![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
Dear Amy: My husband and I have a bright, high-functioning 16-year-old daughter.
I have been teaching her how to perform basic household chores (I do the same with our 12-year-old son), and some basic cooking and cleaning skills in order to have some help at home, but mainly so that our kids will understand that everyone in the family pitches in, and that it’s important to have some life-skills. I am a stay-at-home parent and a busy volunteer at their school.
At first I thought our daughter didn’t understand some of these basic instructions, which I had shown her and then written down. She just couldn’t seem to get things right. She used floor cleaner on the stove, left wet paper towels on the wooden dining room table, damaging it, and a few other mess-ups like “forgetting” to put wet laundry in the dryer, but leaving it on the floor, instead.
Then I overheard her bragging to her cousin that she was purposely messing up in order to get me to back off. I am furious. My husband thinks she’s being clever and doesn’t want to punish her. What do you think I should do now?
– Disgusted
Dear Disgusted: I think it’s time your daughter learned another life-skill – the concept of natural consequences. In short, if she fails a task, she will be asked to do it again, until she demonstrates some basic competence. If she deliberately causes damage, then she should be expected to compensate the family for it. If she does a load of laundry and deliberately leaves wet clothes on the floor instead of in the dryer, you can place the soggy pile onto her bed.
You should do your best to stay calm throughout: “I get it that you don’t want to do this. I don’t enjoy doing it, either. I’ll just hold onto your phone (laptop, etc.) until you figure out how to do this. You’ll get there!” And because your husband thinks this is so clever, perhaps he should take over these household chores that make his life easier and assume some responsibility for teaching your children some of these skills. In my opinion, he is a big part of the problem. If he teamed up with you, your daughter wouldn’t disrespect your household so easily.
Link
I have been teaching her how to perform basic household chores (I do the same with our 12-year-old son), and some basic cooking and cleaning skills in order to have some help at home, but mainly so that our kids will understand that everyone in the family pitches in, and that it’s important to have some life-skills. I am a stay-at-home parent and a busy volunteer at their school.
At first I thought our daughter didn’t understand some of these basic instructions, which I had shown her and then written down. She just couldn’t seem to get things right. She used floor cleaner on the stove, left wet paper towels on the wooden dining room table, damaging it, and a few other mess-ups like “forgetting” to put wet laundry in the dryer, but leaving it on the floor, instead.
Then I overheard her bragging to her cousin that she was purposely messing up in order to get me to back off. I am furious. My husband thinks she’s being clever and doesn’t want to punish her. What do you think I should do now?
– Disgusted
Dear Disgusted: I think it’s time your daughter learned another life-skill – the concept of natural consequences. In short, if she fails a task, she will be asked to do it again, until she demonstrates some basic competence. If she deliberately causes damage, then she should be expected to compensate the family for it. If she does a load of laundry and deliberately leaves wet clothes on the floor instead of in the dryer, you can place the soggy pile onto her bed.
You should do your best to stay calm throughout: “I get it that you don’t want to do this. I don’t enjoy doing it, either. I’ll just hold onto your phone (laptop, etc.) until you figure out how to do this. You’ll get there!” And because your husband thinks this is so clever, perhaps he should take over these household chores that make his life easier and assume some responsibility for teaching your children some of these skills. In my opinion, he is a big part of the problem. If he teamed up with you, your daughter wouldn’t disrespect your household so easily.
Link
no subject
From the second interpretation my immediate thought was, the reason for doing chores is for the daughter to take on (some) fair share of combined household work, and to learn how to do necessary adulting skills. Something that no children know when they're born but usually pick up by the time their adult (with some lamentably common exceptions). Is it definitely the case that she knows and understands this and is refusing for arbitrary reasons? Or is it possible that that's so natural to LW she assumed the daughter would have picked it up, but that perhaps TELLING her would more surely ensure she knew and understood? I'm not sure how likely that is, presumably children who just need to be made to do things are more common, but I also think that generally, telling people the ACTUAL reasons to do something often has SOME benefit.
After all, most girls grow up with a high incidence of people being passive aggressive at them until they spontaneously decide that they would like to take on a bigger proportion of household work: in this case taking on the work is the right thing, but will she correctly generalise from that example to "mothers shouldn't have to do more than their fair share" and not generalise to "I should just go along with what people want me to do if they're insistent"?
Likewise, I'm curious about this "clever". As conuly says, it's not *very* clever. I wonder if it's like, a badly timed *early* foray into non-compliance. That's just speculation, but the fact that she got things so *weirdly* wrong and bragged about it, made me wonder if this is more fumbling than an average 16 year old (many of whom I might expect to just reflexively half-arse the job without particularly thinking about it.) Maybe she just needs to be told not to do that, but maybe she actually needs some practice at not being an arse when her mother is trying to help her, but knowing which instructions *are* over-stated and *should* be complied with only perfunctarily.
no subject
I'm also wondering how much housework the dad does, and whether there's an element of "dad gets away with not doing shit", especially since LW's description of the dad's reaction sounds like pride on his part.
no subject