Teaching the value of hard work

It has just occurred to me in the past few weeks that my children are spoiled, lazy, and irresponsible. In many respects I still treat them like babies, and they have zero responsibilities around the house.

If any of you out there in cyber-space have any great tips or ideas--please share!

I stewed over several ideas and just became more full of questions. (sticker chart? or pegboard? do you pay them? or should they help because thats part of being a family? what are kids that age really capable of doing? how do I get them to be self-motivated about it and avoid a power struggle? how do you keep it simple but still get things done? do they need an immediate reward or a weekly reward or both?)

I had visions of creating some elaborate plan, with a hand-painted wooden pegboard and a big kick-off family meeting to introduce it all, but I sort of lost momentum...

Then Friday afternoon when I was gearing up to do the weekly deep clean I thought, "Why not? Let's see what these kids can do." So I waved a couple dollars in their greedy little faces and started making assignments.

I figured this would actually be more work for me since I would have to show them what to do and "help" them do it. And in Zion's case that was exactly what happened. I learned a lot about my kids that day.

Zion has a very short attention span when it comes to work so if it takes more than a minute or so to complete- he will never finish. He gave a great effort to sweeping the back porch until we both decided that job would be better for someone a little taller to do. Then I introduced him to the Windex. Its squirtgun-like properties made it the funnest thing EVER. And since most of the smudges on the sliding glass door are about his height anyway he actually did a very decent job.

Hosanna got the coveted assignment of scrubbing the bathtub. Oh, she got to wear her bathing suit and oh, Rivka was jealous. She spent a good solid half hour in there humming to herself and getting Comet on every inch of her appendages. I have to admit that the bathtub looked much better after that date with Hosanna Banana, and all I had to do was go in for a minute and show her the spots she missed ( and scrub when she wasn't looking).

Rivka has always had a thing for cleaning. As a baby she would steal baby wipes and go around the house wiping everything off- the walls, her shoe, her mouth-usually in that order. But she's only 5, so I didn't have real high hopes of her being much of a true help to me. First I had her wash all the baseboards ( they sparkle, its amazing) and then she wanted another job so I had her vacuum every inch of our apartment (by herself completely while I watched with my mouth gaping open- why didn't I teach her this years ago?) Still hungry for more work I let her mop the bathroom and kitchen by hand. I am hoping that in a year or two I can sit on the couch with my feet up and just bark orders on cleaning day. :)

The kids were very excited about their dollars and very proud to show daddy the jobs they did. I really wanted them to have a lot of fun the first time to get that spark in them, you know? We'll find out this Friday if it worked...