Is it fair to give not common cleaning chore to teen?

whooo, Chai.. (We've all had those thoughts as parents.)

I always said to my kid,
"Do what I ask you to do and I'll never have to tell you to do anything."
We had, and still have, a pretty good relationship.

I almost said partnership but being a parent is NOT a partnership of equals.
~~~
David: you are completely off base on this one.
~~~
Gracie: You are going to hate being on your own.
You have to do ALL the chores yourself.
Really.
The laundry, the vacuuming, the dusting, the scrubbing the green gunk off the shower floor so it doesn't get between your toes, you are going to have to do all those every week.
You have to go the grocery store with the list you made AND put the groceries away AND then, cook the food, wash the pot and pans AND the dishes.
You have to take the garbage out.
The laundry takes at least two hours to do unless you have stuff that has to be ironed then it takes a LOT longer.
(And don't forget you have to remember to have the right kind of soap, bleach, fabric softener or dryer cloths on hand, all the time.)
If you've got your own apartment, you'll have to have either quarters or cash for the laundry card or you'll be stuck with waiting until you do.
Oops. I almost forgot. All the kitchen counters and the floor have to cleaned before you go to bed. (Believe me, you do not want the critters who show up if you don't.)
There's more.
But that's enough for now.
If you resent doing these, or some of these, things now, you will likely resent doing them for yourself in the future. If you do, do any future roommates a favor and DON'T move in.

If you think your dad doesn't like it when you don't help, wait until you hear your roommates.

Joe(they will not be as kind)Nation

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Everyone is free, but not everything is free.

It's a parent's duty to provide clothing, food, shelter, love, support, education, etc. Unreservedly.

iPods, cable TV, cell phones, etc. are not part of that deal.

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

whooo, Chai.. (We've all had those thoughts as parents.)

I always said to my kid,
"Do what I ask you to do and I'll never have to tell you to do anything."
We had, and still have, a pretty good relationship.

I almost said partnership but being a parent is NOT a partnership of equals.
~~~
David: you are completely off base on this one.
~~~

Thank u for that information, Joe. I was wondering if I was on base.

David

0 Replies

@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

And the parent is then free to take away what ever was given the child -

That sounds like robbery.
It is a sad fact that family members have all robbed
or otherwise stolen from one another, husbands, wives, children, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc.

Linkat wrote:

the child gets free room and board

That 's legally required.
Few dispute the morality of that in vu of the fact
that the children did not ask to be born.

Linkat wrote:

plus I am sure a variety of electronic items. Sure the child is free not to such work and in return the parent is then free to take away any and all items they have freely given the child (except of course those things to keep them alive and healthy).

I agree with u as to future donations (except free food, clothes n housing)
if thay have become socially, emotionally estranged.

David

0 Replies

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Everyone is free, but not everything is free.

It's a parent's duty to provide clothing, food, shelter, love, support, education, etc. Unreservedly.

iPods, cable TV, cell phones, etc. are not part of that deal.

Agreed; good point.

My earlier posts addressed the concept of parental extortion.
I don 't favor that, but I think that the common sense way
to approach it is simply to sit down and in a happy, non-threatening way,
to have a convivial discussion of what needs to be done
and what, if anything, the members of the family will do about it.

Regardless of my earlier posts, it hardly seems fair that EVERYTHING,
ALL work will be piled only on the parents
and other members of the family do absolutely nothing.

Having said that,
it remains a fact that if I had a kid, I 'd not put him to work.

I 'd not like to do that, so I woud not do it.

I have had invited guests in my home,
sometimes remaining for several years; I never even thawt
of putting any of them to work.

David

1 Reply

She ended up doing the chores today. She actually did good job both on sweeping the steps and mopping. Wife was watching her to make sure she didn't do half ass job.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

I have had invited guests in my home,
sometimes remaining for several years; I never even thawt
of putting any of them to work.

Guests are not family. Family have rights you would never extend to a guest and responsibilities you would never ask from a guest. Having a child help with chores is not a cheap way to unload labor, it is a series of training exercises preparing them to be independent adults. It is often much easier to do something yourself than to train and supervise a child to do it, but much better for them to learn that there is pride in doing something to support the whole and doing it well.

1 Reply

@dragonguy,

Good! I'm wondering if she'll start to feel invested in how the hallways looks.

When I mentioned the Monica Ali book, Brick Lane, and talked about the hallway in it, I was referring to the long term stress of always having a community hallway not fixed, needing plaster, rather desolate council housing, for years and years. The protagonist, a very young woman who had moved there from Bangladesh with her new husband, had years of hope and despair. The hallway wasn't the key feature of her life, but it was a kind of spine - a place to get behind and safe in your rooms and a place to get away from your rooms and misery into the air beyond.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Good point. People who have to clean and maintain something themselves are seldom the ones to trash their own efforts.

0 Replies

@engineer,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

I have had invited guests in my home,
sometimes remaining for several years; I never even thawt
of putting any of them to work.

engineer wrote:

Guests are not family.

I took care of my cousin, Connie, about 4O years ago,
when she was 11, but I did not put her to work.

engineer wrote:

Family have rights you would never extend to a guest and responsibilities you would never ask from a guest. Having a child help with chores is not a cheap way to unload labor, it is a series of training exercises preparing them to be independent adults. It is often much easier to do something yourself than to train and supervise a child to do it, but much better for them to learn that there is pride in doing something to support the whole and doing it well.

How much pride is there in surrendering to extortion,
and well doing the will of the extortionist ??????

