{"id":337,"date":"2007-11-05T10:23:59","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T18:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/05\/chores-pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later\/"},"modified":"2007-11-05T10:33:08","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T18:33:08","slug":"chores-pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/05\/chores-pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Chores: pay me now or pay me later"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A month or two ago, I read an <a href=\"http:\/\/laragallagher.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/childrens-chore-carnival.html\" target=\"_blank\">excellent series of blog posts<\/a> about how to instill a work ethic and get your children to work around the house. It made me realize that I should get started on Ruby right away, as she was getting old enough to do a few small things.<\/p>\n<p>Her current chores are: sorting and putting away the silverware (from the clean dishwasher), helping to set the table by carrying things from the kitchen to the dining room, and helping to clean the playroom.<\/p>\n<p>Let me first say that none of these things actually <em>helps <\/em>us right now or makes things any easier. Her involvement makes these activities take longer than if I were doing it myself (and that&#8217;s how many parents fall off this wagon). However, I see it as an investment. It&#8217;s like that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fram_%28oil_filter%29\" target=\"_blank\">saying<\/a> &#8220;pay me now or pay me later,&#8221; except instead of money I&#8217;m paying with time. I&#8217;m paying upfront now in order to enjoy the payoff later of a kid who understands chores and does them automatically because that&#8217;s the way it&#8217;s always been. I can imagine that it would be much harder down the road to try to get an older child to suddenly start helping after they&#8217;re past their initial toddler&#8217;s eagerness to be involved.<\/p>\n<p>One day I hope that Ruby will be as amazingly helpful as the children in the blog post I linked. However, now I am satisfied enough that I no longer have to look over her shoulder as she sorts the forks and spoons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A month or two ago, I read an excellent series of blog posts about how to instill a work ethic and get your children to work around the house. It made me realize that I should get started on Ruby right away, as she was getting old enough to do a few small things. Her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}