Lesson 2-6 "Sharing Work in the Home"

This lesson is kinda skimpy, there's just not a lot to it. "Teenagers should help with family chores. And they should have a good attitude about it." Um, yeah, and that's it. Thanks for coming. See you next week.

Seriously, how am I going to eke an entire lesson out of this? Maudlin stories about young people who at first grumbled and then became grateful and joyful that they had to be woken to do dishes, cut and stack wood or watch mother sew shoes to send them to college, or pitch in to rebuild a decaying shed. Bearing testimony of personal growth and self-discipline that comes from housework. Testimonial or a guest appearance by someone who has recently left home and now appreciates just how much they should have learned while there. (By the way, I'm just curious, what's the rationale for having to get priesthood approval to ask someone to come in to talk for 5 minutes on "the rewards and benefits of learning to work in the home"...??) I suppose I'll run a thrilling 15-minute discussion about the kind of chore charts in their homes and how families divide the work, unless I get a better idea.

I started wondering if my sons had ever been taught a similar lesson from the AP manual, or whether it was only the girls who had a lesson in church about the emotional growth, joy and family bonding that they are supposed to feel while cleaning toilets. So I asked them. They looked confused; "that's only for girls, Mom." (They just say that sort of thing to get a rise out of me, which usually works). Let's see if it's just that their memory is faulty ... AP Manual 3, No lesson. AP Manual 1: No lesson, unless it's implied in the lessons about family unity and honoring your mother. Manual 2: well, there's "The Blessings of Work," with the same story about President Kimball polishing harness tack, but most of that lesson is about a boy earning money for doing overkill yardwork for a Countess in Utah (?!!?) - so that's not really about the joys of unremunerated household labor at all. Came up empty on that one.

A quick glance around the web suggests that many people feel it's hard/impossible to motivate teens to do chores, but (say advice professionals) good parents need to do it anyway because it builds character and self-discipline, and because it's practically criminal to unleash on the world a young adult who's never had to pick up a sock and doesn't have a clue how to cook spaghetti. For example: Dr. Ruth Peters' book Laying Down the Law, or EmpoweringParents advice on how to do it right from the parenting end, or an emphasis on clarity and work-sharing from ParentingTeensOnline. Dr Heller argues that part of the problem is that children and adolescents have lost their value in society (i.e. it's less common for them to earn part of the family wage or to provide essential labor on the family farm, like they did in ye olden times). So we're all not alone in believing that work, although no longer economically necessary, is still an important part of growing up - even if so-called labor-saving devices have altered the kinds of work we expect to do in affluent modern homes.

I'm rather conflicted about this topic, actually. I can attest, there are few things as inherently messy as a kid, and my tweens/teens surely leave a tornado swath of mess and destruction as they move through kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and garage. I'm not naturally neat myself (I am what Flylady would call BO, "Born Organized," but that's NOT the same thing as being instinctively neat or tidy) so it doesn't come naturally to me to clean up after myself much less after everyone else or to show them how to keep a sparkling clean home. I'm sure my kids haven't had the best model for taking joy and personal growth from housework. I have to say, I feel it's a parenting balance between making them do housework and chores just for the sake of them learning how to do them, and letting them off the hook a little because their schedules are so demanding between homework, sports, Scouts, Church obligations, music lessons, and everything else we demand that they juggle effectively. I can see both sides of it. I read that story of the dad waking the girl at 11 to do the dishes she was supposed to do, and I thought, okay, I get that it's important to hold kids to their obligations, but honestly, some nights, before early morning Seminary? I'd rather load the dishwasher myself and let the poor kid sleep, or finish homework, or get that music practice in. To me, that's a perfectly acceptable form of "sharing work in the home."