooooooorrrrr
You COULD just whip out a credit card and book the two of us a trip to europe where we can be lazy to our hearts content while we still have valid passports.
no?
;)
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