Getting everyone to help out around the holidays.

(Originally published by my friends at Stridepost.com  

Re-printing here, with permission.  For posterity as much as anything...)

When my family all got together for Thanksgiving, it was the usual blend of chaos, cacophony, gluttony and non-stop euchre playing.   So kinda awesome, in other words.

Yes, my favorite partner and I DID win 7-8 games in a row, but that’s not the point of this article. Not the main point, at any rate, but definitely worth noting. We OWNED the dining room table for hours, stopping our dominance only because it was time to eat.   In your faces, family members!!!!

Sorry. Where was I?

We gathered together as a family, and the adults did all of the cooking and prep and table setting and serving and post-meal cleaning up. While all the kids, my own included, contributed little to the cause. No cooking, no prep, no table setting, no dish washing. (Except for my eldest niece, she’s a big fan of making pies…) This did not dawn on us until much later, long after we could have done anything to change it.

They did EXACTLY what we asked them to do. Nothing. Not asking them to help out with, in this example, tasks needed to make a big family dinner a success? This not at all unusual, it turns out.

As I write this, my daughter, who can be, to quote a friend of ours “A bit like a BB bouncing around in a tin bucket”, just dried the dishes and helped clean the kitchen. Because we needed to put her on a task, any task, until we’re ready to start decorating for Christmas, to keep her head from exploding. And she was a big help, as she will also be when we do start decorating in a few minutes. And she LIKES to help, when we remember to ask. So much so, that she’ll ask us sometimes for chores.  Especially if it means she can spend more time with us.

Crazy kid.

We’re just so used to banging stuff out quickly ourselves. It’s easier, at least initially. But… getting involved  helps kids to understand that we all need each other, that we’re all in it together.

While I remember working hard around the house when I was young, far harder than my peers (we talked about that sort of thing), I don’t remember ever struggling to fit it all in.   This struggle is far more common now, and I fully understand the need for math and violin practice to be squeezed into the narrow window of time I spend cooking a quick dinner so that we can eat and leave for riding lessons. Not really in a position to ask her to help me cook…

So we get in the habit of doing all of it, and they get in the habit of letting us.

And we miss out on opportunity to help them to become more responsible, learn life tasks, and have greater understanding of effort it takes to complete tasks.

So, this holiday season, remember to let them help bake, and clean and decorate. Ask if you need to, simply say “Yes, please.” if you don’t. Make it fun, and be patient. Everyone wins.