#181 Chores as Child Abuse?! Responses to This & Other Surprising Comments

Rachel Denning (00:10.766)
Have you ever thought about chores as being child abuse? Well, I hadn't either, but I shared a post on Instagram about our system for organizing chores in our family, and I was shocked at the number of negative comments that it received from people who believe that giving your children chores is akin to child labor and abuse. One comment said, parents who want to do less things by dumping it on kids should be ashamed of themselves.

Kids do not need to have regular chores in order to learn responsibility and you know this very well. You aren't teaching, you are using your kids. Another comment said, there's plenty wrong and abusive in making children feel they must contribute to the household. Why? Because it's putting undue pressure on children, pressure that they should not have. One more simply states, children should not be made to do regular chores. And finally, chores for kids?

more like mom and dad don't want to do their household duties. This concept wasn't entirely new to me. I had come across it in some out of the way literature, but I had never come across anyone who actually believed it. It seems common sense to most parents that using chores can help your children learn responsibility. In this episode, we respond to these comments since responding to them on Instagram was limited by space and philosophize on chores and debate both sides of the argument.

When can doing chores be detrimental to a child? In what circumstances do chores become child abuse or child labor? If parents decide to do chores, what is the best way to go about doing them? How do you teach your children the underlying philosophy or archetypal reasons for doing chores so that they feel self -motivated to do them? We discuss all of this and much more in this lengthy but entertaining and enlightening discussion. This episode is sponsored by Our Family Charts and Systems.

If, after listening to this podcast, you decide that chores are important to your family, then let us help you get organized and systematized with our complete, done -for -you, fillable and printable charts. This bundle also includes family mission statements, examples of morning routines and daily schedules, device usage contracts, meal schedules, and much more. Click the link in the show notes for the family charts and systems and start today using simple strategies to create more organization and cooperation and to encourage responsibility and teach life skills.

Rachel Denning (02:42.317)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your hosts. Are you going to skip that this time? Thank you. And we're happy to have you guys here with us. We love talking about all things family, man, from marriage, excuse me, parenting, family lifestyle, family legacy, family culture, cool stuff. And then, you know,

Family life is so complex, you guys. Sometimes I think we view it too simply. Black and white. Yeah, it's really black and white. Or we just haven't given it adequate thought. Just really trying to wrap our heads around in a deep way. Almost like you guys ever had massages? Or sometimes you go get a massage and it's so light. It's like they're just rubbing the outer layer of your skin.

And there's no, you're like, okay, I feel good. And then you go to a place and they're using their elbows and heels and they're getting the deep, deep muscle that you didn't know was under the muscle. And it's that layer, right? And so sometimes we're too superficial about it. And we've been guilty of that. And we're busy, we're thinking about all kinds of things and we're distracted or focused on whatever. And so it often doesn't occur to us. I guess...

This is maybe the biggest observation, I think, is that you get into life, you fall in love, you get married, and you think, let's start a family. But when do you stop and say, how are we going to approach the subject of chores with our kids? That'll come up until later on. But then, even then, you're like, no, no. And we kind of follow what our parents did, or we react negatively to what our parents did. Well, my parents did too many chores, so I'm not doing it.

Of course we're doing chores. Chores is how kids learn responsibility and hard work. And we have these kind of little memorized or ingrained scripts that we've been handed. Paradigms. Yeah, these little paradigms. And so we pick up this ideology around it. And that's it. That's the end of it. Of course our kids are doing chores. Gosh, what are you thinking? And then there we go. We move on. Because we think it's so black and white, kids do chores. Or...

Rachel Denning (05:05.005)
Some people will be like, no, my kids are not doing chores. Chores are not helpful for kids, so we're not doing them. And that's it. That's the end of the conversation. That's the end of the dialogue. That's the end of the thought process. Except for just having it done, getting it done. But we don't revisit it. We don't think deeply, most of us. We don't philosophize about chores. That's how it's going. We don't get into the deep philosophy behind chores. And some of you listening to this are like, oh, wait a minute. Well, it's way too simple. There's no need to even philosophize.

And to you, I say, whoa, hold on. Before you turn this off, before you think about stepping away. You can philosophize about everything. About everything. And that's not just to make things more complex than they are. There's actually a lot of depth and a lot of significance to simple things. Not that we have to make them complex, but if we're not careful about exactly why we do what we do and the exact outcome we're seeking,

and then how we approach it. I guess that's where everything gets so complex because one family might say, yes, we're doing it. The other one says, yes, we're doing it. But they both approach it so differently. Their implementation is so far off. It has a completely different result. And so then you're like, well, wait a minute. Wait, do chores work or not work? Yeah. Are chores important or not important? And how much and how often and what age? And then all of a sudden you're like, wow, this is way more complex than I thought. Right. Well, and what you were talking about for a minute there.

of philosophizing about it, I think that it's powerful, and this is one way we approach life in general, to philosophize about all the small things because that adds a lot of depth to it. And I know in our own parenting, that's made a huge difference. Because we have philosophized about the small things, when our kids ask us something like, well, why do I need to wash the dishes, right? We have a deep, meaningful answer. It's not just.

because I said so or because we do chores or because you know what I mean like we're able to give explanations and that's something that when our older kids especially have expressed to us that they're grateful for that like you know you never just said we had to do something just because you always gave us a really good reason that made sense so that we were like oh yeah okay that makes a lot of sense we'll do that and that's why things have worked well with the way we've approached it because

Rachel Denning (07:29.421)
We're not just telling them what to do. We're giving them a deeper reason for doing it, like a philosophical reason. We literally give our children philosophical reasons for doing chores. Well, it's even deeper than just giving it to them. We get engaged in discussion, asking questions. We invite them to really think deeply about it and understand it, which I think is a really solid underlying rule in life.

with anyone you're leading, especially your children, can you adequately articulate and explain the reason why you do what you do so that your children deeply understand it and they choose to engage? Exactly, including chores. Exactly. Our children choose to engage in chores because they understand the deeper meaning behind it. And one example of a way that we do this that I love to use is that, you know,

We've, as a family, sat down and watched episodes of hoarders and episodes of Marie Kondo's Tidying Up. And so we use that kind of as a basis of like, this is why we do chores. Who do you want to become? Like a hoarder or someone who's tidying and bringing joy to their space by organizing it and beautifying it. That's the underlying philosophy behind our reason for doing chores.

And the hoarders, and again, we walk through this whole thing and we're going to talk about all the angles today, but hoarders is an extreme example and those real life stories, which are more common than most of us think, come in every variety and shape. But if you aren't hoarders, then your kids aren't likely to be deeply exposed to them. So to see those things in real life, that shows them an extreme case. But back to a more simple case that I see as a life and business coach.

I see this daily, that it's a little bit of chaos, a little bit of disorder, a little bit of disorganization, a little bit of overwhelm. An unequal distribution of responsibilities of running a family and a household has tremendous consequences, negative or positive, but often I see the negative side of it and I'm like, hey, it's just, it's the lack of...

