Our kiddos do chores. Every day. Every morning and every evening, actually. And every weekend. Around here, everyone does–right down to the babysitters and the dogs. So when Speedracer came up to me last weekend and said, “can we do chores like last weekend? that was so fun!” which chores did he mean?

Cleaning out the barn.

But he really meant any of them What he meant was can we all go out and do the chores together? 

Because that’s their favorite chores. When the kids and the parents are all working together on something. When Momma is scrubbing and Daddy is shoveling right beside them. When we form a human-chicken-transfer chain to move our wily escapees from the feed shed back to the coop. When Momma hauls the bucket and Speedracer opens the gate and the Ladybug takes the top off and puts it back on and the Cowboy comes running with the scrap pan. (The bowl of household leftovers the chickens get each day.)

They like when we’re all outside sweating. When we’re all outside getting dirty. These are their favorite Saturdays. Yes, even over soccer Saturdays and sleepover Saturdays and shopping Saturdays.

They want family time as much as we do, even if it means sweating and sunburn and not eating lunch until 2:30. The easiest way to discipline a slacker during Saturday chore-days is to send them inside to their room. Alone. While everyone else is outside working together. Who’d’ve thought, right?

The exception to this would be video games, if we had them. I believe they would go inside to play video games rather than be with the family. It’s just one more reason why we’re not bringing them into the house. (They take over!)

On work-day Saturdays, even the dogs are outside with the family!

I share this because I think it’s important to realize that sometimes our kiddos complain about all the farm work. They do. They’re kids just like any others.

But sometimes–a lot of times!–they really enjoy it. They enjoy getting to drink from the hose while filling water buckets. They enjoy catching chickens. They enjoy getting to splash each other while scrubbing buckets. They enjoy mowing the grass like Daddy or getting a ride on the tractor or getting to use the “big” garden tools. They enjoy being given “big” jobs like helping move the animals, draw medicine doses, knowing where the tools are to run errands in the garage…

Children don’t mind work. Real work. Valuable, meaningful work.

And that’s a good thing!

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Updated on March 9, 2017