There shud be no government without CONSENT.

I 'm very pleased that I did not have these problems,
when I was a kid.

David

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I can't imagine having told my dad that I wouldn't do a chore he told me to do. He and my mom would have simply eroded each and every liberty I had until it became perfectly clear who was in charge.

We may be related lol. Mine also made us get paying jobs as soon as it was legal....summers and school breaks, all the way through college. Oh, the cruelty! Smile

2 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

OmSigDAVID wrote:
I have had invited guests in my home,
sometimes remaining for several years; I never even thawt
of putting any of them to work.

engineer wrote:
Guests are not family.
I took care of my cousin, Connie, about 4O years ago,
when she was 11, but I did not put her to work.

Do you have maids and servants?

Quote:

engineer wrote:
Family have rights you would never extend to a guest and responsibilities you would never ask from a guest. Having a child help with chores is not a cheap way to unload labor, it is a series of training exercises preparing them to be independent adults. It is often much easier to do something yourself than to train and supervise a child to do it, but much better for them to learn that there is pride in doing something to support the whole and doing it well.
How much pride is there in surrendering to extortion,
and well doing the will of the extortionist ??????

David

How is this extortion?

1 Reply

@Irishk,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I can't imagine having told my dad that I wouldn't do a chore he told me to do.
He and my mom would have simply eroded each and every liberty I had
until it became perfectly clear who was in charge.

Irishk wrote:

We may be related lol. Mine also made us get paying jobs as soon as it was legal....summers
and school breaks, all the way through college. Oh, the cruelty!

I gotta say:
I think my life was a lot happier
because I did not have to put up with that.
I liked being a trial attorney; it was fun.
After that, I got a political job that was quite comfortable
and was more fun, but I must admit that every day of vacation
that I took from either of those jobs felt very, very good.

Now, being fully retired, I don 't work at all
and every day is vacation; I feel very happy about it.

When I was a kid in school, b4 I began to work,
the best part of the school day was the end of it, when I went home,
and the best day of the school year was the LAST one.

My torpor is not hereditary; my parents were not like that.

David

0 Replies

@InfraBlue,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

OmSigDAVID wrote:
I have had invited guests in my home,
sometimes remaining for several years; I never even thawt
of putting any of them to work.

engineer wrote:
Guests are not family.
I took care of my cousin, Connie, about 4O years ago,
when she was 11, but I did not put her to work.

InfraBlue wrote:

Do you have maids and servants?

Yes.

Quote:

engineer wrote:
Family have rights you would never extend to a guest and responsibilities you would never ask from a guest. Having a child help with chores is not a cheap way to unload labor, it is a series of training exercises preparing them to be independent adults. It is often much easier to do something yourself than to train and supervise a child to do it, but much better for them to learn that there is pride in doing something to support the whole and doing it well.
How much pride is there in surrendering to extortion,
and well doing the will of the extortionist ??????

David

InfraBlue wrote:

How is this extortion?

Apparently the labor was extorted.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

It seems to me that the chores in your house are done by your maids and servants, so the point of doing that kind of work for yourself and your family is moot in your case. In the case of the OP it seems that the chores in their house are done by the family members themselves. I don't think that your point of view can jibe with theirs seeing as how your situation is not equatable to theirs.

Assuming that what appears to you as extortion is correct, you haven't explained how this is extortion.

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

It seems to me that the chores in your house are done by your maids and servants, so the point of doing that kind of work for yourself and your family is moot in your case. In the case of the OP it seems that the chores in their house are done by the family members themselves. I don't think that your point of view can jibe with theirs seeing as how your situation is not equatable to theirs.

Permit me to clarify:
in the absence of servants,
I woud not put guests to work.
It seems to me that kids r, in effect, guests of their parents.

InfraBlue wrote:

Assuming that what appears to you as extortion is correct, you haven't explained how this is extortion.

I believe that this thread implies threats.
My information is from this thread, only,
regarding the extorted labor.

David

0 Replies

It would appear as though your guests are just as clueless. I've never been a guest in anyone's house without doing something to help out. It's what civilized people do. They don't have to be asked, you just do what's needed to be done. Whether it's taking out the garbage or helping clear the table.

1 Reply

@Irishk,

Irishk wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
I can't imagine having told my dad that I wouldn't do a chore he told me to do. He and my mom would have simply eroded each and every liberty I had until it became perfectly clear who was in charge.
We may be related lol. Mine also made us get paying jobs as soon as it was legal....summers and school breaks, all the way through college. Oh, the cruelty!

Heck with that; I have had a job since I was 14, year-round. I haven't had a 3-week long vacation in 18 years.

Kind of blows the 'lazy liberal' stereotype out of the water eh?

I wish all I had had to do was sweep the stairs, I mean, c'mon. It takes two minutes to do.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Ceili,

Ceili wrote:

It would appear as though your guests are just as clueless. I've never been a guest in anyone's house without doing something to help out. It's what civilized people do. They don't have to be asked, you just do what's needed to be done. Whether it's taking out the garbage or helping clear the table.

I did not deny that over the years thay did anything.
Thay did. Thay were my friends.
That made me a little nervous.
I did not want them making changes whereof I have not approved.

David

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

. . . Kind of blows the 'lazy liberal' stereotype out of the water eh? . . .

Cycloptichorn

I have never had any opinion
of liberals qua being lazy; just being deviant CHEATERS.

David

0 Replies

Is it fair to give not common cleaning chore to teen?

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