Van asks to help a lot. And by “help”, what he normally means is that he wants to make my job a thousand times harder and longer than it would be if I simply did it by myself. I feel like a punk every time I tell him “no”. And so, I’ve started giving him his own chores to do while I do mine in an effort to keep his little hands busy. And, by golly, it’s actually been – dare I say – helpful.  

Typically, when I empty the dishwasher, he wants to press all of the buttons and make the spinner under the rack go around in circles. It drives me insane. So now, while I put away the bigger stuff – plates and cups – I give him the silverware. You know that I rock feeling you get when  you know you’re doing something right as a mother? Well, every time I watch him put the silverware away, I get that feeling. He learned instantly how to differentiate between the sharp knives and the dull ones, the long forks versus the short ones, and when one utensil falls into the wrong section, he always fixes it. It’s pretty special to watch those little wheels spin and he’s pretty stoked with himself when he’s all finished. And hey, it’s one less thing for me to do. I don’t even care that every time I open the silverware drawer it looks like someone threw each piece in from twenty feet away. The disheveled appearance doesn’t bother me one bit.

He also helps me clean the counters. He loves spraying the spray bottle, so I show him where to spray and then I wipe it clean. Teamwork for the win.

The other day, he helped me pot some plants. It was something I was going to wait to do until both of them were sleeping, but I had lots of other things to do with that precious nap time so I decided to involve him instead. Hooper was at preschool. His job was to fill his plastic cup with potting soil and bring it over to where I was and fill the empty pots. My back, and knees, thanked him for not having to get up and down a thousand times myself. And, again, he enjoyed it.

Both of my boys fight over the vacuum. Now there’s a fight I don’t break up.

What kinds of chores do you give your kids to do around the house? It’s one of my New Years resolutions to continue doing this sort of thing. Too often it becomes easier to just do it myself, but I know the lessons embedded in the tasks are more important.