Latest / The Parenting Podcast / Do chores have to be a chore? (Pt. 1) | Ep. 01

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Do chores have to be a chore? (Pt. 1) | Ep. 01 · The Parenting Podcast

• 0:53
  Cheryl: Well, Ellen, you have had a really big celebration.
• 0:57
  Ellen: We did.
• 0:58
  Ellen: 47 years of being married.
• 1:01
  Cheryl: Wow.
• 1:02
  Cheryl: Congratulations to both of you.
• 1:04
  Ellen: Thank you.
• 1:04
  Ellen: It went really fast,
• 1:06
  Cheryl (2): but you started very young
• 1:08
  Ellen: Yes
• 1:08
  Cheryl: Okay.
• 1:09
  Cheryl: So y'all just got married a month or something after you graduated from high school
• 1:12
  Ellen: I had enough credits,we got married pretty soon after that.
• 1:17
  Cheryl (2): That's Amazing.
• 1:18
  Cheryl (2): We don't hear a lot of that trending these days.
• 1:21
  Cheryl (2): Let me ask you, what was something that was a surprise.
• 1:24
  Cheryl (2): You were so young, mom and your grandparents at home, and then straight to being married, what was something that was a bit of a surprise?
• 1:31
  Ellen: Well, probably a lot of stuff, but I think maybe more along the practical side, because I still was pretty young.
• 1:38
  Ellen: I was just 18.
• 1:40
  Ellen: So actually having to be the chief cook and bottle washer was kind of a surprise.
• 1:46
  Ellen: There was no one actually.
• 1:47
  Ellen: Taking care of me in that sense, I had to do the taking care of.
• 1:51
  Cheryl: So you mean actually the cleaning of the house and the cooking and all that?
• 1:55
  Ellen: Yeah just those everyday things.that your parents do for you because I didn't live on my own.
• 2:00
  Ellen: So now it's my turn to walk into those.
• 2:02
  Ellen: Fortunately I was really well-trained but chores definitely surprised me.
• 2:06
  Cheryl: Okay, so you say you were well-trained.
• 2:10
  Cheryl: What did that look like?
• 2:12
  Cheryl: Let's talk about this.
• 2:13
  Cheryl: What was it in their training that equipped you for adulthood?
• 2:17
  Ellen: Well, I think my parents started when I was pretty young.
• 2:20
  Ellen: I don't even remember.
• 2:21
  Ellen: I always had to make my bed and pick up my room.
• 2:24
  Ellen: That was just what you had to do.
• 2:25
  Ellen: But also both my mother and my grandmother took the time.
• 2:29
  Ellen: They actually showed me how to dust.
• 2:31
  Ellen: They showed me how to clean corners.
• 2:34
  Ellen: They taught me how to dust baseboards, which I do not do, but they taught me how to do that.
• 2:40
  Ellen: And so they gave me a very thorough understanding how to clean windows, everything that you would need to have the knowledge to clean a house.
• 2:48
  Ellen: They between the two of them taught me how to do that.
• 2:52
  Cheryl (2): But also I know enough to say it was pretty strict and pretty hard on you.
• 2:57
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 2:57
  Cheryl: They were tough on you.
• 3:00
  Ellen: My family had no sense of humor and I had a lot, so they stared at me many times.
• 3:05
  Ellen: They didn't get my jokes, but yes, they were definitely disciplinarians.
• 3:10
  Ellen: This is what you need to learn.
• 3:11
  Ellen: This is what you should be doing.
• 3:13
  Ellen: We've taught you to do it; do it.
• 3:15
  Cheryl (2): That wasn't my situation at all.
• 3:17
  Cheryl (2): Like you saying"baseboards," it wasn't all that long ago.
• 3:21
  Cheryl (2): And someone talked about, oh my back's sore because I was dusting baseboards all day and I thought, oh, I've never thought in my life about dusting baseboards.
• 3:32
  Cheryl (2): What else do I not know?
• 3:34
  Cheryl (2): My mom just did it all and, she didn't know anything coming into marriage.
• 3:40
  Cheryl (2): She had been raised by grandmothers who didn't train her and it was a pretty dysfunctional situation.
• 3:45
  Cheryl (2): She was safe, but she knew nothing.
• 3:47
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 3:48
  Cheryl: She had to figure it all out.
