The Power of Chores

Someone once told me that the main reason the world should continue to repopulate is, cheap labor. Kids get to a certain age and for those blurred years that you covered EVERY aspect of personal and family care, they have to start giving back. Ideally.
It is my personal belief that children should start being assigned chores around two. Nothing huge, I save the oil changes and oven cleaning for my five year old, but two is a good age to implement cleaning up toys, sorting laundry, helping to make the bed.
Let me just point out, chores sound wonderful, but it's not easy. Small children are programmed to have fun at all times. Chores, hard as you may try, are not always fun. And those young children grow into older children who are inundated with schoolwork, socialization, television...all seemingly more important than chores. Then they grow into teenagers, and well, you know.
But chores are important. They teach responsibility. When handled properly, they give children a proud sense of belonging and contribution to the family. And they help to afford you the luxury of say, a shower or a few minutes in a book or writing in your blog ahem. For me, chores are not even a question. I am the sole caregiver and provider for an entire tribe. I have eight trillion more important things to do every day than put away ALL those clothes, sort ALL those shoes and pick up ALL those toys over and over and over again. I like the beds made in the house. But if the kids didn't do it, let's be realistic, it wouldn't get done.
And chores have helped us bond. When my kids proclaim, "This is my house," they couldn't be more right. From the innocent little age of two years old, they become cogs in the gears of the mechanics from which my house is run. It doesn't always run smoothly, we have our yelling matches, but I made a decision some years back when children began popping from my loins like little baby rabbits, I will not ever be perfect. I am a good enough mom.
Which is good enough for me. The kids' school and daycare are constantly raving about my children's behavior and intelligence. "If we could clone your kids and put all those clones in this school," they tell me, "We would." Instant gratification.
Growing up, and until she passed away recently, I was incredibly close to my grandmother. If you knew her, you would've been too. Having raised seven children who raised their children, who for the most part all turned out to be successful, intelligent people - and all turned out to be good, kind family oriented people, I trusted her opinion entirely. She had been a school teacher from the age of nineteen. Grandma knows kids. And in between priceless bits of advice and encouragement, she would forever praise my parenting and the amazing people my children are shaping in to. "It's uncommon and so beautiful," she would gush, "How well behaved they are."
It will forever touch my heart, that my children were mentioned in her eulogy. I am so proud to have created such amazing little beings that were able to touch her life so profoundly. The way that she touched mine.
Still waters run deep, as they say. The meaning that I glean from my flash of a life comes from more than just these dates that I push myself to go on, more than a bad husband that has shaped us so completely.
No matter where we go from here, the foundation in which I build my children's lives will never waiver. Trust me when I say, even when they come home for summers from college (which they WILL attend), they will still have chores. Because we will forever be a family, and they will forever be components to the mechanics of my life. Grandma taught me that much.