Kids and Chores

I remember trying to teach a boss that it was better to get something done slowly while teaching someone else to do it, than to keep doing everything yourself. I painstakingly took many student workers through training so that they could grow in their skills, and my time could be freed up to work on tasks they really couldn't do.

Now I have children and I find it a constant battle to take the time to teach them daily tasks rather than just doing it myself. My own mother was great at this and she has taught Kyrie a number of household tasks. I have also realized that kids are interested in doing chores for a very short period of their life. I need to seize the day.

But what should I expect? Where should I start? I found some helpful tools on workingmom.com. This is an Age-Appropriate Task List. Evie can help pick up toys and she loves to put things in the garbage. (It is a good idea to check the garbage often to see what else she has put in there.) Kyrie loves anything with a spray bottle so I'm going to teach her to clean mirrors and glass this summer. Ben...Does not get thrilled about chores but he will work for rewards. So we will be working on adding to his responsibilities so he can earn more privileges.

This is the best Kid-Do List because it allows you to build it yourself based upon your child's tasks and give them a priority. I've used charts in the past but they all had chores that weren't relevant (feed the cat, etc...) and were just in the way. And you can email it to your older kids.

On to summer chores.

Monthly Goals

So, I got off to a sputtering start with new year's resolutions and was trying to get them all done, in categories. HA! This season of life is known as "try to raise kids that will not be a menace to society and still have your health." Goals have to be a little less overarching.

So it brings me great joy to say that I accomplished one of my recent goals (no 5):  to organize my linen closet before my mom visited (she arrives Friday). Yes, that top shelf looks a little messy but we have a lot to get up high so a mischievous 5-year old and her accomplice (age 2) don't create total havoc with all the gift wrap supplies.  

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Meanwhile, I'm working toward no. 3. I took a friend with taste shopping and looked at fake plants, storage boxes, baskets, and a variety of decor options. I came away with a couple of things. The giant red vase (with lid) and the basket. The basket is sturdy and can easily be filled up with misc. toys that are not picked up when that is requested. So I liked how practical it was. But not entirely satisfied. I realize that I may have to do something seasonal or at least plan on updating this area again in a year. But for now, there it is.

So, Yeah, the Goal Thing

Yes, I'm still working on goal-setting. So far, I'm doing a remarkable job of achieving my goal which was to "give myself time to set other goals." Yay me! But I am still proceeding.

A personal goal I have this year to make further efforts to beautify and organize my home. I'm no Edith Schaeffer and while I have a definite creative side, it does not express itself in artfully arranged flowers, the perfect tablecloth, or an organized linen closet.  Some of the things I want to do involve more money than we have (a matching bedroom set), but the practical applications of this goal I hope to accomplish in 2012 are:

1. Buy a comforter or quilt set that includes an adequate dust ruffle that won't shred and matches our bedroom curtains. 
2. Do something about my kitchen window. I bought curtains for $5 when we moved in and they come down and hit my houseplants and they are ugly and not quite wide enough. I tend to get excited about bargains. Now I need to find a way to get something I'm happy with. I need light so it will probably just be a valance. 
3. I have a very high (10 feet up there) built-in shelf in the living room. I tried to grow house plants up there which is a great idea but neither Mike nor I ever watered them. Thus they are dead. I want to find something to put up there that is meaningful. I have no idea what that is yet. Ideas are welcome.
4. Lots of organization that needs to happen. The kitchen needs huge help because while I love organizing people, I do not love organizing things. Boring. Kyrie, however, does, so I'm going to incorporate her help to do better with the kitchen. 
5. My linen closet is abominable. My grandmothers would be ashamed. My mother stayed with the kids recently and needed to find sheets. She had trouble. That's wrong. I will be organizing this before she stays with the kids again in March. 

Yeah, stay tuned. 

Goals: Family (Part 1: My Parenting)

I've taken the last week or so to think about some of my goals and one area that I moved to the top was parenting. If you are following these goal categories, I guess you could call it "family goals." Which is a great topic. But for the present I need to focus on my end of it, which is parenting.