• 3:50
  Cheryl: She just did it all.
• 3:51
  Cheryl: I would even say,"mom, can I help you?" And she would say,"it's just easier if I do it myself." I would do a few things, but she never trained me.
• 4:00
  Cheryl: She was a great cook, but she didn't know how to boil water when they got married.
• 4:05
  Cheryl: And I didn't get that passed on.
• 4:08
  Cheryl: It's interesting because we both come from different situations and then we're thrown into real life.
• 4:14
  Ellen: Right.
• 4:14
  Cheryl: We have to figure it out
• 4:15
  Ellen: yeah, and quickly
• 4:16
  Cheryl (2): and just with a lot of stumbling around.
• 4:20
  Cheryl (2): you just were really well equipped, but under pretty harsh circumstances.
• 4:25
  Ellen: yeah,
• 4:25
  Cheryl (2): I wanted to keep a home.
• 4:27
  Cheryl (2): I saw my mom do it, but I had to just figure it out.
• 4:29
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Cheryl: I'll just tell you, Ellen runs a tight ship.
• 4:33
  Cheryl: even if y'all weren't military, it was a tight ship.
• 4:37
  Cheryl: And how did that always work for you?
• 4:39
  Ellen: Well, not always the best way.
• 4:41
  Ellen: I mean, that's sometimes hard on your children when you have pretty high standards.
• 4:45
  Ellen: And just to give you an example, we always had lots of people in and out of our home.
• 4:51
  Ellen: Part of it was a military function and some of it was just social things.
• 4:55
  Ellen: And I remember one time when my kids were all pretty young and of course, Mike was gone because everything happened when he was gone.
• 5:04
  Cheryl: He was gone because of military.
• 5:06
  Ellen: Yeah, He was gone for the military, but we had already a preassigned event at our home where a lot of other people were coming and there were two very famous authors in the Christian community coming to our house.
• 5:18
  Ellen: So it was like a really big deal.
• 5:21
  Cheryl: Without Mike.
• 5:21
  Ellen: Yes, of course, without Mike.
• 5:23
  Ellen: So all the people in our Bible study pitched in to help me get the house cleaned up because I had four children under eight, and they helped me get the house all straightened up and everything.
• 5:31
  Ellen: So things are going well.
• 5:33
  Ellen: And the next thing I know, everybody comes in and we all sit down and do introductions.
• 5:38
  Ellen: And then all of a sudden I looked down and out walks my black weenie dog completely covered in teeny smaller than pea size, teeny tiny styrofoam balls.
• 5:51
  Ellen: Back in the day, this was probably in the eighties.
• 5:55
  Ellen: They used to pack instead of the big peanuts that they pack now
• 5:58
  Cheryl: so you're talking about like the ones that used to be in the beanbags, those tiny, like smaller than small fingernail.
• 6:04
  Ellen: Yes, even smaller than that.
• 6:06
  Ellen: These were teeny tiny little styrofoam balls.
• 6:09
  Ellen: We lived in Las Vegas where the humidity is very, very low.
• 6:14
  Ellen: So we have a lot of static electricity...
• 6:17
  Cheryl (2): This is going bad.
• 6:18
  Ellen: And unbeknownst to me, the kids got up on the top bunk bed and proceeded to empty the box because it was"snowing".
• 6:25
  Ellen: So now we have the static
• 6:28
  Cheryl: Ten million snowflakes
• 6:29
  Ellen: Yes, oh absolutely.
• 6:31
  Ellen: Now they're clinging to the walls.
• 6:33
  Ellen: They're clinging to the Wiener dog.
• 6:35
  Ellen: The whole hallway is just covered in these styrofoam balls, the kids are covered in them and there's no practical, easy way to break the static.
• 6:46
  Cheryl (2): And then they come walking in and the dog comes in and I mean, your guests I bet they left with them on their legs...
• 6:51
  Ellen: They did.
• 6:53
  Cheryl: I remember one time we did.
• 6:55
  Cheryl: I learned, but we did sprinkling glitter.
• 7:00
  Ellen: Oh gosh,
• 7:01
  Cheryl: for Christmas cards or something.
• 7:04
  Cheryl: I had these big things and we sprinkled glitter and it made a mess at home, but Bill called me from work and he wasn't even around.
