Working Together

Every Monday night my family holds “Family Home Evening”.  There are many different things that we do as a family for Family Night, sometimes it is very simple and short, sometimes longer and more elaborate.  Sometimes we have a lesson, where Dadzoo and I instruct our children on subjects we feel need teaching, sometimes our children will teach a lesson, sometime we have a movie night, or we will read story books to each other, and sometimes we work on a family project that needs attention.  It doesn’t really matter what we are doing, the only requirement is that we are together as a family and all distractions are put away.
 
A few weeks ago, for family night, we canned chili sauce.  The particular recipe I use is fairly labor intensive, it takes two days to complete, the first day takes some time, for there is a good amount of vegetables that need chopping.  Figuring that “many hands make light work” and that my older girls are more than capable of chopping peppers and onions, we dug in and made chili sauce for family night.

 We were able to find jobs for everyone, and strangely, there was very little complaining, all the children seemed to enjoy the job that was given to them.  I think they felt a sense of pride in being included in what was previously a Mom and Dad (Dadzoo always helps with chili sauce) job.

My littler ones helped gather the jars and load them in the dishwasher so they would be clean and ready to go the next morning.  They were also able to help wash the vegetables before the older girls cut and seeded, and Dadzoo manned the food processor to grind everything up.

 Why is it so important for children to learn to work?  There is a wonderful article “Teaching Families the Value of Work and Responsibility” that is wonderful and had become my guide when trying to teach my children this important character trait.   I would love to copy the whole thing here, it is THAT good, but a link will have to do instead.  I would like to include a story from the article in case you don’t have the chance to read the whole thing:

Bishop Vaughn J. Featherstone told a story of how a lady taught a boy to work:

An aristocratic lady once hired a 13-year-old boy to take care of her yard and garden. After the first week she explained to him: “There are as many ways of mowing a lawn as there are people, and they may be worth anywhere from a penny to five dollars. Let’s say that a three-dollar job would be just what you have done today. … A five-dollar lawn is—well, it’s impossible, so we’ll forget about that.”

She allowed the boy to evaluate his work and decide how much she should pay him. She paid him two dollars for his first week’s effort. The boy was determined to earn four dollars the next week, but he did not do a job worth even three dollars. He worked carefully and looked for ways to make the yard better, but over the next few weeks he still could not pass the three-and-a-half dollar job. Finally, he resolved that instead of just trying for a four-dollar job, he would try to earn five dollars. He thought of all the ways he could make the yard more beautiful. He worked very hard all day long, taking out small amounts of time occasionally to rest. It took him longer than ever before, but by the time he was finished he was satisfied that he had done a job that was worth five dollars.

After carefully inspecting the yard, the lady decided that this boy had done the impossible. She praised him for his work and was glad to pay him the five dollars he deserved.

Many years later, when the boy was a grown man, he recalled how important that experience was to him: “‘Since that time, some 25 years ago, when I have felt myself at an end with nothing before me, suddenly, with the appearance of that word, “impossible,” I have experienced the unexpected lift, the leap inside me, and known that the only possible way lay through the very middle of impossible.’” (See Conference Report, Oct. 1973, 98; or Ensign, Jan. 1974, 84–86; quoted from Richard Thurman, “The Countess and the Impossible,” Reader’s Digest, June 1958.)

 A few nights later I served the chili sauce with meat loaf for Sunday dinner, typically chili sauce is ignored by everyone excepting me, Dadzoo and our oldest daughter (who will eat anything), however this time everyone tried some, they were so excited to eat OUR chili sauce.