Читать книгу Raising Able - Susan Tordella - Страница 45

Do not underestimate the value of making the job enjoyable through teamwork, encouragement and appreciation, and just plain old fun, like dancing around in socks to clean the floors and combining vinegar and baking soda in the toilet.

A 12-year-old girl wrote in my survey, “I do it because I have to and some chores are fun.”

One Saturday when our children were 6 to 13 years old, Bob and I were painting the hallways and steps of our Cape Cod style house. The job intruded in the heart of the house because it included the two main hallways and the staircase. It was like a broken computer: life was blocked until we finished painting and cleaned up.

I painted the base coat the day before when the children were at school. We planned to sponge paint the walls and had enough sponges for everyone, including some of the children’s friends who were visiting and clad in our old T-shirts.

Many hands do make fast work. Within an hour we had a colorful interesting sponge pattern on the many walls. It was not perfect or to standards Bob and I could have achieved if we had spent all morning doing it while the children enjoyed sugared screen time. It looked remarkably good.

At the end, the children were disappointed. “Can we do more?” they said.

Children and teens consider it fun to demonstrate expertise parents don’t have. Youngsters can often out-perform adults in some areas. My children’s homemade cookies were always better than mine because they followed the recipe and added 100 percent of the sugar and butter.

I offered encouragement: “These cookies are delicious. Your cookies are always better than mine,” and ate several. Watching homemade food disappear quickly is powerful encouragement.

Like many Millennials, my teens were techno-savvy. Where would we be without our children to operate the remote controls, describe the latest online-gadgets and repair our computers?

Witnessing, encouraging and appreciating their contributions are more valuable than money or praise.