Rachel Denning (09:54.541)
systems and strategy and order that's keeping you from becoming your best self and living this great life. So many of you listening, you might just dismiss the chore thing. Well, of course they do chores, they do chores, and this is how we do it, whatever, wow. And just because I say so, everyone's helping out around here, this is how we do it. But that's not enough, that's inadequate for bringing enough order to your life and enough.

systematic strategy to clear your runway, for one example. That's a metaphor I love to use. Like you're gonna take off, you're on this runway, you're trying to take off, you're trying to build up speed. To your full potential. Your runway is just scattered with stuff and things and chores. Literally and figuratively. Yes. And so you can't even get enough momentum and you're just wondering like, oh, why do I, like I'm not hitting my goals or, or you might be listening to like, I'm smashing my goals. And.

to what I'd say like you're, you still have higher ones. You have more potential. And this, see we're already getting so philosophical about simple subjects of chores. The way your family and household does chores, even if you outsource them all, or you do them all in house, which are varieties we're gonna talk about, the way you do it, what you choose to do and how you do it is affecting whether you're living as your best self.

or not, whether you're achieving your goals or not, whether you're happy or not, how much stress and overwhelm and frustration you have or not. And ultimately just time freedom and money freedom and life. I mean, so many good people have spent their...

chores and they never really lived and what a tragedy an absolute travesty to get to the end your life and look back and be like what what if my whole life was wrong yeah I was wrong I was so adamant about doing all the chores myself to not be a lazy person and I genuinely missed out on living I didn't live life in this one

Rachel Denning (12:10.029)
precious shot. We get it living and I spent it working to pay the bills or doing chores. The one precious shot you get to raise your children, to be a mother or a father, to be with your kids in this beautiful family legacy and you didn't spend it being a mother or father, you spent it running errands and doing chores and picking up.

which you're philosophizing on this. And this also is not to discount the importance of chores getting done because they need to get done. And so we are going to talk about all of that, but yeah, I think that what I want to emphasize too is that you're talking about this. It seems like little things. It seems like little insignificant things, but when it stacks up, when...

day by day, these irritations, annoyances, the way you approach things, the way you do it, the way you try to accomplish chores, it can stack up so that it creates these long -term negative, even personality traits. It can contribute to the type of personality you develop in the way you think and do things, that it becomes a big deal. And that's part of the reason people come to you for coaching. So it can become a big deal.

even though it seems like a small thing. And even along with that, you were talking about how the way you approach chores, it also, I think, reveals a lot about you and your philosophies for life. It can contribute massively to family happiness or family misery, whether or not you do them for one reason.

And the way you do it, because like you were saying, two families could decide, yeah, we're going to do chores, but approach it in a totally different way and have totally different outcomes. All of that contributes massively to your family, your overall family culture, which we've talked about a lot. Like family culture is huge. It trumps everything. The way your family culture is established and the way it operates is the determining factor for the type of family life you have. And chores,

Rachel Denning (14:30.285)
is one of those pieces, one of those ingredients. And it's so hard to even adequately articulate here the variety of differences, maybe on a scale. A scale would be a good way to kind of illustrate if we could. You see this chart of families of what they choose to do with chores and how they choose to implement them. And then they end up on a scale of efficiency, effectiveness.

and overall well -being and happiness. Like some of you will pride yourself because you just rock it at the chore chart, but if you were to be able to measure happiness, you might realize that everyone's kind of miserable because... You're so efficient at the chores. And you're cracking the whip or you end up yelling a lot. It's so hard to notice this because we get so used to it. Some of you as parents, you yell every day.

And that's just, you think, well, that's how we get things done. That's just how parents do it. They yell every day. If I want my kids to do this, I yell at them. And I yell, and then they do it. And everything's OK. It's all working out. You don't see the underlying resentment building and building day in and day out. Or the punishments or the consequences or the scowls or the, this is a tragedy. It came out in one of my coaching sessions today. The name calling and the belittling.

of children that don't do chores the way you think they should be done or etc etc. I mean however it's happening it's creating these neural connections and associations and deep underlying paradigms yeah subconscious and unconscious pathways that are going to play out for the rest of your kids lives and your life.

It's like, are you genuinely happy? Are they genuinely happy? And some of you might be like, is this even possible? Denny, are you talking about the Republic? This beautiful place, like is it possible to be efficient, effective, and happy and get things done? Is it possible or is that just you? I would say it's not perfectly possible, but there's definitely a balance that can be found like this kind of.

Rachel Denning (16:58.093)
even keel of those three and depending on who you are, well, you probably want to lean more on one than the other, perhaps the happiness, ideally.

But yes, it's possible to have it better than it is now. Yep, 100%. Well, I was just going to say, people might be like, why are you even talking about chores? Obviously chores should be done. And one of the reasons we decided to talk about this today was because I did this Instagram post, all I did was I took a picture of our chore board at our house. And I posted it. And I said, this is.

our choreboard. Now, and I also explained in the post, I'm like, this is an ideal we strive for. This is not what we do every day. I had like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, like what we do on those days. And that's not like exactly what we do. But it's there as an ideal that we strive for. And also to remind us that we're trying to be clean people. We're trying to be neat. We're trying to bring order to chaos. And

You know, I've posted about chores before and no big deal, but for some reason this post, and maybe it was the certain hashtags I used, I don't know. I got all of these, originally these very negative comments and I was like shocked and people were basically saying, children shouldn't do chores. Any parent who allows their child, I'm gonna read some of them because they're really hilarious. Parents who make their.

Children do chores, it's basically like child abuse and you shouldn't be forcing them or manipulating them into doing chores. It's a parent's responsibility. And so as I was reading these, I was like, wow, let's do a podcast about doing chores. Because the varying degree of comments and responses exposes the complexity of what most of us assume is a very simple subject. And so it's worth examining all angles.

Rachel Denning (19:06.413)
And really, and those of you who are listening, I want you to think like, what's your initial response to chores as we've been talking about it? And then as we go through, see if your perspective changes. Yeah, if your ideas change, if you're like, oh, you know what, man, I see this a little bit differently here. And try to come up with a very clear philosophy and framework for how you want to approach chores in the most effective way. Don't just dismiss this.

Don't just brush it off and be like, oh, what we're doing is working. Well, what does working even mean? Exactly. Because you might be getting the chores done all the while building massive resentment. Exactly. It's going to play out. Right. Yeah, because you even mentioned when I first talked about doing this, you were like, well, I don't even know if our listeners, like our listeners are going to assume, we think our listeners would assume, well, yeah, of course we're going to do chores. Our family is going to do chores. And so.

And Greg was like, should we even talk about this? But as we discussed it together, we thought, well, yeah, there's a lot of complexity here, like we already introduced. And so we do want to go through those levels of complexity and discuss, should they be done, chores in general? If so, how do we approach them? And where are the dangers and pitfalls of doing chores in a way that isn't actually working in that it's not, even if you're getting the chores done, it's not.

contributing to family happiness and peace. Because we definitely don't believe that chores should get done in the name of ruining relationships with your kids. Or their own well -being. Or in that case, even at the expense of other more important things, say education, for example. Right. And for younger children, play. Play definitely comes into those more important things for small kids. Or health and fitness. Yeah. I mean.

There's so much here because there's a hierarchy. Exactly. There's this hierarchy of everything. So let's start there. Let's start on the basis, all of us, that if you have a family, if you're married and you have children, there's a lot that needs to be done. If you have more children, there's more that needs to be done. So maybe if you're new to our podcast or our audience or community, we have seven children, ranging from 19 to five. Almost 20.

Rachel Denning (21:31.757)
And so, and we travel a ton and we have multiple businesses. So there's a lot that has to be done to run a family. Yes. So we'll start with that framework, all kinds of things. Chores, I guess, are things that fall in or they fall under this category of usually it's things that need to be done regularly, if not daily, just to keep up, maintain cleanliness order, taking care of.

stuff and things and schedules and property on and on and on, right? Right. I would say there is even a hierarchy of chores. The most basic ones being there's certain things you have to do just to be alive. Like you have to eat. So that's part of a chore. You have to... Cleaner, you're going to be getting sick. Well, like you have to shop and prepare food. That's a chore that has to be done. And then of course, part of that includes then cleaning up afterwards because...

And this was fascinating because living abroad and in other countries helped me to realize this even more so than living in the States. Like if you don't clean up after yourself, I remember vividly, because it's not like I was a naturally neat person per se. I remember vividly living in countries where there's a lot more, there are a lot more critters and bugs. And if I didn't clean up right away, my kitchen would be filled with ants or insects or sometimes rats. And so.

