A few weeks ago, the 13, 11, and 9 year-old gang and I were out on our yearly camping trip, hanging out near Great Basin National Park above Baker, NV, when KO6BTY and I got to participate in a Ham Radio Workbench episode! It was a lot of fun! (It was also one of the latest nights up we had during the trip.)
If you're landing here from there, we talked about a lot of things including:
We just made it back from our camping trip yesterday, so I hope to have a lot of updates over the next few days, and maybe some pretty pictures as well like this one of Mt. Wheeler and, of course, Project TouCans.
I wanted to share a cool moment in time that Mota, Tawnse, and I had on Monday. Daize had gone off to attend College Algebra, and I was working from the house. I walked into the kitchen and it looked like a portion of the recent bomb cyclone had landed in there. I had 25 minutes to kill, so I called Motaand Tawnse. When they arrived, I was already taking the recycling bag out to the garage. I asked them to empty the dishwasher and they got to work. When I returned, I moved everything off the stove into one sink. I asked them to load the dishwasher back up. While they were doing that, I got to work on scrubbing pans. As I did, I looked around the kitchen. I noticed a few dishes they’d missed, pointed it out, and they plopped those in as well. I asked them to check the rest of the house for dishes. While they were checking, I finished the pans, and got to work on cleaning the stove top. When they returned, I asked the two of them to get all the food and other debris off the counters, and then asked them to 409 the countertops when they were done. Finally, I asked them to sweep as I was wrapping up the stove top. Some of the things we did definitely took more than one try, but 20 minutes later, we had a really clean kitchen.
Here’s the point. This was all very pleasant for all of us. We’ve pursued an SEL approach that I found in three books that I”ll reference below, and it’s worked really nicely! I’ve always worked with and treated the kids more like we’re roommates than any other way. This started when they were little. They’ve helped with construction and cooking projects since they were big enough to handle whatever tools (knives, screwdrivers, hammers, etc…) They built the desk I'm writing this on when they were six, four, and two. The ages for this pretty much from the time they learned to walk till the present day, (an example of something they don’t help with yet is cleaning the toilet and tub because the prospect of accidents with Comet freak me out… Anyway.) At those ages, they were excited to be helping as part of the family. That seemed to help build it into part of their personal culture. They’ve also always carried their own stuff while we were out and about. On a few occasions, we’ve all had conversations about us all living in the house and enjoying it, and that part of enjoying it is keeping it nice. When I ask them to do something, I say please… Every time. The whole thing’s been approached on a team of equals level, and it’s worked pretty nicely!
Have I had to ask a bunch of times for one of the gang to move their dishes the additional one foot from the sink to the dishwasher? Yup. Will I have to another 2,000 times or so over the next several years? Oh yeah! But lots of times, (most of the time), the dishes wind up where they should be. To answer a perhaps unasked question about the all ages thing, “Do I think it’s ok for kids to climb on top of and stand on the counter to unload the dishwasher?” Totes! “Do I frequently leave the room while they do this because I can’t bear to watch?” Also totes! :)
Another note to make is that we don’t, generally, have schedules and routines. Definitely not for this kind of stuff. For us, things just kind of percolating along is fine. Which bring us to, “Do I think this would/could/should work for everyone?”
Nope.
There are folks that need schedules. There are folks that are as freaked out about knives as I am about Comet. There’s all sorts of different people… Of course.
But, I wanted to share the coolness we’ve had with this SEL approach just because it was pleasant.
The books that I’ve referenced in this pursuit have been
Home Grown by Ben Hewitt
The Child in the City by Colin Ward
(Kind of hard to get a hold of at the moment, but lots of libraries have a copy.)
and
Hunter, Gather, Parent, by Michaeleen Doucleff
(I haven’t read the book yet, but I did read the authors pieces in the NYT (I think) and The Atlantic.)
Also? The little bitty San Francisco kitchen looked just gorgeous when we were done!
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