Eldest, Rachel, started a Saturday and weekday evening job as soon as she was 14, working for a local sweet shop. When the shop changed hands she moved to American Soda, a food importer and has worked in their shop since.
"The Boy" Jacob, followed into his sisters footsteps and on turning 14 took up employment as a "Director of media distribution" which is his rather grand title for a paper boy. In fact he is a triple round paper boy, doing weekday mornings for a local news agent and an additional Saturday morning round for them as well. His third round, is a Thursday night delivery of free papers (250 of them) As a consequence of all this experience they are both developing an understanding of the importance of work and money.
Youngest Ruth is not quite old enough to send up the chimneys yet, but is champing at the bit.
At home we have a very complex, 3 week rolling rota on the fridge that shares the duties connected with our evening meal. Each night 2 jobs always need doing,
Setting and siding the table. Putting out cutlery, condiments drinks, plates and food then putting them all away stacking used dishes for washing.
Kitchen duty. Washing,drying and putting away dishes. Cleaning worktops, cooker and general tidying
So on any given night we have 2 children "on duty" and 1 "off duty". Now I'm not a totally Victorian Dad, the kitchen chores are a big job for one person, so I share that every night. There are no set rules for the kitchen duty, so whoever is on duty with me gets to discuss which bit each of us does. I must say I prefer to wash than dry dishes, but I am flexible, well usually anyway !
So why should we complain you may ask, well Monday night is Ironing night. Joanne and I share this thrilling task, then distribute the nice piles of clothes to the girls room and the boys lair.
Now is it just our kids, or does the next step of the process take days for all teenagers ?
How hard is it to put the pile away, how frustrating is it to find a neat pile of cloths, buried under other things on Friday ???
I know people that would say, stop ironing for them, well that's okay if you don't mind going out with kids in creased clothes. Stop their pocket money I hear you say, well the amount of this our self financing kids receive is not really an incentive if removed! Take their phones of them, tough when they have bought their own and put the credit on themselves! Ground them ! Possible I suppose !
Well I have another plan, as they all read my blog, I am going to write an entry about my life's challenge, the difficulty in getting clothes from the desk into the wardrobe! Yes that's what I am going to do ! In fact kids you have just read IT !!!! Perhaps one day soon I can write another blog about the blessing of having kids that put their stuff away straight away :)