That right there was this immediate need for being neater and cleaner because if not, I had bugs in my kitchen and I didn't want that. Isn't that interesting? That's just this beautiful natural consequence where many of us, if we live in this just manicured neighborhood, right? That doesn't happen. And we're in the sprawling city. Like you don't see that, but go live next to the jungle. You guys go get, go give that a whirl, go live in the mountains and see how the immediate response of nature plays out.

on your circumstances and your situation. So as a young mother, when I had smaller children and we were living in developing countries, this is how I learned that lesson right away is because when I didn't clean up right away, I got immediate consequences, almost immediate consequences for not cleaning up. So right there, those are the basic chores that you start with. And then of course it goes up from there all the way to...

Rachel Denning (23:57.741)
you know, cleaning the baseboards because you like them being dust free. And we haven't even mentioned animals yet. If you guys want to bring in pets and then animals, or you want to have land, I mean, you can see how this can become really complex. Let's say you have lots of toys, lots of cars, a house full of stuff, a garage full of stuff. You want all these things for all of your people to be able to get a good education, have good life experiences, have fun.

So the more you have and the more you want to do, the more chores there are. Which I think this also falls in to in a way natural consequences. This is the approach I take that if we're going to have more of those things, I'm not going to be the one taking care of them. So if my children want the blessings of having more things, they are the ones that have to have the responsibility of caring for those things because otherwise. Now does that make you lazy?

Rachel? Right, and we're bringing this up because this is some of the comments. Let's do that, let's dive into those. But that to me ties in perfectly like, no I'm sorry you don't get more toys and more stuff and more things so that I can take care of it all for you. Right? So and again that's part of our core life philosophy is earning and taking responsibility with the...

Good things. The privilege of having good things in life. So again, that's the whole hierarchy starting from the basics of like you get to eat and this is one way I approach it with my kids too. You eat, which means you contribute to the eating, the preparing, the cleaning up. I shouldn't have to be the one doing it all for you. That doesn't mean I'm not doing it with you, but you're helping because that just...

you get the benefits. It's like the little red hen, you know? Yeah, and it's a solid life principle that we want to be teaching our kids from the time they're little, that if you... There's no free rides. Yeah, there's no free rides. And if you're going to participate in something or you're going to enjoy something, receive something, you have a responsibility to do your part. Nobody, not even your parents, and some of you might disagree with this, but I want to get you on it. Nobody owes you anything. And I think it's extremely unhealthy to go through life.

Rachel Denning (26:28.046)
thinking that other people should do things for you. Well, and of course people are going to say, of course your parents owe you something. They brought you into this world and you're right. Like parents have a moral, and we've talked about this before, parents have a moral obligation to take care of their children and they honestly do. But that doesn't mean they have a moral obligation to do that for you the way they do for a baby.

for the rest of your life. In fact, they are at that point being what Jordan Peterson calls the eatable mother. Like they are damaging you, they are causing you harm by continuing to care for you the way they would care for an infant. It is their duty and responsibility to wean you from that care so that you can learn to care for yourself. So there's an underlying framework here that as the child goes from infancy onward,

their skill level, ability, responsibility to contribute rises with them. With maturity. Yeah. And so, and that takes a lot of judgment and maybe some experimentation trying to figure it out that as the kid gets older, they should do a little bit more, a little bit more. Now, where people go wrong is doing too much or too little. Yes. And so it's tough. This is, again, this isn't black and white. It's not exact for an age or a family because there's so much.

going on with maturity levels and cognitive abilities and physical abilities. But as an underlying framework, I want to really emphasize this to all of us. As your children get older, their responsibility and skill level to contribute to their own upkeep needs to increase and increase and increase. Incrementally. Yeah. Until...

even as young teenagers, they have the capability and confidence and competence to provide for most of their stuff. And even saying that, some of you are like, oh no, and we'll dive into it, but they can, they have the capability. They have that capability. In a very healthy way, healthy, happy way where they're not begrudging or whatever, they're not upset, they're not missing out on life. They're like, hey, it feels so good to take care of yourself. It does, and they want to do it. And I think one...

Rachel Denning (28:55.725)
example of this in our own life that happened was when our teenagers who are 16 and 15 were, well it was initially the 16 year old that was asked. He was asked to go house sit, essentially pet sit at an extended family's house in another state, right? Well they went on a trip because they already recognized his maturity levels and his capability.

They asked him to come stay at their house by himself to care for their pets. And take care of their property, right? And to take care of their property. They have a few acres and a big house. And he was asked to go do that. Now, he wasn't forced to do that. He wasn't manipulated to do that. They saw he was capable of doing that because of past experience with him. And he willingly and eagerly wanted to do it. He wanted to go be...

solely in charge of this property and all the animals for like 10 days. And then his 15 year old sister. It's kind of, it's remote. It's kind of tucked away on 37 acres, kind of away from everything else. Yeah. And it was awesome. Right. And then his 15 year old sister was like, well, I want to go with you. Like, I want to do that too. Right. And so together they went and house it. The pet set, pet sat for by themselves for like 10 days.

But it was something they wanted to do. They didn't feel that it was forced upon them or that they were incapable of doing it. They felt very capable and competent to be able to take care of it because they already had the skills and ability to care for a house, to clean a house, to take care of animals, to be responsible. They were able to do it. And to do it all joyfully. Right.

joyfully. They want to do. They're excited. Turn on some music, have a good time and they make a great time of it. Right. Okay. So let's dive into these comments because they're going to be, I think, um, interesting and fun and lots of other stuff. Um, I don't know if I'll read them all because some of them are very long. I was surprised at the lengthy comments that I received on this post.

Rachel Denning (31:15.341)
Okay, so this one says, parents who want to do less things by dumping it on kids should be ashamed of themselves. Kids do not need to have regular chores in order to learn responsibility and you know it very well. It amazes me that so many people seem not to realize that kids, Greg's over here laughing, I'm trying not to laugh. Wow. That kids aren't here to help adults, but parents are here to care for and provide for kids.

The mentality that the kids will do it and parents will have less work tells me that many people do not really love their children, but look for excuses to serve themselves. Sad, sad crying face. Wow. It's not the child's job to make light the work of lazy mama and data bears. Also hypocrites, if a child has regular chores, then obviously they know how to do them, so you aren't teaching, you are using kids.

angry face. Wow. Oh, this is good. I didn't hear that one. Yeah. Is this, does that one keep going? Cause no, that's the end of that. Okay. We got to break that down. There's so much there. Okay. Okay. Go, go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

Rachel Denning (32:40.557)
That's shameful. Now, to be fair, I don't remember exactly what my post says. I should read it because part of my selling point for doing chores might have been. You can do less. Well, I think, I mean, because that is definitely something we talk about in our coaching is like if you're and it's not that you can do less stuff, it's so you do less chores in the house. And this is something I emphasize. Let me ask a question that we may interject here.

What? Is it mama's responsibility or dad's mom and dad to do everything? So you have to answer that question for yourself because that's the core of your philosophy. Is it your job to do everything? Some of you are like, yes, my kids, my family, my responsibility. And I would say it depends. There's a hierarchy there. If you're a new mom with a newborn baby, absolutely, yes, it's your job to do everything you can. Now, even that being said.

We talk a lot about this in our coaching that in ancient societies and even in more developed countries, the mother is not responsible for doing it all. She has help from aunts and uncles and cousins and mothers. It's really there. There are only a few societies in our experience around the globe. Mostly Western societies. There's only a few Western societies with a real...

