Helping Hands

October 3, 3:49 PMSalt Lake City Parenting ExaminerRachael Lever

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So, whoever thought up that crazy idea about it being a good idea to let kids help around the house? Whoever it was maybe didn’t have kids, or else maybe their kids were different than mine, because if you’re thinking you’re going to save yourself some time by having the kids share the work load, you are in for a big surprise.

The other day, I invited the four year old in our house to help me do the dishes. She was thrilled (I don’t think that will last long), and immediately dragged the dining room chair over to the sink. Although she didn’t roll up her sleeves, she would have if she’d thought of it. We got the water all filled up and the dishes in the sink. I washed, she rinsed, and loaded the dish drainer. It was going pretty well, even with her surreptitiously sneaking suds out of the wash water and washing her face, hands, neck, and whatever other skin was accessible. And then, the two year old came trotting through the kitchen, saw what fun we were having and just had to join in. He dragged a chair over to my other side and plunged right into the wash water. Great. I was flanked by two very young and messy children, and I knew that I didn’t have a chance of staying dry. On my left I had the rinser pouring water from cup to cup, and stirring it with silverware, and on the right the two-year old tossing dirty dishes willy nilly into the sink, and waving the wet bottle brush/sponge around like a sword. By the time we finished I was neither relaxed nor dry, and I had a lot of water to wipe up in, around, and near the kitchen. But the kids sure were happy (and not dry).

Another example of the helpfulness of young children happened just yesterday. We got out the Halloween decorations. The girls have been asking for a week when we would get them out, and I kept putting them off, telling them that the house was too messy to start making more messes. Yesterday I finally informed them that the house was clean enough, and that it was time. They practically peed their pants they were so excited. So I pulled down the boxes and hauled them into the living room. They immediately pounced on the first box, pausing momentarily in the act of opening it to ask, “Mom, can we open the box?” Yes, you can, I answer, with only a few misgivings. They pull it open rapturously and start exclaiming in delight over the orange and black trinkets, gushing about their beauty and basically going out of their minds. They unload the box and immediately busy themselves with “decorating” the house. This consists of taking whatever their hands touch and putting it on the closest shelf. By the time they’ve finished the room looks like a flea market. Luckily only one thing got broken in the melee, and I just happened to have some glue handy. Now they are so proud of their decorating, that it makes it even harder for me to sneakily rearrange stuff so that they don’t notice and feel bad that I’m changing what they did. It’s just all so complicated.

So here is a how to list for letting kids help without losing your mind in the process.

1. Know that helping actually means hindering and making everything 10 times more difficult and taking four times as long.
2. It’s going to be messy.
3. If your child accidently dumps a pan full of water on the floor instead of in the sink, try really, really hard to smile and say oops instead of the words that you really want to say.
4. It’s going to be messy.
5. When your six year old mops the floor, she may not realize that you don’t actually need to use the entire bucket full of water to clean a twenty five square foot area.
6. It’s going to be messy.
7. While you may think that your children have been observing your cleaning techniques for the past few years, they really haven’t grasped the concept of what you’re doing until they’ve done it themselves a few (hundred) dozen times.
8. Apparently they do not have the bodily/hand control to just sprinkle a little bit of comet in the sink. That can is so darn heavy it just dumps by itself.
9. It’s going to be messy.
10. You have to have a sense of humor. Otherwise, you may want to live by the old adage “Don’t try this at home, kids”.