How to Get Kids to Help at Home
Elva Anson
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Emidra Publishing
ISBN: 0972356940

A RebeccasReads author featured in
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Using ordinary household tasks to create capable, responsible & independent children & have fun doing it.

Ok, folks, how many of you struggle to get your kids to help you around the house? In your apartment? Well, you are not alone, & Elva Anson decided to impart not only the lessons she's learnt, she tells some eye-opening case studies along the way.

How to Get Kids to Help at Home: A Guide to Raising Responsible Children covers:
 • Born Dependent: Understanding the problem; how we keep children dependent & how doing chores is more for them than you.
 • “You've Got Too Much Potential” Is an Empty Statement: support must precede a challenge; the importance of confidence & much more...
 • Home Is the Classroom for Learning Basic Skills: If you are a parent, you must be a teacher; “Do as I do” is more important than what I say... & more.
 • Who Does What & Who Decides: Family meetings -- the center of learning & more...
 • Begin at the Beginning - Young Children: Young children love to help & more...
 • “Catch Me if You Can” - Juniors: Age of mastery - six through twelve, & much more...
 • “I Have Too Much Else to Do” - Teens: responsibility, adaptability & flexibility & more...
 • Make Work Easy: simplify; get rid of clutter & so much more...
 • Bribes, Allowances, & Other Compensation: the pitfalls of manipulating children with bribes, & more...
 • Values -- The Foundation for Training: Know what you believe; recognize & promote differences; teach time management, & more!

It may come as a surprise to learn that today's families are quite different from those of fifty years ago. In part because of the high divorce rate & thus the changing dynamics of families. In part because our children no longer spend hours of each day interacting: talking, gardening, sewing, repairing, cleaning & cooking, with extended family members or community. The culprits? Parents who are struggling with multiple relationships, job markets which move parents from place to place, houses of worship where family members go their separate ways, & when at home, the ubiquitous TV & PC. When do families ever talk?

“Many parents fail to get to know their children or to create an environment where they can become capable. The family either becomes the root of hostility & alienation instead of an anchor in a frightening world, or it exists passively together instead of experiencing creative adventure & learning.” (P. 10)

Even as we whine about how our kids can't or won't do things for themselves, we don't admit we've not taken any time to teach them. It's as if, in our amnesia about our own childhood, we've “assumed” (thus making an “ass out of you & me”) our kids “ought” to already know how to take care of their things, rooms, clothes, chores. They should already be able to work around the home like perfect little replicas.

Somewhere I learnt, years ago, that it takes a person teaching something & another person learning the same thing at least three times, before the teacher learns how to teach it & the learner learns it.

“Do things for your children, & they will get along today. Teach them to do things for themselves, & they will get along for the rest of their lives.” (P.16)

So if you're wanting to uncover the roots of your children's ineptness & “laziness”, look to the way you are teaching them. & perhaps the simplest secret of all is letting your children know they are not only loved, they are needed ... to make the family & its home work.

Elva Anson goes on to explain how excessive directing, expecting children to behave like “adults” & doing too much for them only keeps children dependent. So they turn into those unlikable, helpless, unhelpful little princes & princesses. & you're their unappreciated servant!

During the 1960s, millions of American children left high school having learnt next to nothing about basic life skills -- even the military noticed it & set up programs so their draftees learnt how to handle money, launder & repair their clothes, make beds & buy things. One of the jobs I had back then was to find runaways from bright & tidy suburbs. I learnt to look in the “sleaziest” parts of town where I'd find them, unkempt & adrift. With little variation they all divulged, when I asked, that they'd found their way there to experience “real life” -- because the squeaky-clean family life their parents provided: non-English speaking housekeepers, latchkey privileges & not one responsibility, had not been “real”. & of course it wasn't.

How to Get Kids to Help at Home is for beginners -- parents & kids alike. By the time your chickadees are teenagers, the dye has been set & you'll have to live with the consequences. However, if you can catch your kids at the beginning of your lives together & practice Elva Anson's lessons, many of which are given in the form of games & “credit cards”, you'll all have a chance, & much fun along the way!

I'll warn you here, that this innocuous little book is going to make a grown-up parent out of you! It contains excellent advice, lots of insights into the history of how families work together, some simple steps to practice, & it's an interesting read!

& in time, running a home, with capable, responsible, confident & centered children, will be a blessing!

Highly recommended reading for mothers & fathers.

More from Elva Anson:
Becoming Soul Mates
The Complete Book of Home Management

www.emidrapublishing.com
(11/07/04)

Rebecca