Come, Mommy

Kieran has reached the age where he wants to help with household chores. Never one to turn down offers of assistance, I let him rinse dishes, take things out of the dishwasher, squirt soap, whatever he can do, really. Kevin does the same, and since he does the bulk of the laundry in our house, Kiri has lots of fun adding soap and vinegar to the washer, pulling the fuzz off the lint screen of the dryer, and pushing the buttons on all the machines. At our Parent-Child class at Waldorf, Kiri has recently been the first in line after snacktime to help wash dishes and empty the compost. As soon as he finishes eating, he rushes off to the apron rack and then asks me or his teacher to help him tie the strings. He just loves to be involved in household work.

He often pretends to be doing household work when he is playing. I’ll hear him mumbling to himself about folding clothes, or reminding himself not to spill the “water” when he is “washing” toy dishes in a sink set up in a tub on the piano bench. It is very sweet to hear his little soprano voice describing how to load a dishwasher-”the gwasses go on the second shelf-see? Shelf one, shelf two! And the pwates go on the bottom-see them standing on their sides? They never do that on the dining table! And now we add the soap-not too much! It rinses out in the water and we need to keep the Earth healthy!”-and so on.

The other afternoon Kieran helped me throw in an unexpected load of towels for the washer. I thought I was watching him closely, but I guess I missed something, or else he came back later to finish the job. Anyway, not too long after we started the machine I heard an awful thumping coming from the washer. Wondering if we would be shopping for a new machine in the near future, I entered the laundry room and opened the lid:

After I rescued Rocket from the water and dried him off, I asked Kieran why he had put the flyer in there in the first place. “Well, Mommy, actually, Rocket transformed himself into a submarine just so he could learn to do the laundry even better than I do!”

If you look closely, you’ll see that Rocket does indeed have his periscope up. At any rate, I just love helpers who take their jobs seriously enough to want to share the joy!