By Eseohe Ebhota and Prisca Emadu
For the fear of damaging their relationship with their children, parents may be reluctant to involve them in household chores. They may even feel guilty asking their children to help out with chores, blaming their unwillingness on pressure from school; peers and extra-curricular activities which they feel might be weighing them down. Or parents may believe their little ones are too young to take on responsibilities, not realizing how capable their youngsters can actually be.
Getting children to do chores at home can be challenging. Some come up with different excuses such as being tired, while others suddenly have a headache. 5-year-old Grace does not hesitate to say, “Mummy I am still young,” whenever she’s asked to do something. At other times, she laments “Must everyone send me on an errand because I am the smallest person here?”
Children do not mind spending the whole day playing but spend more than 40 minutes to wash an item. It can, of course, be difficult to know where and when to start encouraging your child to be independent. Many parents assume that little children are incapable or will break and damage things. A lot of children brought up in families with a maid or nanny become so reliant on their house helps that they eventually become unable to do the most basic tasks for themselves.
Lifextra spoke to a cross section of people and got very interesting and varied responses.
Chidinma Okoro, a business woman and mother of two, said, “I have a housemaid and still have a sister living with me, but that does not prevent my children from participating in house chores.
My first son is six years old and the second is four, but I have thought both of them to take their plates to the kitchen after eating, wash their school socks and also put back their toys after playing with them. That is just the first step because there are still more chores I will teach them. I see my boys cooking, and not believing it is a task for girls alone. My house maid is just there to assist me with house chores and be an adult guardian to my children when I am not around.”
Mustapha Abdul, a father of three, said “this is one of the reasons why I think women should not have housemaids, or better still if they want to have maids, they should make rules that would require their children to do house chores. I watched a Nollywood film where the maid was made to do all the house chores while being maltreated by her madam and one of her daughters. However, one of the daughters didn’t like how the maid was being maltreated so she became close to her. In the course of helping her out with the chores, the maid taught her to cook, wash and several other things.
He continued, “With the support of her mother, the other daughter became very bossy, had the housemaid run errands and do her personal chores down to washing her lingerie. When the time for marriage came, the story became different.”
Speaking to parents, he said “Parents, especially mothers, should know that raising a child entails a lot and so should not be treated with kid gloves.”
Mrs. Lilian Ijeh, a self-employed mother of four, is of the opinion that parents are the cause of children’s lack of interest in household chores. “In some homes, when the mother tells a child to do something, the father opposes and the child feels more protected and loved. So that child will never love work,” she said.
Citing the example of a relative, Cecilia Ufuoma said: “I marvel at how spoilt her children have become. Her first daughter, who is seventeen, cannot even cook noodles without burning it. They rely solely on the maid for everything, and my sister doesn’t seem to be bothered. The last time I tried drawing her attention to it, she almost got angry with me.”
Juliet Nwoye also agrees that while still young and tender, children would need someone to assist them, but when they attain a certain age they must start participating in house chores. “In fact, I encourage parents to do away with maids as soon as their children are about fifteen, except in cases where the children go far away to study. But if the children are around, let them get fully involved in house chores.”
Recalling her childhood, she added “I remember as a child, I never grew up with any maid in the house not to talk of any relative staying with us. At ten I could cook, sweep and wash dishes. Yes, we know times have changed, but some of our moral values shouldn’t change.”
Parenting expert Jim Fay, co-founder of the Love and Logic website, says we all need to feel needed and to know that we’re making a contribution even children. “But they can’t feel that way if they don’t have chores and make contributions to the family,” Fay says.
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