A Suggestion (please read and respond)

[Thomas Wouters]

On Mon, Oct 30, 2000 at 01:44:39PM -0500, Alex wrote:

> > This would seem tantamount to a mother making her little children pay
> > her for lunch, rather than providing it for free, to prepare them for
> > the harsher "real world" of restaurants:-).

> Don't knock it till you've tried it.  It's character building, and
> knowing they'll have to pay for it stops 'em clamouring for
> seconds. <wink>

This isn't as far fetched as it seems. I once had a highschool tutor that
had, in my eyes, the wierdest ideas. (I wasn't a model student, even though
I scored high if I wanted to, so I had a lot of chats with her ;) One
particular one came up when she heard I had to help out with the cooking,
cleaning, laundry and dishwashing and such at home. She thought that was
rediculous, and actually went and talked to my parents about it (who,
frankly, laughed at her, loudly.)

Her reasoning was such. She and her husband always pampered her kids at
home. Their four kids never had to do cooking, washing, cleaning up, none of
that. She went out of her way to make sure her kids could devote all their
time to school and having fun. And she was very glad she had done that,
because her oldest son had just moved out, after starting university,
and had a very hard time with it, with all the work he now had to do at
home, on his own, which he had never done before, and hadn't had the
feintest clue about.

When she got to that part of her story, I burst out laughing, and I later
heard my parents did the same, at the same point :) But I believe her
reasoning was that her son would never have another chance of being
pampered, not until he was an old man, so she was glad she pampered him
before he moved out. All me and my parents saw was that she hadn't prepared
her son to 'real life', and because of that he had an extra hard time of
coping :)

So, no, asking your children to pay for their lunch isn't such a strange
idea, as long as you accept payment can mean a lot of things. Doing the
dishes or setting the table are very common chores, at least in the
dysfunctional families I know :) And I can honestly say I've had more
benifit from being able to take care of myself than from the english
language classes my mentor used to give ;)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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