Like most children, all I wanted to do was play games with my friends all day long. In my household it felt almost impossible to just be a young playful boy. This was a period in my life where I would sit in my small room and plot the murder of my mother, father, or both of them for their strict rules about doing chores. My mother was definitely the one that we saluted when her back was turned and then we would all giggle. We looked forward to summer vacation from school so we could just play and dance to soul music. It never happened in my home. My mother created a list of tasks that had to be completed before she returned home from work every day.
Being only 7 or 8 years old, my list included cleaning my room every day, making my bed that she would inspect and critique, washing dishes while standing on a stool since I couldn't reach the sink, mowing the lawn and pulling weeds with my brother and sister, vacuuming the house, taking out the garbage, and getting on that stool again to cook rice every day for dinner. Later she taught each of us to iron our clothes, along with towels without burning them. My siblings and I hated every moment of it. We planned many ways to have her kidnapped or shipped to another country, but she always managed to find our top-secret plans and maps to remove her so that we could just have fun together. We finally figured out ways to get the chores done faster by inviting our neighbourhood friends in to help complete our tasks so we could all have fun playing baseball, dodge ball or other fun games. Great idea or so we thought. The adults in the community told my mother of our scheme once she exited the bus before heading home. Then the tasks increased. We looked in the telephone book for an assassin, but our allowances together weren't enough to hire a cat to get rid of her.
As I grew up and went off to college, I noticed how most of my roommates didn't have the same skills that I had been forced on me as a child. None of them knew how to make a bed or even clean up after themselves. That was the moment that I realised what my old lady that terrorised us was trying to teach us. She taught us how to take care of ourselves. I can remember saying one day, "Mom, why do boys have to learn do all these stupid chores, isn't that why you get married." I wasn't quite sure what happened, but the lights seemed to have gone out around me as the back of my mother's hand hit my face. She was too fast for me to get out of the way. My siblings trembled with fear as my mother yelled, "Women are and will always be equal if not better than men. If and when you get married, I am teaching you to do half of the chores and learn how to take care of yourself when you become an adult." As the stars around me finally stopped circling me, I had to confirm that I understood the message as she made each of us repeat it twice.
Today, I understand the necessity of doing chores in my youth. The hard work we despised as children made us who we are today. Doing chores helps children learn about what they need to do to care for themselves, a home and a family. Skills learned have taught me how to prepare meals, clean my living space and to be organised. Being engaged in household tasks taught me relationship skills and responsibility. When I took a position as a Project Manager, all of my childhood training truly benefited me. It was like second nature to organise and manage projects through a variety of techniques using kaizen lessons to organise better and eliminate clutter in order to achieve the goals of the project successfully and in a timely fashion.
There are many benefits to teaching children to do chores that include:
Chores provide children with a purpose
Chores teach children about delayed gratification
Chores help to improve motor skills
Chores teach self-discipline
Chores help you to learn about working with others
Chores influence success as adults
In 2016, Inc. Magazine released an article titled, Kids Who Do Chores Are More Successful Adults based on research highlighting that professional success in life, which is what we want for our kids comes from having done chores as a kid", says Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen at Stanford University, in her 2016 TED talk. Haims says, "It's a roll up your sleeve and pitch in mindset." If someone would have tried to explain this to me when I was a young boy, I would not have understood any of it. Even as a teenager, I wouldn't believe it, but today, it all makes sense as the lightbulb turned on.
The best part about growing up in an environment that held me responsible for starting and completing tasks is a life saver for me. For the past 20 years I have worked as a public relations and marketing consultant from home. Most people, especially during mandatory shutdown during COVID, find it difficult to work from home without wanting to watch television or play games on the computer to pass the time. My upbringing taught me to treat almost every situation like a job. Facilitating meetings is always a reminder to have a clear agenda, sticking to the agenda, and starting meetings on time and ending on time, whether in person or online. Although I must admit, sometimes it makes me feel like a robot the way every task is project managed through various apps like Asana, Trello, or one of the many other project management tools.
So, am I pleased that my mother pushed me and my siblings to do chores every day? The answer would be NO, I still would rather have been outside chasing a ball with my friends, nagging my big sister while she was trying to talk to her boyfriend on the phone or annoying my big brother who didn't want a nagging little runny nose kid anywhere near him. However, like magic, those skills have assisted me in working strategically and successfully developing relationships with others. Did your parents introduce you to chores when you were young? What was it like for you and can you see the benefits today?
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