Isolated nuclear family where it's just mom and dad and kids and mom and dad are supposed to do everything parents have a lot of help from extended family and neighbors Which we don't have that here. So you have to fundamentally ask ask and answer that question Is that is it your responsibility to do all that stuff now? whatever your answer is You have to start asking why and what are the consequences?

And what we get to see because we get to work with so many good people and families all the time we get to see a big variety of outcomes and Consequences and how it's all being done whether it's being done effectively or not But but how it's being done and why and we often see parents who they do take on the responsibility So yeah, I need to be the most responsible and then they lean into it so much That it burns them out. Yeah, remember you guys energy is exhaustible

Rachel Denning (34:55.789)
We can renew it and most people don't know how to do that. We don't know how to be energy generators and generate plenty of energy we need. And so it's exhaustible and your time is precious and rare and exhaustible. You don't get it back. And your bandwidth to think and make decisions and show up and be there as a spouse, as a person, as a parent, that's exhaustible. And the more you give that to chores and running errands, you become, you're no longer the...

mother, you're the maid. And you're not there to teach, you're the taxi driver. And so you're not being a parent, you're being a servant. And some of you are like, take that as a badge of honor, like, oh yes, I'm the servant, because I'm here to serve. But you're not actually providing real service and value by just merely taking care of the temporal needs of people.

That doesn't always play out. Right. And which, not to say that there's no value in doing that, there's a lot of value in doing that. It needs to be done. There are things every single day that need to be done. And maybe you are the person to do that. And that's great. But there are certainly some things that, one, either need to be ignored and not done or postponed or purposely procrastinated. Or you get someone else to do that. Whether that's hired help, going back to the mother with the new baby, right?

Because you're saying, yes, I'm the mother, it's a new baby, I have to do everything for this baby. You're right. But does that also mean you're supposed to wash all the baseboards and mop all the floors and everything else in the house that could and should be done or wants to be done? At what point do you draw the line with, I have to do everything? Because there's an exchange rate, I guess another fundamental principle here. There is an exchange rate for everything you choose to do. Exactly. And at some point, you cannot do it all. Right. If you try.

there will be consequences on your sanity. Exactly. And your body and your wellbeing, which therefore directly translates to your family wellbeing. Right. There will be a cost. The health and wellbeing of the baby itself could be in jeopardy if you exhaust yourself too much by trying to do it all. So it's a faulty belief that parents are supposed to do it all. They can't do it all and they shouldn't do it all if they're trying to be intentional parents.

Rachel Denning (37:17.357)
The parents are going to do the things that only they can do, just like you always talk about. No one can do your pushups for you, except for you. There's some things in parenting that only you can do. Not some things, there's a ton of things. You guys, I, nobody on this planet can be a father to my children. I am their father. But there are billions of people who could mow my lawn.

or teach them how to mow your lawn. Or whatever. There's so many things that... We are big, big advocates of outsourcing. Anything that can be outsourced maybe ought to be so you can focus on the things that only you can do and that you do best and need to do best, which is nurturing and caring for and loving and spending time with your family. But if you're running errands and doing chores and fixing this and fixing that and cleaning this and running here...

you have no time left over for real, genuine quality time with your kids. Oh man, that exchange rate is way, way too high. But I want to circle back to like, if, if you inherently are lazy and you are passing off things to your kids so you can do nothing. Yeah. That's a problem. Yeah. Shame on you. If you're outsourcing some of these things in a healthy,

appropriate way to your children so they're learning lessons and helping with the family economy so that you can do things that only you can do and you can do them better. That's a great strategy. Right. Right. So going back to what I was talking about before, one of the things I definitely teach in our coaching is that I do outsource to my kids because that gives me more time to do things that they can't do.

like helping to build our family business. We have a family business that we work together in, that we have a dream of being an expanded family business that could employ those kids who might want to be employed in it. But when I'm working on the family business, making a podcast, for example, with you.

Rachel Denning (39:37.293)
If I hire my kids to fold the laundry, which they're literally doing right now, folding laundry, or to make a meal, or to whatever, that's not only benefiting me, it's also benefiting them. So that right there is an example of I'm not having them do the laundry so I can sit and watch Netflix, or whatever. Some would be critical of you and call this negligent. They would call that negligent parenting because you're working in a business. Right.

where you should just be a mom. Right. Do you want to respond to that? Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, this isn't a topic, but I think it's worth responding to because you might think, well, I'm going to do some other things. Or some of you, I know this comes up all the time. There's a lot of guilt. Parents have a lot of guilt for taking some alone time or self -care time. And they think, no, I should just wear myself out.

in my family duties. Just serving, serving, serving. I'm like, well, you need some self time so you have more of yourself to give to your family. Right. Yes. And so in this case, I think specifically with the business aspect, for me personally, business is an interest of mine. It's a passion of mine. So that whole approach could be replaced with something like,

I spend time working on something that fills me, something I'm passionate about and interested in. That could be painting, that could be drawing, that could be running, something that's helping to, like you said, fill me. For me, that is business. For some people, it's not. Although some people might need to or want to invest in a business, to grow the income so that there's more money for experiences and education.

and that type of stuff and i think that's also valid uh... making money or pursuing money is not a bad thing uh... so in that i mean basically that's the approach we have that you'd because i think one of the things that happens it's a uh... pitfall for a lot of parents like you were talking about is they wear themselves out in parenting forgetting that they are actually first an individual and then second a couple and so they don't devote time

Rachel Denning (41:55.501)
to their individual growth and development and they don't devote time to the couple development and those things suffer at the expense of being a parent. And so then the family falls apart because the individual is literally falling apart. I remember, and the marriage is falling apart, but going back to this, I remember one time during the crazy years of raising kids feeling like I had lost my individuality. Like I literally...

I felt like I was not a person. I was just a doer of things that needed to be done. And none of them were things I wanted to be done, that I wanted to do. They were just things that had to be done, like the laundry and the chores and all that. And that made me a less capable mother. And when I focused on making time for myself as an individual person,

that strengthened my ability to mother in a better way, besides the fact that it sets an example for my children of how to live, of how to be a person in the world. So that's my approach to that. So in a very real way, you're modeling for them how to be a happy, human, healthy, productive human being, and you're earning an income that provides for experiences that off the chart experiences for these kids to...

even way surpass us in the cultivation of their potential. Right. And there's so much there. And again, I just can't emphasize this enough. The very best thing you can do for your children is to make the most of yourself. Not to their neglect, not to neglect of anything else, but to be optimized in a way that you still continue to grow as an individual. Some, and I see this all the time and you might.

You might be listening and just be like, I don't know, I'm all in. And you don't get to see what we see on a regular basis, just across the span of the earth. We just get to see this where, you know, some of them take on this badge of honor of just like, this is it. And they just wear themselves out. And we get to see the train wreck of their own psychology or their own emotions, their own spirituality, their own health. They destroy their health or...

Rachel Denning (44:14.477)
their relationship. So the marriage falls apart and it's a strain for a long time and then completely dies later on. That ugly scenario. Or the kids grow up and they're like, oh, we did it. We did all this. And then they all just fall apart. And I see out there, it's like, well, that's his life. I'm like, no, it's not. You made that bed. That's yours. You built that mess. Every last piece of it is your disaster because of the way you approached it.

So you have to play the long game. You have to have this big, big perspective around this or you run into a lot of trouble. Let's keep going with your comment. Okay. So kids do not need to have regular chores in order to learn responsibility. That's true. It's not necessarily that chores themselves teach responsibility and that responsibility can't be taught in any other way. That's basically what I'm saying. But chores also can be a way to learn responsibility. Right? So.

Which I would love to talk to this person. Which adult do you know doesn't do daily things to be responsible? Usually ones that don't have control of their lives. But even the most chaotic out of control person has things they have to do every single day just to exist. I don't know of any mentally functioning adult that doesn't have things they have to do every day.

to maintain their own existence. Right. Which is the basis of a chore. Why wouldn't you teach your children that? I don't get that. You're literally raising them in this false reality. You don't have to do things for your daily maintenance. The laundry will just show up in your drawer. What crazy idea is that? The fridge will just be always there. The food? Meals will be prepared for you. The bills will be paid. I'll brush your teeth. I'll bathe you. I'll do everything for you. And you don't have to do anything. What kind of crazy world? So yes.

Responsibility can be learned in other ways besides just chores, but yet at the very basis of responsibility is the ability for you to care for yourself on a daily basis. And that is the basis of chores. And you have to for your own existence. Right. Now you don't have to be extravagant. You don't have to go beyond. And some parents make this mistake. They go beyond there. You've got all kinds of chores and they have their kids endlessly doing chores. Right. I mean, we'll get there. But yes.

Rachel Denning (46:41.741)
Can you learn responsibility outside of chores? Of course, but done well responsibilities is doing chores daily is a really great model for becoming an adult, which isn't that why are we raising children? Are we raising children to be children? Are we raising children to be a great adult? Right, which is going to be addressed because there were a couple of comments that brought that up.

and mentioned that and we're saying, no, you're not raising adults. You have children and they need to be children. They need to be able to play. So we're gonna talk about that because I don't disagree with that, but we're gonna talk about how that ties in. Well, let's emphasize that for a moment just right now. Kids need lots of playtime. Yeah. And they need downtime and they need free time and they need recovery time. So do adults though. Yes, exactly. Perhaps less so. Maybe not.

Maybe we all need more playtime. For very young children, they need a lot more. They need tons and tons. And our littles, if you were to see our family, our littles just play and play and play and play and play and play and play. And then we'll kind of lead them over to help them help out with some things that are part of their maintenance. We're not having them do big kid chores or we're not having them do our chores. They do some maintenance for their own well -being. Right. And we do it in small ways with them. But then.

most of their lives is play because they're in that phase of play. Exactly. So I guess I want to keep emphasizing that. Yes, small children especially, but you know, big kids and adults need play. And we play a ton and we play hard. And I guess our philosophy is like when there's work to be done, work hard and enjoy it. When there's play to be done, play hard and enjoy it. Exactly. Right. It's just like, it's a great way to do life. Let's keep going.

Okay, so the mentality that kids will do it and parents will have to work less tells me that many people do not really love their children but look for excuses to serve themselves. Yeah, that's jacked. If that's true, that's messed. Yeah, it is messed. If you had kids to serve you, that's messed up. So I agree. Right. And, you know, I'm not going to say that that doesn't exist. I'm sure there are instances in the world where that's the case. And as I was thinking through this, and I also received a very...

Rachel Denning (48:57.741)
long direct message from someone uh... but it made me think that and through our travels we've definitely seen this that yeah there are definitely places there are definitely countries there are definitely situations of especially in poverty and things like that where children are worked too hard they don't have a childhood

And so if this is the approach to some of these comments, I get that. I agree with that. There are some children who literally have no childhood because they have to work all the time. And that's wrong, that's sad, that's extreme. And in that case, yeah, I definitely think there's a message that needs to be out there about, hey, no, children should not be forced to do all of your chores all the time.

So there definitely is a place for too much work, but I would argue there's a place for too much leisure. Yeah, well, absolutely. Right. OK. Now, man, I know we've said it. If you're, and our listeners aren't like this, but if you are a lazy sack and you're just using your kids to do your stuff, then I would do this angry emoji face too. Exactly. I'll get right in your face and be like, what is up?

No, get off your lazy tail and go do something awesome with your life and your kids, man. Okay, that's enough on that. That's enough on that one. Okay. Other one. Chores for kids. We respectfully disagree. Was there more on that comment? Well, there was some more, but it was more of the same of like that you're a lazy mom and dad if you're making and you're a hypocrite because if the child has regular chores, they know how to do the chores. So you're not teaching them how to do chores. You're just using them.

Okay. Still I'm like, really? Like, whoever leaves this comment, I hope you listen, like, do you not have regular daily chores you have to do? Because like you do, like I'm going to shower a couple times until I get showering down, then I'm done showering. I know how to shower. I don't know how to do it anymore. Doing this is making me a hypocrite. Right, that's the part I don't get. Like, so once they know how to do them, they shouldn't have to do them anymore because then you're using them. Who's going to do them?

Rachel Denning (51:15.117)
Once you know how to cook, you're like, who's going to cook? Nobody needs to cook anymore. We all know how to cook. No more cooking. No cleaning up. Because we all know how to clean up. So no more cleaning up. I don't get that. I guess I can see what's being said there about hypocrisy if you're not teaching these principles. Because yeah, having your kids do chores is good, but teaching them why we do chores is even better. And teaching them effectively. Some of you have some skewed ideas about why.

and you pass that on and it keeps getting passed on from generation to generation, it can be really bad ideas. But to truly understand why and keep that gentle reminder and effective teaching and mentoring, that's a beautiful thing. I wanna pause here, because there's something I wanted to share before we started the podcast that I wanna make sure I get in. I've often had people tell me like, kids have to do chores to learn how to work hard. I heard that so many times.

endlessly until finally I was just so sick of hearing, I'm like if I hear that stupid idea again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I don't know what I'm gonna do. You're gonna make an angry emoji face. I'm gonna make an angry emoji face and send it to somebody. No, I'm not, I'm not gonna get reactive, but I thought that's such an erroneous idea because chores aren't that hard. I just kept thinking, I'm like if, if your, if your definition of hard work is doing chores around the house that are hard. Right.

You have no stinking idea what hard work is. Exactly. And I'm like, I never in my whole life thought I'm going to have my kids do chores so they know what hard work is. Like chores are easy. Right. Chores are easy work. If you think chores are hard, you've never done hard work. And I invite you to come work with me somewhere. Like, let's go put in some work and you'll be like, dude, chores are a walk in the park. Chores are a vacation compared to real hard work. So when I want to teach my kids hard work,

It's never through chores. I've never thought, kids, we're going to do chores so you learn how to work. Bogus. We're going to do work. We're going to do chores so you learn how to live in the world as an effective functioning human being. That's essentially what chores are for. Like we've emphasized already, if you want to eat or cook or clean up or be clean at all, you have to do chores. And then we, in our family, we outsource a lot.

Rachel Denning (53:33.101)
And so we'll teach the kids how to do it, but then we won't necessarily keep them doing it because we can hire someone else who's so grateful for the work. So, so grateful to have the work. We'll have them come in and do the work. Our kids know how to do them. We've taught them, we've raised them. They know how, they're not lazy. We bring someone else in to do the work. So now our kids can go on to bigger and better things that only they can do. Right. I think a good example of this is actually bathrooms because I've taught my kids how to...

do the bathrooms, right? They all know how to clean a bathroom, but I don't make them all clean the bathrooms because nobody really likes cleaning the bathroom. You know, I don't really like cleaning the bathroom. So for a while I outsourced it and I would pay someone to come to the house and it was only once a month to do a deep clean on the bathrooms. And I have five bathrooms and I paid $125, right? Well, but - Hashtag worth it. Hashtag worth it. But I also gave them the option.

because when they're trying to earn money, they'd be like, mom, do you have any jobs I can do to earn extra money? And I said, yeah, I pay $125 to have all five bathrooms cleaned. You can do that. And I've had several of the kids take that up on me. Take me up on that. They're like, OK, I'll do that. I don't like necessarily cleaning the bathrooms, but I'll do it for 125 bucks. And so that's, I think, a good option there or a good example of like, yeah, they know how to do it, but I'm not.

forcing them to clean the bathrooms every time because I don't want to do it because I don't want to do it. I hire someone else, but it's there as an option if they want the money. And we're constantly emphasizing, like we want you to do the highest and best stuff. If they have educational pursuits, life pursuits, passions, hobbies, passions, and they're like, Hey, I really want to pursue this and work on it. Can I get out of chores? There's been so many times like, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. We can hire somebody to do chores, but nobody can go practice your craft or your passion for you. You cannot outsource practicing a skill. Sorry. Just like someone, no one can do your pushups for you. They also can't practice the piano for you or do your gymnastics flips or whatever. Immediately. I mean, today I could hire someone to come vacuum the house so that my son can practice guitar or practice parkour.

Rachel Denning (55:57.645)
My daughter can go to horseback riding lessons or like again, you can come up with so many things that like nobody else could do for them. So that's a really important principle. Yeah. So this next comment here, cause I think it kind of ties into what you're saying. Um, chores for kids, we respectively disagree. Why? Visit our page. We have lots of information. So it's kind of self -promotional. First of all, if you really care for kids, you will take seriously what we have to say, even if you disagree.

And then I responded saying, there's nothing, cause I did look at their page and it was basically like, you using your kids to do chores is child abuse. That's basically what I was saying, child labor, it's abuse. To use your kids to do chores. Wow. Okay. And so it just had a lot of different like quotes and things on their page about why having your kids do chores was child labor and abuse.

Now, so I responded after looking at it for a minute, you know, saying, you know, I don't see that there's anything wrong in teaching children to contribute to the normal work that's involved in being alive. Like we've been talking about. If you want to eat, you need to at the very least gather food. Like, right? If you're a hunter gather out in the woods, you've got to go gather some food or something. You've got to pick some berries. That's the very basis of chores. You're trying to be alive. You're...

you're contributing to your own survival. And it's always age and maturity appropriate. Absolutely. Capability appropriate. Right. So I get what they're saying. They might say, look, if you have your seven -year -old out pushing his lawn mower back for all day long. Or your two -year -old. Yeah. That's child labor. Like, OK, that's OK. Yeah, I agree with that. Not so good. Right. Agreed. But if you're asking your 15 -year -old to fold his own laundry and d***.

put it away and pick up his room. I don't think that that's child labor. He uses and do the dishes. He used. He used like what? Right. Wipe up your spot on the counter there because you spilled like I don't see that as being child labor. I see that as a very basic. You're alive. You create a mess by being alive and you need to learn how to pick up your own mess. Absolutely. That's the basic.

Rachel Denning (58:20.525)
And help as appropriate, help with family responsibilities. Right. Because there's just the nature of being in a family. There's like, there's individual things and then there's family things. And they can help as they can, as they're capable and able. They can't. Now, I guess I really want to say, yeah, of course there are people who are out there abusing their kids. Absolutely, they are. And using them for child labor. Having them do way too much inappropriately. I've seen that a lot.

So yes, that's valid, sure. And I guess we're not talking to those people. Right, we're not. And we're not promoting that message, for sure, of chores equals get your kids to do everything for you, back to the other ideas so that you can do less. That's just a given. That's just messed up. And then I also said chores is about helping them to develop respect for themselves, their environment, and recognize the personal power they have. They do have this power in a way.

over their environment. They have the ability to bring order to chaos. That's an essential archetypal need. Well, every human wants that and needs that. It's this hierarchy of needs. Exactly. It goes back to all these fundamentals of the human being at our core. We want those things. Right. Can I bring order to the chaos around me? And in a very...

essential way that is partly what chores are teaching that I have the power to bring order to chaos around me and it's very fascinating because I remember hearing once some mentors that we had they were teaching and presenting and that was one of the things they talked about they said and I know I do this myself very often when we are feeling out of sorts in our mind or emotionally mentally or emotionally we feel out of sorts one solution

to that problem is to bring order to your environment in a physical way. And so I do this a lot. If I feel emotionally off, upset, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, if I go around bringing order to my physical environment, it helps to bring order to my mind and my emotions. And so I think we can teach kids the same thing while doing chores of like, hey, you're filling out a source, like.

Rachel Denning (01:00:36.877)
let's bring some order. We can organize this space and it will help us to feel better mentally and emotionally as well. And you can make it fun. You turn on a song and say, hey, let's have a cleaning party like we do with our kids. Like, let's all clean up. And we're having a blast. We're having snacks afterwards and music and fun. Our kids called it that for years, like cleaning parties. That's what we did was a cleaning party. But now if you take this principle we're teaching and you're like, that's what we're doing, and you go in and like, kids, get in here now.

If you don't, there's no more food for you. And you start manipulating or cursing or yelling or belittling or name calling or being cruel in any way. Like it all backfires. None of that works. None of these principles work. So that was actually a follow -up comment that I said that plus when done the right way chores are play and they are fun. And even adults need to learn this, right? To view work as a joy and not as a drudgery. It's a necessary joy. Yes.

And so I, you know, I mentioned that, that, cause even when I looked at their page, it seemed like that was kind of the vibe I got of like chores are drudgery. They're horrible. Nobody wants to do chores. And so making your kids do chores is a horrible thing because you're making them do something that nobody wants to do. Right. Which to me is totally off in the underlying message. Like that's part of the problem here.

Parents are approaching chores as this horrible drudgery that they don't want to do, so I'm going to make my kids do it so that I don't have to. That's part of the major problem that's going on here, where if you switch your entire mindset to chores as being something archetypal and something necessary for the proper and joyful functioning of your life, you begin to take on this.

Positive approach to doing the chores like it becomes more if if not fun and pleasing it at least becomes less painful because you are realizing how Essential it is to your being alive and in addition to all of that So in in my podcast in my I have a podcast called be the man podcast I just interviewed this guy who is a ninth degree black belt tested to become a grandmaster

Rachel Denning (01:02:59.341)
and in just in a month, maybe six weeks, he's going to become a grandmaster, which is so rare, so amazing. And he talked about this journey of staying grounded and staying humble. And the day before he tested to become a ninth degree black belt and eventually a grandmaster, he went to this testing ceremony and he's so humble about it, but he smoked.

everybody. I mean this guy, he's a three -time world champion. He's a baddie. He says, you know what I did in the morning? I went and mopped all the floors. I mopped all the floors. I cleaned the cell. I could have hired somebody. In fact, I have employees that do that. I went and mopped the floors. Exactly. To stay grounded. Right. To mirror what the tour is like. I'm here too. Yes. And I'm humble. I'm not some special guy that's beyond this. I'm gonna go mop the floors. Right. Before my own competition.

I love that. Which is awesome. It reminds me of this quote I heard somewhere and I really, I don't know the source of this. It could have been the Buddha or maybe some just Chinese monk said it. But it was just very simple. After enlightenment comes the dishes. So it's like, yeah, you get enlightened and you still have to do the dishes, right? Because that's the essence of living. You have to do the chores. Nobody gets away from it.

And so I think this is such a dangerous message to our kids of like, you don't have to do the chores. Well, who does? Right. I have all these questions running through my mind. Like, they have a whole website and like, messages, propaganda for not kids not doing chores. I'm like, OK, well, number one, who does the chores then? And number two, what's the what's the ultimate outcome of kids that are taught not to do chores? Like that is the epitome of entitlement. And like.

Yeah, like you're set on some pedestal that you're above everyone else, even the Buddha or Jesus, because you don't have to do any chores. Yeah, that baffles me. So again, what's the long term thing? What's the end result of a child that doesn't do chores? Like that can't work out. Right. So I said something like, you know, the doing the chores is not about abuse or child labor and they're.

Rachel Denning (01:05:20.141)
Their response was, there's plenty wrong and abusive in making children feel they must contribute to the household. Why? What? Right, hold on. They said why, question mark, because it's putting undue pressure on children, pressure that they should not have. In the family, the parents are the carers and the providers, not the children. Making kids do regular chores that really are the parents' responsibility is in reality child labor.

