It is important to teach  your children how to handle responsibilities. Life skills are so important and yet people forget to include these when training their children. When you homes educate your children you really need to embrace training your children how to do household chores and then expecting them to complete them up to your standards.

Now I will admit that I had to assess whether the standard I had was being nitpicky or reasonable. For example, I was taught to fold bath towels in half, then half again and then into thirds. That is how I thought towels were supposed to be folded. Well when I got married, my darling husband did not fold towels that way and did not see the need to do so. There were many times I went behind him and refolded the towels “the right way”. But by the time I was home educating  my children, either I could wear myself out doing everything myself or I could relax some standards that were not crucial to a good job being done. If they folded the towels then I left it be but if they just balled them up and stuffed them in the basket, that would be unacceptable. Do your carpets have to have the vacuum “lines” all going the right direction? I think not.

Your children will still be bettered by being able to vacuum, fold laundry, wash dishes, and yes, even make dinner. When my children were in their final year or two of official education, I required the child to make dinner one night a week. This ensured that if they lived on their own, they would not have to eat unhealthy things because they weren’t taught how to cook. It also ensured that their spouses would be blessed by having a marriage partner that could help out in the kitchen when necessary. Plus it had the added benefit of giving me a night off from kitchen duty. Win!

Requiring children to clean up after themselves, help with dishes and dinner, vacuuming, and dusting, washing windows, cleaning the car, putting away groceries and yard work are all things that they will need to know how to do when they are on their own, so it is a good idea to teach them how to do it well. And then periodically inspect their work to ensure that they meet your standards.

Oh, one more thing . . . sometimes children think they have done something just because they thought about doing it. This is something that you have to work on and make the child aware that they need to follow through and do what they think about doing as soon as they think it rather than waiting where the lines can be blurred between knowing you should do something and having done it. I have one blessed child that still struggles with this and actually thinks the task has been completed when it hasn’t. I give a reminder and am usually met with amazement that it is left undone. There is no harm with this but a continued working and growing, helping this dear one to work through this difficult situation. This too shall pass . . . I hope.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº