My Kid Surprised Me

[skid]

It's spring break for the kids here, and they're off of school for a week. Since I still have to work, I figured I give my 11 year old boy some chores to do during the day. I had bucked up a large (the tree was about 18 inches diameter at the base) alder tree that had blown down over the winter, and had piled the rounds for splitting into fire wood.

I half jokingly told my son to split all the wood while I was away at work that day. To my surprise, when I returned home from work he had split and stacked the entire tree in the woodshed, about a 1/5 of a chord. Granted, green straight-grained alder is easy to split, but for an 11 year old to do all that somewhat surprised me. Having a Fiskars splitting axe certainly helped too!

Tomorrow he can clean up the garden...

[BrewTech]

My daughter is 12, and spends most of her time texting her friends about how awesome Justin Bieber is.

However, if I give her an actual JOB to do, she will happily knock it out. For instance, she was helping during a brew day at a local LHBS... I was going to put my beer on tap, and needed the taps removed from the kegerator, disassembled, cleaned, lubed, reassembled and reinstalled. I showed her how to do the first one, and she handled all the rest without any more help.

Following that, the owner needed an order of hops separated, weighed, and packaged for sale. I didn't see her for an hour. She bagged the entire order. The owner's wife gave her a fiver, and she was as happy as could be.

Kids WANT to work, they just need to be properly motivated. Sometimess a little cash helps, but often just the feeling of being useful is enough.

[SLV^GLD]

When I was a kid a typical day of spring/summer school vacation involved chopping a few cords of wood, clearing a fence row, shucking a bushel of corn, planting a field of tobacco and playing horse basketball as the sun went down. We were fast asleep by 8pm because we were gonna get up at day break to do it all over again. We ate our own cows and pigs and sold our own crops and livestock.

I busted my ass and it required sausage, bacon and eggs to keep it moving. I'm a slender, fit bastard regardless of my diet or activity today because of it.

I decided I hated that life and moved to the city as soon as I could. Now, at age 32 my wife and I are seriously considering having a child and we want nothing more than to recreate that life for them.

I fucked up but I am going to do the best I can. I have no idea what possessed me to abandon a lifestyle of self-sustenance and self-worth gained by self-production.