If you got an adult, so well, we'll address that. Let me, okay, okay. We'll just quick pause. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. If it's, there are adult chores and there are child chores. There's a hierarchy of chores. Absolutely. So if I'm trying to get a child to do adult chores. So that I don't have to do them especially. That's messed up. Even for whatever reason, it's just messed up. Like a kid should only be able to do chores that they're capable of doing. And I would say though.

Kids are far more capable than we think they are. Absolutely. And our kids aren't burdened. All of our children help out in our family economy, and I wish you could all have the privilege of getting to know our kids thoroughly and well. None of them are like, really, really, my life is hard. It's horrible. Well, I would say sometimes our small children say, well, why do I have to do that? That's hard. And then I bring some perspective and say, well, no, actually doing this thing would be hard.

Yeah, you're right. That would be hard. But as overall beings, they're just super happy and good. There's no like, my life is slavery and terrible. They all get it and they all participate. Well, because I think especially what you're talking about here, our older teens, none of them would ever say, oh yeah, I do too much. In fact, all of them would probably admit, I should do more. I could do more. Because they've said that to us. And.

anytime they're asked to do something, they do it very willingly and happily. Because they feel this sense of, yeah, I'm grateful for everything I have. I recognize the importance of why this needs to be done, and I feel a need to contribute. And we've been tactfully teaching them awareness their whole lives. So they're cognizant of all that's going on to run a household and a family and a life. They're aware of it. Right. And they see it and appreciate it. Where some kids...

Rachel Denning (01:07:44.717)
and teens and adults for that matter are just clueless. They lack situational awareness and awareness as a whole. So part of my thoughts with this response though was they shouldn't feel the need to that they must contribute to the household. Well yeah if you're asking if you're saying your child must contribute to the household or you will starve if they don't.

do XYZ, it's not like you're asking them to pay the bills or earn the grocery money or something, right? That would be, that would be wrong. But you're, you're also asking them to be cognizant of how they contribute to the mess. Right. And to the cost, but not in a manipulative way, not in a weird way, but just helping them understand that just by being alive, there are costs and expenses, which are yes, of course, the parents responsibility. It's

It's my responsibility to provide for my kids, but I want them as much as they can as they grow and improve to realize like, oh yeah, I contribute to this so I can help out too. I can carry my weight. In whatever small weight I'm capable of doing. Yep, exactly. And they feel good about that. They love it. They feel so proud. Yeah. Everyone feels good to take care of themselves. Right. There's something just fantastic about autonomy. Right. That human beings.

We thrive on and love. In fact, we actually feel, and it's just ingrained in us, we feel low and pathetic and we don't like ourselves when we have to depend on, or we don't even have to, but we do depend on others to do things for us. I came out in another coaching session this morning where there's this gentleman who's, he's loafing, man, and he's taking advantage of the welfare system and other people to provide for him. And of course it comes out like,

Well, yeah, of course he doesn't like himself. How could he? Because he's not doing likable things. He's not even providing for himself, let alone the children he has fathered. And yeah, how could you like yourself if you're not even autonomous enough to take care of yourself? Right. Well, and I've seen it even with our small children, who are, our smallest ones are five and eight. And just...

Rachel Denning (01:09:59.501)
like the little beam they get on their face when they do something small like help unload the dishwasher. They're helping. I still have to put the cups up in the cupboard because they can't reach, but they just feel so proud and happy that they're doing this thing that's helping out. And so yeah, I think that's the essence of it. But then this idea that it's putting undue pressure on them, pressure that they should not have.

I disagree with that. In fact, I think one of the major contributing factors to some of the failure to launch that we're experiencing in society today and this whole issue that people bring up with the Millennials is the fact that they don't have enough pressure. They don't have enough real pressure because they've been cushioned, they've been protected, they've been baby nurtured, helicoptered, that they don't feel... This kind of philosophy has caused a lot of the very problem. Oh, absolutely. We've been moving in pressure and so...

Right. They can't hold down jobs. Yeah. Because they haven't had to do any chores. They haven't had to do any real work that actually contributed to their own existence. And so they can't handle doing anything that actually matters. So they stay in their parents' basement being provided for. They go out and work. But man, it's uncomfortable. And this boss, he wants me to be on time and like work hard and stay till like the end of the work day and do our thing.

handle the pressure. And we're laughing because we literally just had some friends of ours who are business owners tell us about this situation that happened that they had an employee quit because they couldn't handle the work. That was very simple. And our 16 year old son is there working. Doing all of it like carrying a workload of multiple people joyfully. Loving it. He's literally loving it. And learning all these skills and having a great time and people are like, it's no, I can't be consistent because it's hard to show up.

five days a week, right, for your job. Exactly. And it's a chronic generational problem. And so, yes, I agree, parents are the carers and the providers. They should be caring and providing for your children, but caring and providing for the children does not equal doing everything for them. That is, in essence, crippling them. You are preventing their growth and development when you do everything for them. It's just like a chick.

Rachel Denning (01:12:20.781)
that's hatching out of an egg. If you open that egg shell for them, they don't - You've just ruined its life. Or they die because they haven't developed the strength they needed by getting out of the egg to actually live in the real world. Exactly. Now, I will take the other side for a moment and say, are parents sometimes putting unnecessary pressure on children? Absolutely. Sure. And that's just sick and wrong and messed up and manipulative and it's just wrong.

And yes, we have to acknowledge it is happening, and where it is happening, it needs to stop. But I think the more prominent problem is not enough pressure, like Rachel was saying. Well, I think it's happening in certain places around the world today, nowadays. But I understand, again, we do understand where this point of view could be coming from, because historically, and in some countries still, yeah, there is too much of this...

child labor that is going on. It's definitely an issue. We're not discounting that it's not. Sure. And so, yeah, that's another complication here of this whole topic and maybe every topic. You're like, well, what socioeconomic place are we talking about? Which economy, which culture, which country? It makes a difference. It matters. We've lived in other countries where, yeah, the kids have massive pressure to provide for the family as little as six or seven or eight. And that's just... And that is...

messed up and totally wrong. So we agree in those situations. Of course, of course a child should have no pressure to provide for the family. None at all. Right. And we personally know a man who we adore and respect who was providing for himself at the age of seven because his parents were so incapable of caring for him that he left home at the age of seven, survived on grass sometimes.

Yeah, that's wrong. So we understand that this message is important for certain situations and certain circumstances and places, but the danger we often see is, and this happens in all genres of life, the danger we often see is that because this one thing is so wrong, we swing all the way to the other side and say this must be right. When in reality, what's right is somewhere in the middle.

