A confession from the heart.

How do I teach my children to work? This is the post from Mrs. Joseph Wood, and this post, along with a previous conversation I've had with her, has taught me an important lesson; my children aren't my own personal little labor force.

In my effort to teach them how to work as a team, to give them responsibilities, to give them a sense of pride in helping around the house, and skills on which they'd build and use later in life, I confess I've gone about this the wrong way! My approach was, I give you a chore, I show you how it's done, and I go do whatever I need to take care of. I did realize they would make mistakes, take longer to do the task then I would take to do it, and that I may in fact end up going behind them at some point to do the job again, but my attitude was so wrong! To me, part of the reason you give a child a task to do, other than to teach them life skills, is because that frees me to do other things. I wouldn't have the child do it to begin with, if I had the time or desire to do the task myself. There were also times, especially when trying to get them to clean up their room, that I'd stand behind them with the rod of chastening to help motivate them into action. I see now how wrong and unloving that was! It's not about 'you do this job and you do it now or else'. Working as a team doesn't mean I am excluded. It means I'm the team leader. The platoon leader doesn't tell his troops what to do and then send them out to the battle field without him! He leads them! He's not just in the ditches with them, he's in the front, encouraging them, not behind them threatening them! I want my children to do what I ask because they love me. Not because they're afraid of the consequences if they don't. Granted, there are some areas in life where that's inevitable. But picking up their toys shouldn't be one of them.

Thanks Mrs. Wood for your wisdom, and for sharing that wisdom with other moms like me, who had the right intentions, but lacked the knowledge.