Young'ins Need To Work

Having 6 kids under the age of 10 makes for a real lively household. There is lots of laughter, playing, creating & fun.

But with this many young ones, there is also disagreements, spats, crying, and mischief and most of all TONS of energy

Sometimes I just sit back, watch and wish I could have just a speck of their energy.

But instead I have to know how to deal with it.

Energy is good, it's great if steered in the right direction.

Kids with lots of energy + Nothing constructive to do = Mischief

There are days when I am ready to pull my hair out & I wonder why our children are not getting

along, or seem to be getting into an unusual amount of trouble.

Usually those are the days that I have neglected to give them enough work to do.

Over the years I have learned kids need to work.

Too much free time is not healthy for them.

And I have also learned you can teach them to work at a very young age.

For instance:

Today our 3 yr old tidied up the entrance for me, wiped up messes on the floor

and then was with her daddy helping him part of the day,

Today our 4 year old helped me can peaches, pick corn & cucumbers from the garden,

cleaned off the table cart & helped his brothers in the barn.

Today our 5 year old cleaned off the table, swept off the deck

and went working with his dad (he's our little farmer, he does that most every day)

Today our 7 & 9 year old fed and watered the chickens, picked eggs,

cleaned out the chicken barn, cleaned off the table, and many other odd jobs I had for them.

And my girls help me all day long.

They don't get a lot of free time and I don't feel guilty about that.

When I was growing up I had to do more work in our home than most of my friends.

That kind of frustrated me.

That was until I got married.

Do you know why? Because I didn't have to learn on the fly how to care for a household,

I already knew.

It was then (too bad only then) that I realized the wisdom my parents had in making me do some good old fashioned hard work.

Our goal for our children is that they know how to work, and that at the end of a day they feel a great sense of accomplishment from what they did do.

Too many kids now a days sit around and play Nintendo or watch TV all day. We are raising a lazy, self-centered generation when we let that happen.

Kids need to work, and they are never too young to start.

And when they do you will see the pride in a job well done, in a task completed.