• 7:10
  Cheryl: He said,"Sweetheart, I have it on my tie; inside my jacket pocket..." so I got rid of those,
• 7:18
  Ellen: but this is similar.
• 7:19
  Cheryl: So see, it doesn't always work to run a tidy ship.
• 7:24
  Ellen: No.
• 7:24
  Ellen: And of course our guests were delighted.
• 7:27
  Ellen: I'm sure that's a story they tell, but they were older people and it didn't offend them at all.
• 7:32
  Ellen: And they thought it was funny, but I was so embarassed
• 7:35
  Cheryl (2): What I figured out, because I didn't get trained.
• 7:37
  Cheryl (2): I figured out what you could see was clean and nice, but my mom didn't know.
• 7:43
  Cheryl (2): And so I didn't learn from her about"behind closed doors" that old song.
• 7:48
  Cheryl (2): And so behind closed doors, sometimes it was junk drawers and closets were messy.
• 7:54
  Cheryl (2): And I just kind of didn't know, but that's okay because when we have guests, we have people come over, we just keep those doors closed.
• 8:01
  Cheryl (2): So didn't have this big picture of what we're talking about our home.
• 8:05
  Cheryl (2): We were just brand new.
• 8:06
  Cheryl (2): I mean, I don't think we'd been married three months.
• 8:10
  Cheryl (2): We moved into a little house and actually it wasn't so little because it was just us.
• 8:15
  Cheryl (2): And we had rooms that we couldn't even use.
• 8:18
  Cheryl (2): We didn't even have furniture for awhile.
• 8:20
  Cheryl (2): We had this one room but it was sort of our junk storage room.
• 8:23
  Cheryl (2): And when we kind of didn't know what to do, we would just put things in there and we were going to clear it out, but that's okay because you just closed the door and if anybody would come over they never looked in there.
• 8:32
  Cheryl (2): It was off the living room and we had a friend and he was single.
• 8:38
  Cheryl (2): He was a lawyer and his life was very tidy and neat.
• 8:41
  Cheryl (2): He called Hey, in about 10 minutes away How about if it comes to your new house?" Sure." And hung down the phone.
• 8:47
  Cheryl (2): "Quick we've got 10 minutes." And so trying to clean up from supper and trying to just tidy up some tidying up the stuff you can see.
• 8:55
  Cheryl (2): so it's okay.
• 8:57
  Cheryl (2): And then he came.
• 8:58
  Cheryl (2): We're talking, living room and we're chatting and he put his hand on the door.- of that if you think of a junk drawer, it was a junk room and I'm just going, please don't open, please don't open the door.
• 9:08
  Cheryl (2): "Why don't you come back here?" And he went ahead and he opened it.
• 9:11
  Cheryl (2): I was so mortified instead of just laughing...
• 9:16
  Ellen: right.
• 9:16
  Cheryl: I was too young and I was mortified and I couldn't even enjoy showing the rest of the house because I was so embarrassed about that.
• 9:24
  Cheryl: So it was a lesson.
• 9:26
  Cheryl: That said,"whoa, you can't just stop at the closed door." so we have these two different styles and neither of them worked very perfectly.
• 9:36
  Ellen: Right
• 9:37
  Cheryl (2): so let's switch to our kids.
• 9:39
  Cheryl (2): chores then?
• 9:41
  Ellen: Yeah, Chores chores are challenging in a family.
• 9:45
  Cheryl: It's a pain.
• 9:46
  Ellen: Yes.
• 9:46
  Cheryl: It's never fun.
• 9:47
  Ellen: Nobody wakes up and goes, I can't wait to get my chores done unless there's a really good reward at the end.
• 9:52
  Cheryl (2): Thinking about it, why would moms not just do it themselves, which is what my mother did Drive their children be a drill master on it or pay somebody.
• 10:02
  Cheryl (2): What would be a reason not to do that?
• 10:05
  Cheryl (2): And I'm asking this question because I have the answer.
• 10:08
  Cheryl (2): All right.
• 10:09
  Cheryl (2): You know, me, I love to do research.
• 10:11
  Ellen: Right.
• 10:12
  Cheryl (2): Okay.
• 10:13
  Cheryl (2): So what I like to find out is legitimate information from science.
• 10:18
  Ellen: Yes.
