John Cowan - Digging for a cure

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 11:35 AM

There’s a fable that I half-remember from my childhood: a king suffered from poor health, and had a string of doctors who prescribed him potions and pills, but he never seemed to be well. Then one doctor told him there was a magical cure for his illness, buried somewhere in the palace’s back garden. For it to work, the king would have to dig and search for the buried medicine himself. The king dug and dug for weeks, but never found the magic potion. He angrily confronted the doctor, who pointed out that the king was now very healthy: his strenuous digging exercise had given him the health he had sought in a bottle.

There are some ‘cures’ in childhood where we have to get our kids to do their own digging. If we do their homework for them, they might get a good mark but ultimately they will not learn how to learn. If we do our teenagers’ washing for them, their clothes will smell nice but their attitudes will stink when they are required to act independently. If we buy everything for them they will have things of value but no sense of value. If you always tidy their room for them, it might be more presentable but they will always be a victim of their personal environment rather than a master.

This is one of the hardest things for the softer-hearted parents amongst us to really get a grip of: we are robbing our children if we do anything for them that they could do for themselves. It robs them of learning self-sufficiency, how to be contributor, how to shoulder a fair-share. We need a bigger view of what chores actually are. They are not just a cheap source of labour around the place; they are, in fact, life-skill training programmes. Most parents discover that getting children to do chores does not actually save much time and energy, at the start especially. Training, motivating, supervising and enduring the whining and complaining is probably a lot more tiresome than doing the chores ourselves, and we do a better job. But it does pay off hugely in the long run.

They may plead and wheedle, or react angrily. But give the problem back to them to solve. Of course you would help them if they are genuinely stuck – you are not a monster – but you coach them through it. You remind and encourage, but you don’t nag or rescue.  And the battle passes. The only battles which go on for ever are (a) the ones you don’t begin to fight (b) the ones you are not determined to win.  And who are the real winners in this? You, your kids, their employers, their eventual partners, your grand-kidsand probably a whole lot more.