July 27, 2008
Work - Blessing or Curse?
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Welcome to the twenty fifth edition of A Living Education E-zine! Most of my American subscribers will soon be heading into their new school year after what I hope has been a wonderful fun filled restful summer vacation. This is the time that parents are choosing their new programs for the 2008/2009 school year, so if you have not already, be sure to take a look at my homeschool curriculum reviews
Our family has been working very hard in our home, in our veggie garden as well as in our businesses. As I have been working alongside my children I have been pondering “work” and we have been discussing healthy work ethics as well as how our characters are built when we embrace a task that we don’t particularly like.
We all have them...I have spoken about this before in one of my E-zines where I mentioned getting through the yucky jobs with a “just do it” attitude. For me washing the dishes at night is not my choice of activity but I do it because it simplifies things for the morning and I prefer going to bed with a clean kitchen.
For my children I often find that they have a much longer list of disliked chores, but as we have trained their characters over the years they do the work with generally happy hearts.
Charlotte Mason
“Let children alone-...the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose."
We must understand the point of this quote is that we need to first secure that they will go the right way, and then we can stop the intense training. A while back I despaired when I felt like I had been working on a specific child training situation for long enough. My bother was “But I have been dealing with this same issue in my child for months and it is still not resolved!”
Some discipling of our children seems to stick much faster than others and there are those days when we tend to hand out the instructions left, right and center. A few years ago when we considering an olive farm and we were doing our research we were told not to expect a yield for 7 years. Gosh, I remember thinking, that sounds just like a parenting analogy in the making!
So when I was despairing over this particular issue God reminded me that my children all still have “Under Construction” signs on them as do I! So how does this relate to my monthly theme on work?
Children
From very young we have included our children in the daily work that is needed to run our home. We started our little ones with simple easy chores from the time they could walk. As they grew in maturity and strength we opened new doors of responsibility for them. The home became their first training ground and still is for my younger three children. You see many folk miss the point of getting their children to do their chores. Busy homeschool moms can see the doing of chores as only a way to get the house clean with a few extra pairs of hands, when in fact the basic principle of teaching our children to work within our home is a much bigger picture to grasp.
Chores are the first building block in learning stewardship. As your toddler remembers to put his shoes away or obeys you and throws away her diaper after a change, you are sowing the first seeds of responsibility.
Add to this working with a happy heart and you are teaching them to be content when they have to do something they don’t want to do.
The link back to the Charlotte Mason quote above is to ensure that we do not spend the whole day on at our children to “pick this up” and “pack that away”. Set your chore times, train them to do them correctly and deal with any grumbles with grace and by example.
Once your children have learnt to serve in their homes, to serve their parents and their siblings with happy hearts, then they can be encouraged to find other opportunities for work. This is not a process that can be rushed and often I hear from moms of 6 year olds who want them to do odd jobs for others to earn and income...be very careful not to rush a harvest out of season!
Recently my oldest daughter has taken on a job to pay for her lease on a horse. She is now 13.5 years old and has a grooming job as well as mending torn horse blankets to cover the cost of her lease. It is wonderful to know that she can be released in this area as she has been prove trustworthy in her home and relationships here.
Organizational Tips
Over the past 2 years I have often made reference to the chore charts found on my website and I recently published a chore program for kids. As I was preparing updated charts for my own children I had a light bulb moment! Except for the new chores I was adding for my individual children they pretty much know exactly what they need to do each day.
It was then that I realized that the chore charts are actually for me! With 4 children and two home businesses to take care off, as well as my husbands work from home commitments, pets and...well just life, I cannot have all these things floating around in my head.
Hence the need for chore charts! They are for moms to make sure that all things get attended too...and I don’t need to guess or check up on who has done what...I just have to look at the blocks.
Husbands
Once many years ago when my mother was visiting, she offered in a very helpful solution to a marital problem we had. She called it the Job Jar. This sounded like the perfect idea! My husband had a natural tendency to not want to do things like hang pictures, changing tap washers and other such handy man things. So I took her advice and made him a job jar where I could add slips of paper with his chores written on for him to do in his own time. Worked like a charm? Nope! I wish it were a good news story, but he made his point very clear by adding his own paper tags – none of them work around the house!
You see the job jar is the same as nagging! My husband knew what needed to be done the first time I asked. It wasn’t the third or fourth request, or even the slip in the job jar that convinced him.
So the solution we found was:
The asking once is an important thing and there were many years that I would have given King Solomon a reason for calling me a dripping tap, but never once (yes you read it correctly) did nagging get me the desired outcome. Perhaps the job was attended to, but I had generally succeeded in offending my husband too!
These days we have found a way to get jobs done around the house without nagging, but patience and committment to serving one another however we can.
Quote
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. Helen Keller
“Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.” Colleen C Barrett
Book Reviews
You may wonder where my ponderings about work have come from. Two and a half months ago we decided to grow our own vegetables again. Previous to the last 4 years we have always grown veggies in some way or another. But with rising food costs and questionable farming practices we have been convicted to do this on a much larger scale. But it was a huge job preparing the vegetable area and one that took us a full 3 weeks to implement. You can read more about it on our family blog
But as we have been working together and dealing with character issues that arose I have much time to ponder the blessing of work. At the same time I was reading a delightful book Living the Good Life: How One Family Changed Their World from Their Own Backyard
If you want to get your children inspired in the garden here are a few titles to consider:
A Handful of Dirt
Sunflower Houses : Inspiration from the Garden - A Book for Children and Their Grown-Ups
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children
As always, these links go through to Amazon.com but my South African subscribers need to order through www.kalahari.net or www.loot.co.za
News
During the 3 week school break my daughter decided that she wanted to write a book. It really was as simple as that! She sat down at her computer and started writing. This book is an outworking of her two great loves – horses and literature.
Zambia is the story of 13 year old Ryleigh Forster and a Namibian Wild Horse that she befriends. As I proof read it I found myself actually enjoying the story and not just looking for errors. Moms, you can happily let your older children read this on their own or you can read it to your younger ones, but either way it is an entertaining and gripping novel. Read more...
Subscribers to this list can purchase it in E-book format, or if you are prepared to pay postage, in print.
Take care until next time,
God’s richest blessings to you as you homeschool,
Wendy
PS Please pay it forward by sending this E-zine on to other homeschooling moms who will benefit from my thoughts. If you received this from a friend, sign up here
