Four chores and seven years ago…

I’d say when you’re about seven or eight you get to thinking… usually after eating dinner… that your parents unmistakably decided that in order to save themselves the agonizing monotony of doing chores… they should have kids.

Clearly this logic is fundamentally accurate.  Everyone knows this.  Deep inside their being. And yet, it’s insanely far from reality— a universally perplexing, diametrically opposed truth.

I mean on the one hand, my parents totally had me and my brother for the sole purpose of filling their house with little blond servants to clear their table and hand wash their knives and unload their dishwasher and hoist large laundry baskets upstairs and take care of the crazy number of farm animals they had to have.  You know it’s true, Grandma.  You, too, Granddad.

And yet on the other hand, before the kid-servants are really of any use, they spend years perfecting their skills as the epicenter of all chores known to man.  As BabyCenter.com put it in an e-mail to me today: A busy preschooler means an ever-messier house.  And it’s not just the toys and books strewn everywhere.  Preschoolers also like to remove things from shelves and drawers.  They draw on walls.  They spill juice, tear paper, fling clothes.

I think I snorted out loud when I read that “fling clothes” part.  However there will be absolutely no drawing on walls… and I’m sure they’d love to spill juice, if they could get their sticky little hands on that contraband.

So, flinging.  Nate’s latest favorite game is to take whatever piece of clothing he is supposed to be wrestling his chubbiness into and toss it up in the air like a graduation mortarboard.  Endless fun.

I still remember several tense weeks when Jacob joined Miss Letti and Miss Chethi’s class just after he’d turned three.  He went completely deaf as soon as anyone mentioned the word “clean-up.”  He was full of excuses, stories, fits, and flops about why he could not participate.  Weeks of acute coaching on the importance of “teamwork” were immediately put into action.  Books on teamwork, cartoons emphasizing teamwork, modeling and praising and time-outs for un-teamwork-like behavior.  And then the crisis was over… phew.

Now it seems JJ’s new most favorite thing in the world is to do chores.  He has to make milk sippy-cups in the morning, make my hot tea, and fold laundry.  He washes dishes, he sets the table, he puts toothpaste on toothbrushes, he cleans the entire living room, he cleans his room.  Every night he wants me to think of dozens of chores he can do so as to prolong his bedtime.  A tempting proposition.

I’m getting pretty good at inventing age-appropriate chores… as I see it, I better enjoy this phase while it lasts.  And I certainly know it won’t.  If only I could give him some real chores like finding out where and how to recycle all of our e-waste.  Or oiling the teak chairs out back.

Last night he was laying on the floor in his pj’s, pouting, “But Moooom.  I will be sad for a yeeeeaaaar if you don’t give me more chores.”

I can’t wait to pull this one up for teenage Jake.  “You know son, the word chore used to have a positive connotation in this house.  You used to beg me to give you more chores.”

For now, I’m grateful I have someone who delights in flinging clothes… and someone else who delights in throwing them in the hamper.