Life's Lessons

At the risk of sounding like the meanest Mom in the World, I have to share some of the lessons that the girls (particularly Savannah) have learned this past month.

Lesson 1. Mom's serious when she says something, and she doesn't play around.

Lesson 2. Cleaning the chicken coop over doing school work isn't as much fun as it sounds.

Now. The stories behind the lessons learned at our house this last month.

For weeks, I've been telling the girls that they need to keep their toys in their locations when they're finished playing with them. The consequence for NOT keeping their toys organized when they're not being played with is that the infamous and somewhat dreaded Gunny Sack comes to eat them. Usually, Gunny doesn't spit them back out, and other children end up with new toys. Not so in this case. After giving the girls the chance to "govern themselves" with some guidance for a week, and then for an entire day, Gunny had reached her starvation point. One Friday, the girls were given the chance to clean their room. In the Stahr home, this means: make your beds, put your dirty clothes in the laundry basket, pick up the Barbies and the Little Pet Shop things (the only two sets of toys in their room), and make sure the books are on the shelf. I've worked with them many times to make sure that they understand this concept. At the end of the aforementioned Friday, I went into their room to see how far they'd come. As a side note, at the beginning of the day, the only things to do were to make their beds and pick up the Barbies. Much to my surprise, (or maybe not too surprising...) Margaret's mattress was OFF the bed, all of their clothes were out of the dressers, the books were all over the floor, ALL of the toys were scattered all over, and it looked like Hurricane Andrew had returned.

Several deep breaths later, I banished the girls from their room and went to work. That lasted for a sum total of 15 minutes before I realized that I was cleaning out of anger and spite, and in that case, Gunny would have not taken toys to Goodwill, but rather to the burn pile, never to be seen again. I calmly walked out of the room, closed the door behind me, and told the girls - calmly, that they were not allowed to clean their room, and that they were not allowed to touch anything in their room, except for their beds.

The following day, I followed through on a promise made weeks earlier that if they couldn't keep their room picked up, the toys were not going to be allowed in their room. Currently, the girls are discovering that swings and books are their friends while their toys are on vacation in the basement - nicely organized into their own little containers. We're going to a "check-out" system for the toys. As soon as I get the cards made up for each drawer or tote. I understand that this isn't a permanent solution to the problem, but it seems to have solved the "I can't function in all this chaos" issue. And they're a lot more appreciative of "play with toys" time.

Lesson 2: Education is important. I've learned this my entire life. Home schooling, while it has its benefits (and I really wouldn't quit for anything at this point, no matter how challenging it may be), also has its challenges. Some are a little harder to solve than others. When I was a teenager, I learned a valuable lesson on the importance of an education. I decided that I didn't want to go to school, and was given a choice: "You can go to school, or you can work around the house." I thought it would be more fun to work around the house. Boy was I ever wrong. It started with scrubbing buckets... with a toothbrush. Then, it went to mopping the kitchen floor... on my hands and knees. (Sometimes I think my parents didn't start believing in mops until I was MUCH older...) And the list went on, until I was more than ready to go back to school the next day. To my Mom's credit, her plan worked. I didn't miss another day of school unless I was truly ill, and COULDN'T get out of bed.

So... I employed the same tactic as Mom did. Only, I'd already DONE all of the inside housework the day before, leaving only the seriously nasty jobs outside to be done.

Savannah has advanced in her math skills to a 3rd grade level. Unfortunately for her, the front of her workbook says, "Appropriate for students in GRADE 4". She thinks I'm trying to get her to skip all of third grade math. She decided yesterday that she would rather NOT do school. Ever. At All. So, I gave her a choice. "You can either do your school work, or you can shovel out the chicken coop." We have 5 hens, and their coop hasn't been cleaned since last summer. I made SURE she was aware of all the ramifications involved in cleaning out the coop, including telling her that it was a dirty, nasty job - and then let her make the choice. I also informed her that once she started the coop, she would be responsible for finishing it.

No matter HOW I feel about Math, I would still choose the math over the poop. Several hours later, after Savannah's choice of shovel and pail (and I mean Sand bucket and toy shovel) were elongating the hours she'd been in the poo..., she decided that it was much more fun to do math. Unfortunately, she also learned at this point in time that I was serious about her finishing a project once she'd started on it.

At 5 PM, I walked to the coop with Savannah to see how far she'd come. She informed me that she'd divided the coop into quarters (see, she was doing math after all...), and that she'd finished one quarter of the poop scoop. She'd done a marvelous job. For someone who had poop up to their knees, she'd done very well moving the poop from one side of the coop to the other.

Mercy took over, and I had her go in the house and get cleaned up - after asking her if she still wanted to not do school. She decided to weigh her options with the NEXT dirty job... and then I informed her that if the FIRST dirty job was to clean out the chicken coop, the SECOND wasn't going to be more fun... Justice still had to be served with the chicken coop - and it still needed to be finished. This morning, I helped her to make sure that it was a lot more manageable for an 8 year old.

Working in the temple has its benefits - at least for this 8 year old. I started to think about how harsh I'd been on her; after all, that's a lot of poop, and she's not any bigger than half the shovel! Working together, we took an hour to finish the cleaning of the coop. I still think that she's going to choose Math over Poop next time...

The lesson - for every action, there is an opposite (although not always equal) reaction... And Mom doesn't back down on the dirty jobs. I think I'd take the bucket scrubbing over chicken coop cleaning any day. And I'll take an education over ANY of that.