Just 3 tips for getting kids to help

Kids can learn to enjoy helping

OK, I admit it. Lately, I’ve let my mothering skills get a little rusty. Not surprisingly, my once-clever job charts no longer fly with my three teenage boys. But even though they’re almost grown, there's still work to do, and I’ve somehow forgotten strategies for getting them to help. Here are just three that I now remember being effective with kids of almost all ages:

1. Work alongside them. Offering to help turns you into a partner rather than a pesty parent. It also allows you to teach as you go and can provide that hard-to-find time with children.
2. Crank up the tunes. Good music has a way of driving away the dread and drudgery of w-o-r-k. Around here, we’ve even dubbed our upbeat songs “workin’ music.” 
3. “Finish with a swim.” This was my dad’s philosophy. After all, who doesn’t like to be rewarded after doing some honest-to-goodness labor? At the end of the day, we all need something to look forward to.

If I combine all three, we may just get some work done. What are your best tactics?

Time in a bottle

Mousse is time in a bottle

Twenty minutes a day. That’s the average time a woman spends doing her hair every day! That adds up to almost two and a half hours a week and more than five full days a year. So, what the heck are we doing, ladies? 

Instead of gettin’ pretty, we could be reading, writing, chatting, running, playing, watching T.V., working, or any number of other things. We could be doing the things men who simply shower and shave have time to do.

I’ve always been a multitasker, so when I dry my hair I usually read or memorize. Then, when I’m curling and straightening, I often listen to music or podcasts. I know, I know. Friends tell me I should just relax, slow down and think. But, except for during the early morning hours when I first wake up, pondering has never come easily to me. Life seems to beckon me out of bed to begin...well, to begin living! For this very reason, my favorite hairstyles have always been the scrunch-n-go kind. 

I resent spending so much time to just look decent. So, I propose we use mousse—lots of it and lots more often. 

Mousse is time-in-a-bottle, baby! Even if we scrunch half the time we usually spend blowing and straightening and curling, we could recuperate enough hours for a weekend getaway. Now, that’s some time I’d want to keep in a bottle. 

Born to sing

"All God's creatures got a place in the choir"

The other day, after five years of recalcitrant piano practice, my 13-year-old son asked me (once again) why I want all my children to play the piano. “Five reasons,” I told him. Then, right off the top of my head, I listed these

1. It helps coordinate your hands and eyes.
2. It helps make connections in your brain that you might not otherwise make.
3. It gives you a creative outlet.
4. It gives you another language--another mode of communication--to express yourself.
5. It allows you to serve others.

It’s that fourth reason—another way to express yourself—that really sells me on the idea of music in general. Although I’m not a pianist, I still express myself through singing. Moreover, I believe everyone is wired to sing. In fact, one of my favorite children’s tunes affirms this idea: