Teaching Kids To Work

How come teaching kids to work is so much work.  If you are teaching them to work shouldn't mean less work for you?

On Friday's during the summer I have a group job that we work on together.  It is something bigger than their normal daily jobs.  Last week we wiped down all the baseboards and doors in the house.  These are some of the comments I heard.  "I am so tired.  Why do we have to do this."  "But I didn't make the baseboards dirty."  "This is not fair."  "Who is doing the most work?"  Answer: Mom

They have the ability to drag out any job and make it twice as long as it should take.  I find them laying on the floor, they complain almost nonstop and basically act like I am asking them to give up their whole summer to hard labor.

The frustrating thing is somehow the house looks worse when you are done then when you started.  I guess it is partly because the two little boys are making messes as we are trying to clean.

I am writing all of this so that when my kids call complaining about how hard it is to get their kids to work I can say go read page 77 in the blog book.  I'VE BEEN THERE!