Real Jobs for a Two-Year-Old, an Eight and an Eleven

Genesis 2:5 gives two reasons the field had no plants yet. The Lord God hadn't sent rain, and "there was not a man to till the ground." That's before anyone has done anything wrong. The ground just needs somebody.

Ten verses later the job gets filled.

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

The sweat doesn't show up until Genesis 3:19, and what that verse does is make the work hard. The work was there first. I thought about the order of those two chapters this morning when I peeled the laminated chore chart off the fridge, because somebody in my house says "that's not fair" about the table roughly every Tuesday.

The chart I'm retiring

You may remember the laminated one, the one Lily drew horses in the margins of. I bought gold stars, and for nine days I was the most attentive chart-keeper in Utah. Then I wasn't. It hung there all summer anyway and the kids learned to walk past it like a billboard on I-15.

It had four columns and a different job for every day of the week, so somebody (me) had to know what day it was and who was due for what. Every single job needed me to look at it first.

So today, with David home and nobody due anywhere until the afternoon (we're driving up the canyon later for what's probably our last good hike before the weather turns), I did it differently. Three jobs per kid. Each one tied to something that already happens every day, written in marker on the inside of the pantry door with no boxes to check. If the job is done, the job is done.

What a two-year-old can do, and what an eight and an eleven can do well

Ben is two, so his jobs are really jobs we do together, and I don't pretend otherwise. After dinner he carries his own plastic plate to the counter. It takes him about as long as it takes me to clear the rest of the table, and he usually gets there with the plate tilted and one noodle still aboard. His shoes go in the basket by the garage door when we come in. And he scoops Biscuit's food, with me holding the bowl, because a scoop of kibble into a bowl he can't see into is a good loud job for a person who is mostly interested in sound.

It doesn't help the household yet, and I've stopped needing it to. If you want the longer story of how the rest of Ben's day goes, I wrote about the four things he eats in Ben Eats Four Things and I Still Won't Cook a Second Dinner, and he likes being in charge of small finite things there too.

Lily is eight and the one I've underestimated most, since I taught third grade for five years, and a third grader with a real job (the plant waterer, the one who takes the attendance folder down the hall) walks differently. I knew that in a classroom and somehow forgot it in my own kitchen. Lily sets the table before dinner, all of it, forks on the left. She collects the eggs and feeds Penny and Waffle after school, and she puts her own folded laundry away on Sundays. I wrote her name next to each one in my best marker.

Caleb is eleven, and his three are the ones I'd have said were too much a year ago. He washes his own baseball uniform on Friday night so it's dry for Saturday's game. He cleans the downstairs bathroom on Saturday mornings, the toilet and the sink and the floor and the mirror. And he takes the trash cans to the curb the night before pickup, which he'd do without being asked if we could get a rule in his head that "the night before" means before dark.

The mirror

Last Saturday, as a trial run, I told Caleb the downstairs bathroom was his now, and I stood in the hall with a mug of peppermint and said nothing while he did it.

He did the toilet properly, with the brush and not his imagination. He moved the little trash can to wipe under it, which I have never once done in eleven years in this house. Then he did the mirror with half a roll of paper towels and the blue spray, and it came out looking like someone had breathed on it in a freezer. The faucet still had a ring of toothpaste around the base.

I stood in the doorway for what felt like a long time with my thumb already out to rub the faucet. David came through from the garage, sawdust up to his forearms, looked at me and then at the mirror and said, "Mel. Leave it."

I left it.

On Sunday, walking home from church, Caleb asked whether the bathroom had been okay, and I told him the floor was the cleanest it had been all year and that nobody had ever moved the trash can before, both of which were true. He looked at the sidewalk and kicked a pinecone into the gutter.

I did go back and do the faucet Sunday night after everyone was asleep. Don't think better of me than you should.

Making it last past Labor Day

Whether any of this lasts I can't say, though the last chart taught me I'll know in about two weeks.

On the pantry door each job hangs on something that already happens, whether that's after dinner, after school, Friday night, the night before pickup. When I wrote "sometime today" on the old chart for the eggs, the eggs sat there till dark. Four jobs apiece was where I started needing a chart again, so it's three.

"Good job" slides right off Lily, but "every fork was on the left" is something she'll repeat to her father at dinner. Ben gets his the second the plate touches the counter, since for him anything later hasn't happened. Caleb gets his on the walk home from church, where nobody has to look at anybody.

If you want something on eleven-year-olds and how they carry a task, My Sixth Grader Cries Over Math and Here's What Helped is the closest thing I've written. It's about math, but the part about waiting before you rescue is the same part.

Frequently Asked Questions

My toddler wants to do everything himself. Do I let him?

Ben has a stool and a pile of dish towels, and yes, mostly. Then I redo the towels. He can't tell, and his plate trip is worth more to him than the towels are to me.

Do you pay for these?

No, and Lily's allowance doesn't depend on any of the three. What she earns comes from a short list of extras I'm willing to pay for, like washing the Odyssey. The pantry-door jobs are what you do because you live here, and I'd hate for a nine-year-old to think a clean table is a favor she does for me at a price.

What will I tell Caleb when he notices Lily's list is shorter on effort?

He hasn't said it yet, though he's the one who counts and I expect it by Friday. My plan is to say her jobs fit eight and his fit eleven, and that she gets his when she's eleven. If he asks to trade I'll let him try hers for a day and see how long he can stand the chickens.

What if the job gets done badly?

Wait. Then show them again a few days later when nobody's standing there watching. I didn't manage the first part with the faucet until midnight.

Lily is ready for more than the table and the eggs, and I can't decide whether her next job is the dishwasher or something outside the kitchen. What was the first job a child of yours took over for good, and how old were they when you stopped checking?

with love, Melissa