• 10:18
  Cheryl: One time I read about a study and I think.
• 10:21
  Cheryl: It was Harvard or Yale over a 20 year period.
• 10:26
  Cheryl: They watched and tracked children and then saw actually who is successful as adults in their relationships.
• 10:35
  Cheryl: Not that they made a hundred million dollars, but they were successful as human beings and particularly relationships and being a whole person.
• 10:44
  Cheryl (2): and They backtracked and looked where did they find the difference?
• 10:47
  Cheryl (2): And it's the most amazing thing it was children that learned to do chores at like three and four years old.
• 10:54
  Cheryl (2): So it was the required chores and those are the children that flourished as adults.
• 11:03
  Cheryl (2): So my question is why?
• 11:05
  Cheryl (2): There has to be something more about chores than a clean house.
• 11:08
  Ellen: Yes, that's true.
• 11:09
  Ellen: Because otherwise the professional housekeeper should be the most developed, mature character-driven person in the world.
• 11:19
  Cheryl (2): So there is something deeper.
• 11:22
  Cheryl (2): Bill would always say, If we have to make a choice, we're always going to choose or default to their heart or to the character of the situation." It's important to be on time someplace.
• 11:34
  Cheryl (2): It's important to eat a meal.
• 11:36
  Cheryl (2): It's important to do your math.
• 11:38
  Cheryl (2): There are so many different things, but rather than the thing being the priority, he would say, no, in this case, this is a character issue.
• 11:46
  Cheryl (2): This is a heart issue.
• 11:47
  Cheryl (2): So we would address it.
• 11:48
  Cheryl (2): And I think it's the same thing here, because.There are a lot of character traits that come from this diligence of doing chores and I've seen it my life and I see it in my kid's lives If you could think about it what's a character trait that you think comes from chores?
• 12:08
  Ellen: Well, I think one of the strongest things that I feel that comes from learning chores is that as we kind of said earlier, really anyone can clean a house.
• 12:18
  Ellen: That's, not the goal.
• 12:20
  Ellen: The goal is teaching your children through caring for the house and the home.
• 12:27
  Ellen: It teaches them to care for the family.
• 12:30
  Cheryl: You see that would make sense.
• 12:32
  Cheryl: That would align with that kind of child if they can learn that would be a flourishing adult.
• 12:39
  Ellen: Yes.
• 12:39
  Ellen: and of course they don't understand that at three or four and sometimes even 10, but it sets a tone in their heart that, oh, okay.
• 12:47
  Ellen: I pick up after myself cause it's courteous.
• 12:50
  Ellen: I help clean up because it makes the whole home smoother.
• 12:55
  Cheryl: It's true.
• 12:55
  Cheryl: Also one of the things I think if there's anything that can be said about all children, certainly small children, they are self-centered
• 13:04
  Ellen: right.
• 13:04
  Cheryl: They're all about themselves from the moment they come out.
• 13:08
  Cheryl: I mean, they're screaming,"Don't take me out of that nice place I was in."
• 13:12
  Ellen: Yep
• 13:12
  Cheryl (2): Okay.
• 13:13
  Cheryl (2): One of the things that I've seen.
• 13:15
  Cheryl (2): I want the children to get over this self-focus.
• 13:18
  Cheryl (2): Well, I'm working at it and I'm decades away from my childhood, but want them to quit being self-focused and learn to be other-focused.
• 13:28
  Cheryl (2): Because sometimes I had my kids say,"Well, mom, I don't even use that." whatever it is, a room that they didn't want to clean or bookshelf or whatever specific thing.
• 13:38
  Ellen: That's not mine.
• 13:39
  Cheryl: So then we have the good conversations about taking care of our home, but more than that, this is what we do as a family.
• 13:46
  Cheryl: We are loving one another.
• 13:48
  Cheryl: We are giving, we are giving from ourselves to someone else.
• 13:52
  Cheryl: Any other thoughts on just if you could think of another trait?
• 13:56
  Ellen: Well, I think just helping our kids to learn to enjoy an organized kind of clutter-free environment.
• 14:03
  Ellen: I don't mean super organized, but I mean that there's some kind of order to their life.
• 14:07
  Ellen: It keeps everybody in a calmer place.