It is clear to me that I got bogged down quickly this fall and became the parent I don't want to be. When I get tired, my parenting becomes whiny (instead of firm), loud (instead of action-based), and anything but playful. I am not good at playing with my kids ever, but I do make intentional moves to be more fun. I have a close friend who remembers a childhood in which her mother was forever cleaning the house and never happy with it, never playing with her kids, and not any fun. I am that mother. My friend's house is frequently a disaster, but yesterday when it snowed, she took her kids sledding. I do believe in balance; kids should learn to be responsible and take care of their things, but I tend toward the uptight "Pick up your toys NOW" mother. My own mother was great at taking time to play with us. But we also played outside more as children than our kids do (our kids fall victim to weather and suburbia) which had to have helped give my mother time on her other projects indoors.

When I'm exhausted, I'm too tired to engage in art or science projects that create more work. And I also stop teaching my kids how to help me because it is easier just to scoot them out of the way and get it done faster. I know some things that work; I just need to do them again. So, here goes:

1) Be intentional and clear-headed about my parenting.

• Reassess monthly what is and is not working and realign my parenting to a model I can be proud of. I have an hour set up on my calendar to this each month.
• Re-read two parenting books this year. (The first will be How to Pray for Your Children which I'm cross-listing with my spiritual goals. Parenting books inspire me and learning from others is essential to growth.)
• Do my best to retreat and regroup when I am failing. My oldest two understand that I have to step outside and walk around the driveway sometimes. They encourage it. I need to do it sooner before my rope is hopelessly frayed.

 2) Balance fun and responsibility.

• Be patient and teach the older two to step up their help around the house. Continue to reinforce picking up her own toys with the 2-yr old. And be ready to potty-train her when I see signs of readiness. 
• Try to play at least one game (board or outside) a week. 
• Continue to motivate responsible behavior with rewards without bribing.

Goals and Tasks

I recently finished Donald Rumsfeld's book Known and Unknown. In addition to being a breathtakingly up close and personal look at 50 years of American history, Rumsfeld is the guy to read if you want to know how to set and accomplish your goals. (Forget the self-help books on the subject; here is a guy who did it, repeatedly. He also beats the self-helps because he doesn't start out with "I set a goal to make a million dollars before I turned 30. I did it and so can you.") The book is back at the library but Rumsfeld wrote something to this effect: Be certain to make sure your strategy to meet your objective doesn't become the objective. You need to constantly re-evaluate if what you are doing is still taking you toward meeting your goal; if it isn't reexamine the strategy and find something that works. 

I tend to get bogged down in one of two extremes.

1) I set goal after goal without any strategy as to how I'll meet that goal. I love lofty goals; generally the tasks required are where I get lost. A common problem among dreamers, those folks who buy all the "how to" books but never lose a pound, pay down their debt, or put anything toward retirement. They keep buying the get rich books but ignoring the reality that they are going to have to live like paupers and work like bees to get anywhere. I am that woman who talks about how she is going to lose some weight while downing a piece of pie. (And I don't mean the European-sized slice.)

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2) I get so task-driven I fail to keep in mind the goal while driving everyone in my family insane.  This one is easier for me to work out on others, particularly my children. After a nice couple of weeks off school, Ben started his math yesterday and the griping and complaining started and I was ready to put him on the bus to go to school by the time Mike came home. I had some time to myself last night and it started to hit me that Ben is good at math and that his math curriculum is very busy and written for the poorest math student who just can't seem to "get it." Today I pulled out his lesson and realized that he was working nearly every day on concepts he learned two years ago. And doing boring, repetitious problems to boot. Years ago, my teachers recognized I didn't need to do ALL of the problems; why couldn't I figure this out? Because I was task-driven. You must finish this lesson; you must finish this book by the end of the year. (Oh, we're behind.) So I killed two birds with one stone and crossed out half of two lessons. He took liberties and crossed out some more hoping I wouldn't notice but quickly acquiesced. And was quite delighted to double up his progress and skip a bunch of busy work.

In years past, my goal-setting has gone something like this:

• Get more exercise. 
• Eat healthier. 
• Waste less time. 

There is no strategy included and no way for me to be able to meet those goals if I don't have a plan. 

So this year, I'm going beyond goal-setting and developing strategies to help me meet my goals. Which is far more challenging.

To Be Continued....