[mamajane]

Originally Posted by mamajane

The question that comes up for me is when it comes to helping, like cleaning up, for example. How do you not end up doing it all? There have been a number of times helping has become "Mama do it while the kids sit there slacking and Mama gets mad at getting taken advantage of." Help!

I didn't mean to sound like my kids don't help - they do. I was just thinking of a specific helping dynamic, and I think I figured it out. It's the general helping that isn't so helpful. The kind of helping that I've been doing more of lately works better, more specific advice, like breaking the stuff to be picked up into categories and assigning categories, for example. More direction than joining them in the doing. Or handing them stuff and telling them where to put it, because it can be hard to figure out where stuff goes.