• 14:10
  Ellen: If you have to spend 15 minutes as you're walking out the door, cause you can't find your keys because you didn't put them away or the child can't find their shoes, all of those things add stress in our lives.
• 14:23
  Cheryl: It sure does.
• 14:24
  Cheryl: And you know, those stressed with time walking out the door is a really good example.
• 14:29
  Cheryl: I think a lot of us would confess that we have not treated our children the way we should love when we're feeling the pressure of getting out the door.
• 14:40
  Ellen: The biggest fights are everybody's trying to get out the door,
• 14:43
  Cheryl (2): Particularly getting them to school, or if you're a working mom, you have deadlines.
• 14:49
  Cheryl (2): Okay.
• 14:49
  Cheryl (2): You know, me, I'm always trying to ask but what's beneath that.
• 14:53
  Cheryl (2): And I think that there's something like you mentioned, we talked about the house cleaners if it were just the chores and that you get character from that, which there are benefits to that, but there's got to be something more from us.
• 15:07
  Cheryl (2): that our children are learning something.
• 15:09
  Cheryl (2): For example, I saw it in my life with the kids, but absolutely now that all my kids are grown, I've realized so much was caught from me rather than taught
• 15:18
  Ellen: yes, that's important.
• 15:19
  Cheryl: Like integrity that I might say everything I want to say about integrity, but my kids are watching
• 15:25
  Ellen: yes.
• 15:26
  Cheryl (2): They're Watching, watching watching to see my attitude.
• 15:28
  Cheryl (2): I'm wondering if a big component of all of this isn't just doing the chores and having the house and all of that.
• 15:36
  Cheryl (2): But the kids are picking up on our attitude about what's my attitude about serving others and working hard, whether it's in the home or out of the home.
• 15:45
  Cheryl (2): "Oh I have to fix you another meal.
• 15:46
  Cheryl (2): Oh, here we are cleaning up.
• 15:48
  Cheryl (2): If you would make such a mess." Attitudes like that.
• 15:51
  Cheryl (2): I wonder if that's being caught on a deep level where the others might be a little more superficial?
• 15:58
  Ellen: Well, yeah, because we can always make our kids through negative things, clean their room, clean the house, but ultimately we want our kids to leave the home going, oh, I don't hate chores.
• 16:10
  Ellen: And I know that it's worth it to pick up after myself to clean up after myself, to clean up eventually after my family, because it frees us up to enjoy life.
• 16:22
  Cheryl: I think it really matters what we role model for our children in those areas.
• 16:30
  Cheryl: And I just never thought about chores and work.
• 16:33
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 16:34
  Cheryl: Do I talk about,"oh, it was so hard and look how they treat me." That we're role-modeling and that we need to be aware of what we are giving off.
• 16:43
  Ellen: while we're in the middle of cleaning a toilet,
• 16:45
  Cheryl: The whole attitude of let's do this and building maybe servanthood into the hearts.
• 16:52
  Ellen: Yes.
• 16:53
  Ellen: Well, ultimately, even though it's just a little kids Disney cartoon"whistle while you work, I think most people would know that song if they've seen Disney.
• 17:02
  Cheryl: Snow White.
• 17:02
  Ellen: Yep, but there is a kind of a truth behind that.
• 17:05
  Ellen: We want to have a good attitude.
• 17:06
  Ellen: We may not always be whistling, but we do want to have a good attitude because.
• 17:10
  Ellen: It sets the tone.
• 17:11
  Ellen: There's nothing worse than working with a crabby mom while she's angry and you're trying to pick up.
• 17:18
  Cheryl (2): That's so true.
• 17:19
  Cheryl (2): We've been Trying to say, Hey, there's something really important because there's something deeper about chores, about their heart and my heart to work on my heart But we're out of time.
• 17:30
  Cheryl (2): Next time let's talk about the practical, like what you really did or what worked or what didn't work.
• 17:35
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Ellen: I think that's makes a lot of sense.
• 17:38
  Cheryl: Okay.
• 17:39
  Cheryl: Moms, until next time, please, don't forget.
• 17:45
  Cheryl: Hang in there.
• 17:46
  Cheryl: Keep loving.
• 17:48
  Cheryl: Keep persevering because it's worth it.
• 17:52
  Ellen: Yes.
• 17:52
  Ellen: It's worth it.