Love and Logic Child Labor

Johnny "See that spot right there Sams?"Look at that teamwork! (They were both balanced on one little stool)
Sammy loves to clean!Doing a thorough job - not bad for a 15 mo. old!

Okay, so I finished the Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood book a couple of nights ago, and was just tickled by one section I read about the benefit of chores for little kids. The authors of this book promote the idea that teaching kids from a very young age to do chores themselves will build their responsibility and self-esteem. Their formula is "struggle + encouragement from others + accomplishment = healthy self-concept."

So this is great news for me. For one, I don't have to do all the cleaning myself, for another I have a way to keep the kids busy and entertained inside the house, and finally, I get to build their self-esteem in the process and help them to become responsible people. Sweet! So, following their recommendation about giving choices and keeping it fun, Johnny and I got to work on a bunch of chores yesterday and today. It started out a little rough at first and I wasn't getting much cooperation, but ended up being a total blast for both of us. Johnny had so much fun yesterday using the vacuum hose to edge the entire downstairs, sweeping the floor, washing and squeegeeing our sliding glass door inside and out, and scrubbing the sink to a gleaming shine that he did NOT want to take a break to run to Walmart and pick up the photos we needed to complete his class project that was due today (printer's not working again ... aaacckk!). When we were at Walmart, Johnny kept asking "Mama, can we go home and do some more chores please?" LOL!!

So, today, they both got to join in on the chore fun and I got some great photos of both of them standing on a stool together with a bucket of water scrubbing the microwave inside and out. Johnny dusted the livingroom and then we all scrubbed the legs of the dining table and chairs (there was more thrown baby food on them than I care to admit). I even found baby food on the ceiling today. Johnny was never a food thrower, but Sammy's more physical like that in a lot of ways. That's a story for another post though. In the end, we all had fun, got fairly wet, and things got cleaned up pretty well ... eventually. But hey, we're building self-esteem here! :D Oh yeah, try to ignore the perpetually toy-covered floors in the background. It looks that way in about 5 minutes and I could spend the entire day following Sammy around putting up toys just to have him dump them all right back out. I think I put away the Tinker Toys and puzzles 10x each yesterday before it finally dawned on me to put them up where he can't reach them. Heh.