My friend Jess mentioned that we should start having the kids do their own dishes on our annual camping trip with friends this past summer. Lucky for my kids, she mentioned it right before we left for our own family's two week camping trip to Oregon. Yes! Why not have the kids do the dishes? Sometimes you can't see a great idea right in front of you until someone speaks it into clarity.
Surprisingly, the kids responded negatively to their new responsibilities. What? Why do we have to do ALL the work? (that's my FAVORITE complaint) It's not fair! And so on and so forth. But I stuck to my guns. They would rotate being washer, rinser, and dryer with each meal.
Dryer was the favorite job, washer was the least. Especially on chili night:) No, they didn't like their new jobs, BUT there were some interesting observations I made. They chatted away while doing the dishes, sometimes it was shared grumblings over how hard their life was, but often it was just silly, fun conversation. They even started singing together several times. It was sweet enough to almost make this Momma cry:)
Then there were the other days, when they would angrily slosh water around and try to stage a collective strike on the job. It made the mood around camp pretty poopy. But it wasn't enough to make me change my mind. A little responsibility was good for them, this was their camping trip too, they needed to start taking ownership over it.
And camping was a LOT more fun for me not having to wash a dish, ever. I loved it. I just can't believe I waited this long to pass on the job to the kids! Camping is fun again:)
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