When we train our children to help out everyone benefits

By the time we’ve reached Simchas Torah many women are on such a spiritual high that they can barely concentrate anymore on mundane things like cooking and cleaning. At least this is the reason one woman gave me for why she wasn’t going to make even one more meal or sweep one more floor until Pesach. Fortunately for her she had trained her children to be quite competent in the kitchen. And you can do the same.

Kids and Kitchens

Kids like to eat in kitchens. Kids like to play in kitchens while their mothers cook and clean. But did you know that kids also like to cook and clean in kitchens? Because some people don’t know this they don’t give their children opportunities to develop their culinary and domestic skills. Later on they get really mad at these same children for not having such skills.

It’s perfectly understandable that once the family has grown and the older children have also grown mothers need and expect some help. Moreover they want this help to come easily and maybe even enthusiastically (would that be asking too much?). Unfortunately those who fail to prepare their kids in advance are unlikely to get any such thing.

Little Helpers Big Help

So what’s involved in “preparing kids in advance”? There are two ways to go about this: 1) Give birth to a child who has a strong need to help out or 2) teach the child how to help out.

You’ll probably have at least one child who falls into the second domain so we’ll now look at what’s involved in teaching domestic dexterity.

The first step is to actively plan this part of a child’s education. The child won’t learn it just by watching you — he must participate and acquire skills through personal trial and error. This means that a child needs to independently bake a cake from a mix (age nine). You can prepare a child to do this by allowing him or her to work with you when he or she is younger. A small child (age four) can hand you eggs from the carton (and thinks this is a blast). A bit later (five) the child can help you stir and mix (and thinks this is the best thing ever). A little older yet (seven) the child can help you hold the electric beaters and pour the batter (and feels so proud). As you can see by age nine there will be no difficulty in putting the whole cake together. Ice the cake with praise and kisses and you’ve got one pleased-with-him/herself-kitchen-cook ready to go.

But we all know that kitchen work isn’t just the fun stuff. There’s pots to scrub (age 11) dishes to wash (age eight on a stool) dishes to dry (age seven) and put away (age ten) garbage to empty and remove (age nine) and lots more. How does one train a child to do these things as well as make his bed fold laundry assemble his lunch and so on? The trick lies in timing.

When to Teach

You always want to teach housework how-to’s when a child still thinks that the task is really neat. For instance five-year-olds take great pride in serving food and clearing tables; they are honored to be deemed responsible enough to do these grownups jobs. Once they’ve experienced the intoxicating sense of accomplishment at having made a truly welcome contribution they’ll come back for more again and again (be sure to make it worth their while with unending amounts of praise and acknowledgment).

Similarly giving a nine-year-old the opportunity to season the soup a six-year-old the chance to prepare snacks or a five-year-old the “privilege” of dusting the furniture with your giant feather duster is an easy way to introduce the joys of domestic activities. Bed-making and towel-folding appeals to four-year-olds especially when paired with stories and laughter. Never introduce tasks in harsh tone and never ever complain about doing housework yourself. Instead find a way to make every task pleasurable (or at least tolerable) so you can model a positive domestic demeanor.

If you happen to have missed the early deadlines for teaching basic skills use serious rewards during the training stage in addition to the usual praise ’n ’preciation. Ask for tiny bits of help and give huge buckets of positive feedback omitting all negativity. Do whatever you must to instill good feelings and competence in the domestic realm because by the time Simchas Torah comes you’ll be wanting someone’s help real bad.