Ship Full o' Pirates

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed

Congratulations! You have been to to Ship Full O' Pirates over 100 times! Just thought you'd like to know.

Have y’all read in the “How to Parent” books and the “How to Homeschool” books that chapter about talking to your children?  Or how ’bout that chapter in the Bible where God commands that we talk to our children all the time.

This is easy when they’re little, but when they get to be older and more responsible, when you don’t have to constantly talk to them about not greasing the puppy and not painting the carpeting with chocolate syrup, it’s easy to fall into bad habits. (Yes, these things actually happened in my house, once upon a time.  I won’t name names, but he’s 15 and tall and likes to play basketball.)

Older children who have been trained to be respectful and obedient are pure joy to talk to.  I love having conversations with my Pirates.  They are so smart and creative, and they are always ready to engage in conversation.  I love talking to my children.

So all I had to do was figure out when and how to fit this into my day and theirs.

Enter chores!   I’m sorry, but there is just a lot of stuff that needs done, every day, all the time.  So why not make the best of it?

Following a recipe takes concentration, so I have found that cooking is not really the best time to talk about things other than what is being cooked.  But that’s conversation, too.  That counts.

Now, doing the dishes is very mindless.  So we enjoy talking together and singing together while washing our dishes.  And since these Pirates want to eat 3 or 4 times a day, every day, we find ourselves at the sink frequently.

Here is a task that is new to our routine.  We decided to hang out the laundry in an effort to save money on our electric bill.  The dryer really uses lots of electricity.  And my dryer isn’t as young as it used to be and therefore takes seventy-leven cycles to dry a full load.  So conversation with my children was a secondary reason for hanging out the laundry.  But, no less valid.  “Hangin’ out with Mom” now has a whole new meaning at our house. This task takes a little more time than others and at our house we have a lot of it to do, so this will provide lots of opportunity for conversation.

There will seldom be times when it is appropriate for me to do these chores by myself.  And there should be very few times when I expect the Pirates to manage them on their own either, well, maybe the dishes.

I kinda feel like this post is tame and mild mannered, but the concept is huge.  I realize that many of y’all have only small children.  Please remember this post when your children are big.  This is what works for me.

Now, go talk to your children.

No related posts.