Kids, chores, and a good book!

"You can reach the cereal! I know you can!" "Make sure you feed the cat today. She can't get her own food, you know." "Could you please bring your laundry hamper downstairs? I know it's super heavy. Ask your sister to help you." "Please take all the sheets and blankets off of your bed and bring them to the laundry room." My kids have picked up a few new responsibilities in the last couple of months of my third pregnancy. At first they were excited to help out with some grown-up jobs, like sorting laundry for washing and learning how to put sheets on their beds. Then they began to protest a bit, as they mastered the new skill and it became a chore instead of a novelty. Around this same time, I began to worry that I wasn't doing the right thing; that I was going to cause them to resent me and the new baby by heaping responsibilities on them just because I was too tired and out of breath to do them myself. Things have a way of happening just at the right time, though. At bedtime we have a half an hour of story time in which I read to my girls from a chapter book. We just happen to be reading through the Little House on the Prairie series, and we also just happen to be reading Farmer Boy, the third book in the series that chronicles the childhood of Almanzo Wilder, the future husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author. Almanzo is a playful, cheerful, and mischievous little boy, nine years old at the book's opening, and while he does normal kid things like play outside on his sled and go to school, much of his life is consumed with... wait for it... chores. Feeding the livestock on the farm, breaking calves for pulling a plow, plowing fields for the crops, planting crops with his father, brother, and sisters, harvesting, milking, putting away food for the winter, building an icehouse, whittling farming equipment out of wood, you name it, he does it. Oh, and did I mention he always answers "Yes, Father" and "Yes, Mother," even when he would rather go out and play instead? He knows the cows and horses can't feed themselves. He knows that if he doesn't milk the cows on time, they won't make enough milk next time. He knows that if he doesn't get the seed in the ground the right way, and scatters it lazily, there won't be enough food in the winter. We talk about the book after we read, or at the breakfast table, and my eight-year-old draws the conclusion, "Almanzo does a lot of chores. I'd rather go to school than work at home all day. But he has to learn to be a man so that he can have his own farm one day." To which I replied, "Do you think that is why I am teaching you how to sort laundry, and put dishes away, and keep the house picked up? So you can take care of your home one day?" She quickly nods, "Yep. Because we don't want to grow up and not be able to do our own laundry!" Amen, there it is! I am not a lazy mom who passes work off to my kids because I don't want to do it. It is not just that I am hugely pregnant and need a little help. Come to think of it, I was doing a bit more around the house when I was her age, but that isn't the point. The point is, it is never too early to teach responsibility, in whatever sphere my kids are capable to manage. I am teaching skills they will need, not just to care for a home but to care for those around them. They are dependable, considerate, kind, cheerful, and very capable. They know to "do the worst first," to do what they have to do so that they can be free to do what they want to do. They are amazing daughters who bless me and others with their kind spirits, and I have every confidence that they will be successful in whatever they take on as adults: work, marriage, families, and adventures of all kinds. And they will be adventurous because they are confident, maybe even hearing my voice in their heads as they set off, "You can reach it! I know you can!"