ABOUT THIS BOOK .  .  .

Did you know that learning household skills improves a child’s chances for a happy marriage and a good job--whether the child is a boy or a girl? According to HR directors and family counselors, children who do not grow up sharing family responsibilities may grow up to be unemployable and unmarriageable!
 
Once my sons were toilet-trained, I thought it might be time for them to learn to clean the toilet. But as I looked over parenting books, it seemed to me like a lot of them were written not by hands-on parents but by people who wanted to tell me the "right" and "wrong" way to do everything, whether it worked in my family or not. It seemed to me wiser to interview dozens of families who had raised responsible children and ask, "What worked for you? What didn’t? Why do you think it’s important for a child to do do chores?"
This book is the result of numerous interviews plus years of trial and error in our own family.
        I thought I was writing a book about children and housework. Interviews with family and marriage counselors and a human resources director convinced me the subject is bigger than that.

Here's the case this book makes:

1) Every child needs household responsibilities. Why? Because children aren’t just learning chores, they are learning life skills they will need as adults.
2) A child who knows how to care for his or her own personal needs is a more confident and accomplished child.
3) For a child to be confident and skilled, life skills must be taught and practiced.
4) Every family is a team. A family team is a laboratory where it is permissible to try a method, fail, and try again. Working as a team on household maintenance and care teaches
     - group decision-making
     - negotiation and compromise
     - problem solving: how to view failure as an opportunity to try something new
     - responsibility and accountability
     - a family is as important as school work, a profession, or outside activitiesI
     - no schedule works all the time; it's okay to change the way we do things
     - children sometimes have better ideas than their parents