The other night we did something together as a family that we have never done together before. It may sound a little surprising, but our entire family spent a couple of hours working in the yard. We selected an area that needed attention, and then all of us concentrated our efforts to clean it up. It was a great experience.
This idea came to us, because Stacy and I have been talking a lot about how important it is to teach our children to work. Though we have talked a lot about it, we have done very little about it. Our summer experiences in Nephi made us more aware of the responsibility that we have to teach our children how to work.
Family Work
I grew up in a home where the work was shared among our family members. We worked everyday at something around the house and we worked hard. Though I am grateful for those experiences, I sometimes remember how difficult it was to do all that work. When I became a parent of my own children,I thought I would spare them, and myself, from the burden of the ordinary hands on labor of maintaing a beautiful home that never ends.
We made the decision years ago to contract out much of the work around our house. We thought it would be better to spend time with the kids, then it would be to spend time doing so many of the daily, weekly and monthly tasks that need to be done in order to keep a home well maintained. Consequently, we had a difficult time teaching our children how to work. There literally was nothing for them to do. I thought this would be good for my children, but they became pampered consumers instead of valuable producers.
Over the course of the past three years, we have eliminated all of our outside contractors and gradually transitioned the work to individual members of our family. Each individual is expected to get their jobs done. We often face a bit of resistance, and the outside and inside our our home do not look as good as they once did, but our children are learning to work.
Because we divvied up the jobs individually, we rarely if ever, worked together as a family. Working together is proving to be a wonderful social experience for our family. It is also an excellent opportunity to be united in positive results. When we focus on a section of our yard, we can immediately see the efforts of our hands. The yard looks better! We actually have fun when we work together.
While we are working together, we talk, sing and tell stories to each other. We also complain, get frustrated and accuse each other of not working hard enough. For some reason, both of these expressions bring us closer together as a family. The moments of mindless effort focused on menial tasks are refreshing and actually serve as a release from all of the other carefully focused moments of life. Because so much of our work is menial, even our youngest children can be involved.
Becoming Productive
Work is the gateway to productivity. There is really no way of being productive, at least by any definition that I know of, it we do not learn how to work.
It is good to rest, but I firmly believe that each of us must be anxiously engaged in good work if we want to be happy. No amount of rest will bring that to us. It is the work that we do with our own hands that satisfies us and pleases us.
Sharing The Load
How do you divide the work in your home? Do you conform to the classic stereotypes of who does what? Or does each take a turn a dishes, laundry, bathroom cleaning, lawn mowing, hedge trimming and weeding?
It is easy to hate doing this work because it is never done. Almost as soon a household task is completed, it is time to do it again. I am thankful for that, because each time it needs to be done again is a new opportunity for us to work and be together. Our family identity is being established, moment by moment amongst the talking and teasing, singing and storytelling, and even the quarreling and the bickering. I can't imagine anything better.
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