You, too, can experience the miracle of kids who say "Work makes us happy and strong." You simply need to love and teach them, over and over, and be CONSISTENT.
Do this with zero tolerance for anger, whining, teasing, lying, or withdrawal and teach them responsibility, and to be loving toward each other.
Timestamps:
00:00 Mother too sick to do housework.
01:00 Directed the kids to do all the work.
02:05 Responses of children.
03:55 One step at a time.
04:43 A different family where the son 18 refuses to do anything.
06:50 How he got out of chores at age 9.
08:39 Saving time isn't the point. Lovingandteaching is.
11:10 It takes a lot of preparation to get kids to enjoy work.
12:55 Teach a child to clean up a mess even though they are kicking and screaming.
Transcript:
I know a mother who has three children, ages 9, 8, and 6. She has been practicing Real Love with them for years, and here I will share with you what she wrote to me recently. It is my hope that you can glimpse what is possible with consistent loving and teaching.
Children Help When They Feel Happy and Strong
Mom wrote me that one Saturday she was sick. No energy. Just laid down on the couch and assumed the comatose position. But there was the usual Saturday housework that needed to be done. What to do?
Mom told me that she laid on the couch and directed the kids to do all the work she would normally have done. She DIRECTED them, which is an entirely different activity than controlling them, micro-managing them, yelling at them, forcing them. No, just love and teach.
She wrote: “Today the KIDS vacuumed, swept, washed and dried the floors, cleaned the toilets and sinks and walls, and emptied the garbage in every room. While they did it, they were smiling, occasionally singing, and I heard expressions like this:
"I'm glad we're working."
"It feels good to work."
"This is fun."
"This is going by so fast."
She continued: Then we did some cheers, like:
"Winning at life!"
"We can do hard things!"
"Happy and strong!"
This could easily seem like a fairly tale, almost a comedy sketch. But it happened, and if this mother can do it, so can you. It did not happen overnight. Mom simply loved and taught, over and over and over, and she was CONSISTENT. There was zero tolerance for anger, whining, teasing, lying, or withdrawal, and she taught them responsibility, and to be loving toward each others.
Children Fail when They Don't Feel Happy and Strong
By way of contrast with the story I just told, another mother told me about her son Chris, 18 years old, who simply refused to do anything that remotely resembled responsibility. Nothing. No studying. Didn’t finish high school. Laid on the couch all day playing video games.
As she learned the principles found in REPT, she said to me, “Oh, how I wish I had known all this when Chris was younger. I did not see how he was manipulating me into standing by while he made excuses endlessly and ended up having to do nothing.”
She said that she could remember when he was 9 years old that he came to her, innocently confessing to how he had been gaming her all those years—even back then.
Chris read a lot of Calvin and Hobbes, a popular series of comic strips and books for years. He told his mother that in one strip, Calvin—the young boy and primary character—said, “The secret of chores is to do them as badly as possible, so you won’t be asked to do them again.”
Then Chris announced, “That’s what I do, and it works.” Until he read the comic strip, he couldn’t even put words to what he had been doing, and even afterward he was mostly unconscious of his efforts to avoid work. And Mom didn’t realize the game that was being played.
So he would spill something on the floor and walk off (game to him, no responsibility, 1st way). She would discover a mess and tell him to clean it up. He would either wait until she left the room and then go to his room, having done nothing about the mess (2nd way), or he would make a half-hearted effort with a cloth, moving the mess around a bit (3rd way).
Then she would see the mess, dread confronting Chris for the 1000th time about cleaning up after himself, and decide it was just easier to do it herself. And of course he would let her (4th way to be irresponsible). See the game? Each episode possibly minor or innocent—not worth fussing about.
But the end result was an 18 year-old boy without a high school diploma, with no career skills, and with no social skills except those required to get people to leave him alone and never make him do anything.
Eventually, she had to move him out of the house, because it was the only way that the consequences of his choices could become obvious to him, hopefully in an effort to motivate him to change his decisions.
He is presently sleeping in a homeless shelter, which to some parents would sound cruel. Oh no. EVERY other attempt to teach this child responsibility had failed, and homeless was the last motivation left. SO Mom had the guts to make it happen.
Loving and Teaching Consistently is the Key to Happy & Strong
Now back to the first mother, with the kids who were happy and strong as a result of being taught to work and to enjoy it. Again, Mom loved and taught those kids for years—with utter consistency. ONLY AFTER ALL THAT PREPARATION, could the nearly inconceivable experience I just described become possible. It’s an amazing story, and it’s POSSIBLE. Mom proved that.
This is called a miracle, as opposed to the magic most people want. Magic is astonishing, unimaginable results without obvious preparation or work—waving a wand.
Miracles are astonishing, unimaginable results that happen after a lot of preparation. Miracles are much more than the sum of their parts. Some might say they involve the hand of God—that part is up to you—but they certainly are a treat to see and to experience.
Ask the mother and children of the happy family I described about how happy they are.
