Teaching Responsibility - Working is Fun

Transcription

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Michael Pearl:  Children should learn to work at the same time they learn to play. For instance, Shalom and Gracie, Shalom will hold Gracie like this when she's washing dishes, before she could walk, and sit her on the sink. I've seen Deb do that, sit her on the side of the sink, and give her a bottle and a brush and she's washing dishes. She's six months old. She's washing dishes. Getting ready to put clothes in the laundry, you set the little toddler down there on the floor and give her some socks and let her try to put them up there in the thing. You go in the bedroom to pick up stuff, you take her with you, and you pick up stuff and you put some of it in her hands, and you carry it in there, and you let her put it in the washing machine.

You continue to do that and it comes to a point when Gracie right now is...How old would you say she is? 22 months old. She will go around the house and pick up laundry that somebody drops and go and put it in the washing machine. That's her job to do that. She knows what she's supposed to do.

She will take any garbage and go put it in the can. She's been doing that for months. She worked in an office. For months, people would say, "Here, Gracie, put this in the garbage." She'd walk two or three rooms down the hallway and find the garbage and put that in the garbage.

Now, she just cleans up after herself, cleans up after other people. When she's in the house there and Deb starts sweeping, why, she wouldn't let you sweep without her. She's got to have her broom, so she can sweep, too.

She cannot play if anybody's working. She wants to help. You can't make her get away with some toys and just sit there and play if you're doing anything. Any work you're doing, she's got to be a part of it. That's her life. That's how life is constructed for her.

Do you understand if you start that young, how much easier it's going to be on you? How rewarding it's going to be? I've seen it develop as children grow. The first awakening to life should be as part of a team, working. Happily stand up to his chores.

It's what life is all about. To allow free expression is to allow the child the freedom to be in bondage, the appetite in carnal desires.

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