| In the past several months, I have been working to get my children off
child welfare. No longer are they going to take, take, take while I
work, work, work. They are going to be hard-working members of this
family. It hasn’t been easy getting my work force up and running. At this writing, we still have a long way to go before the household runs like a well-oiled machine. But we’ve made some tremendous improvements. I now have people under 12 cleaning toilets. And I have a 4-year-old who runs the sweeper and takes out trash. And then there’s 10-year-old Jake, who does the breakfast dishes, sort of. When Jake does the dishes, he doesn’t just wash them. He experiments with them. Before he begins, he prepares his laboratory carefully. Plates and bowls are rinsed and neatly stacked. The tumblers (all plastic, I don’t own real glasses anymore) are stacked as tall as they will go (or as high as he can reach). The sink is filled. Each item holds its own fascination for Jake. Plates aren’t just tossed into the sink--they’re floated on the surface so he can observe their relative bouyancies. Tumblers are unstacked and restacked in various ways to float or sink, depending on his mood. Large bowls go in upside down or right side up, again depending on what he wants to watch. When Jake washes dishes, it takes three or four times as long as it should because he’s constantly thinking about the water and its behavior. Almost every day, I am treated to a new observation regarding water and air pressure. Or I am shown some new imaginative creation. One day it was a “water jellyfish,” which he made by running water over a saucer. As I watch him dilly-dally with the dishes, I am caught in a quandary. Should I be the tough mother who insists on getting the job done quickly and efficiently, or should I be the patient teacher who encourages exploration and experimentation? Typically, I vacillate. If time is flying and we’re late for school, I hurry him up. If not, I let him play and let his creative mind wander. Who knows, maybe little Albie Einstein started this way, with his mind meandering through the mysteries of a pan of dirty dishes. Someday Jake may come up with a great invention because of his hours spent at the sink. Probably a new kind of dishwasher. |