Rachel Denning (01:14:46.541)
instead of the opposite side and so i think even in this case that's the answer to answer is not you know in some situations children have too many chores and so they're being used and abused in child labor is happening the answer is not all the way to the other side where there's no chores and no responsibility answer somewhere in the middle i think that's what we're talking about kids don't need to restore to develop respect such a we did discuss that already uh... these are just very cheap excuses to justify what you're doing

They did say our page does not portray work as bad it portrays using kids to do the adults work as something bad and it is Okay, I agree again. We're not talking about kids doing adult work. There's adult work and Then there's all the other levels below that but there's plenty of work in there that kids can do and Depending on your child and your tactfulness and your approach a child at 16 17 and 18

could and perhaps should be doing adult level work. Absolutely. We have our teens doing adult level work. I was thinking the other day, I'm like, if for some crazy reason they had to start life on their own and take care of themselves, I wouldn't be the least concerned. Great. They all could right now, even our 15 -year -old. And our 16 -year -old who's working at the farm, he'll be 17 soon, the owners of the farm are planning on taking a trip.

and leaving him in charge by himself practically to care for a farm. That's their business. Because he's capable and competent as a six -year -old and loves it. This kid is on fire with doing all this work that he just adores. Now we also recognize that's also a personality thing. Not every child of ours would want to run a farm. And that's fine. That's not a problem. We don't think, oh, you're a worse person because you don't like doing this.

particular type of work, they're all capable of doing the work they want to do and doing hard work that's required in that field. Exactly. And they enjoy it. We've raised them to enjoy hard work. Right. Because it's necessary. Then one of the things, of course, they mention is that making kids do chores that if you got an adult to do them, you would pay them for. I can't even remember. There's something about paying them. But basically,

Rachel Denning (01:17:15.021)
we do pair kids for tours for very often not always but often they are getting paid to do choice especially in those cases when like if this is something i would hire someone to do like the bathrooms or the yard or the cars we pay them to do those doors the next one i'd i was literally shocked at the comments i got that were about this i was like is there like this whole

group of anti -chor people that are like all together. I know. This whole thing. No, children should not be made to do regular chores. If a child wants to help, the child will ask. Helping is taught via example, not force or manipulation. Now with this case, there are aspects of truth in this. Aspects that I agree in. And I think that's the tricky thing with a lot of things in life.

that sometimes it's like mixed in with truth and you're like, yeah, that's true. Like this whole you're enough type movement, you know, like you're just good enough the way you are. Yeah, that's true. But it's also only half true, right? Because some things are true, but only half true, not fully true. And in some ways this is kind of where this lies, I think. Yes, I think young kids, they will ask to help. And that's a great time to say, yeah, help. But as they get older, they're not necessarily always going to be asking.

to help. Now if you've trained them right and you've helped them see the importance of it like we've been talking about, they do often ask to help. Like how can I help out? The vast majority of people, unless they've been tactfully taught, unless you've been tactfully taught, they're not really good at awareness. They're not naturally good. Just by default, they're not naturally good at noticing all the things that need to be done. And so...

And they wouldn't even be aware of all the chores that need to be done to function because it's just being done. And at their developmental stage of their brain and their cognitive abilities, they're not walking around saying, how did all this food get in the pantry? Wait a minute, how come the internet always works? Is this a free service? When I go to an ATM, like, does this machine just hand out money to anyone with a little plastic card?

Rachel Denning (01:19:35.725)
Right. And so you have to walk them through and just let them know. And we do this all the time. Just let those kids all the expenses and all the things that need to be done because you're teaching awareness. Then once they know, yeah, then they might be like, wow, OK, I can help with that. But then sometimes it's just kind of the default setting of humans is this inherent laziness like, oh, I'd rather take the easy way. Right. And that.

that plays out all the time. If I don't have to do it, why do it? Because you know, mom's likely to do it or someone else is likely to do it. So why should I necessarily do it? It's the least effort strategy that people use to, they'll do just enough to not get, you know, fail the class or just enough to not get fired, just enough to get the job done. Most people operate on a good enough attitude and philosophy and a lot of kids will too. And so you're instructing them and training them to do that. So.

There's some truth there, but again, I think it's not true. One of the favorite things that our oldest daughter said one time was we had, we'd gone on a trip, Greg and I, because we lead couples trips and we went away. And because our children were mature enough, I think she was maybe 17 at the time. We left all of our kids at home by themselves. So she was 17. Our youngest was probably three, seven of our kids. And I think the people who,

of comment on your post today would be just come unglued at the thought of us leaving our home to take care of themselves. But they are responsible enough to do it. They so are. And so when I got back, one of the things she said was, you know what, Mom, I just didn't realize that one of the jobs you do is to manage all of the chores getting done. She's like, I didn't realize that that was an actual job until I was doing it while you were done, while you were gone.

And that's kind of what we're talking about. Like, yeah, the kids might not be aware of everything that needs to be done, because there's actually a job that's an adult job that mom or dad have of everything that needs to be done, that you're paying attention to, that like this needs to be taken care of and that needs to be taken care of and who can I find to do this? Like that's part of the job. And so back to this hierarchy of chores, you know, that's one of the things that you should be doing, but it doesn't mean you should be doing that.

Rachel Denning (01:22:01.197)
and actually doing all the jobs. Because then you're not, you're doing a disservice to your children who need to learn about how the world works. Well, and okay, let's, to a real life scenario, it's like asking the CEO to do all the jobs of all the employees because that lazy sack, he's just trying to get out of her, she's just trying to get out of doing all these jobs. It's like, no, like there's a hierarchy of work.

And nobody expects the CEO or the president to be fulfilling the jobs of other people. That's why he hires or she hires other people to do those jobs. There's roles. Right. So you're saying that you're like the CEO or the president, and so your kids need to do the lesser jobs? I was really implying that for you.

I'll take maybe a vice president position. And yes, yes it does. That may sound harsh, but the kids are less capable and less competent. They just are. They have less life experience and less skills and there's a hierarchy down to the little ones. Well one of the reasons... It's just the nature of life. Exactly. One of the reasons we are the carers and providers is because we have more competence and life skills. If we didn't, it's the blind leading the blind and we're all gonna starve to death because...

None of us can provide or make decisions. That's another problem we're seeing in this generation with the failure to launch epidemic is these kids just getting out of high school or college think they are competent and capable enough to like run a company. They want they want the raise after a week of being there. They want to be able to tell everyone to do because they are the cats. These are real life stories. These are real life stories. These these young adults showing up and being like, I should own this place that you guys should just give it to me because.

My parents always told me how special I am and how successful I'm gonna be. And like, dude, you have hardly any skills. Like show me your resume, show me your portfolio. Like show me some proof of results. And like, well, I don't technically have any, but I am very, very good. And like, okay, prove it. But we want everything handed to us. Well, not we, but that's this philosophy is being spread is like, well, no, I should.

Rachel Denning (01:24:15.565)
I can't believe there's a hierarchy. I can't believe you're telling me that I'm not good enough to run this company over the person that's had 50 years experience doing it. Okay. There's like a couple more and then one was a very long direct message that I received. I'm going to maybe just kind of summarize because I know this is getting long and yet it's so good though. I just feel like diving into these philosophies and these viewpoints and these approaches and the nuances of what they actually mean. Like what are the long term? What's the long term?

outcome of this type of thinking, I think it's important to examine that. It's like we're talking about and it's something we definitely always do, we always do in our approach to life is examining these nuances of what it actually means because semantics matter and you know, it has its part. If nothing else, I hope you all take away from this, the practice of examining things from all sides and really looking at the deep long -term consequences, what things mean and why and...

and what your approach is and revisit it often and really reconsider deeply things you thought were so simple and just kind of cut and dry. They're not. Yeah. And I also do wonder on because I did. First of all, most of the people that made these comments were reading are not actually people that are following me, which is one. It's just so fascinating to me, first of all, that all of these comments were made. They were all very lengthy. In some ways, they're they're.

emphasizing the same point, even this next one, you know, that kids shouldn't do chores because it's mom and dad don't want to do their household duties, that's what they're saying. My kids are adults today, but growing up they never had regular chores and neither did I. Well, what does that even mean, right? First of all, you're like, wait a second, you never had regular chores? What does that mean? What did your living environment look like? Like how did you live? How did you eat?

How did you function? How did you do anything? Perhaps they're saying their parents did all the chores. And so they adopted that same philosophy of like, well, my mom and dad did all the work, so I didn't have chores. So I'll do all the work, so my kids don't have chores. And then like it is, their kids are growing up and they'll do all the work. But my experience, and again, this is a vast experience across five continents. It's like...

Rachel Denning (01:26:38.573)
Kids who don't, well parents who do all the chores and all the work aren't really being parents. They're being servants. They're not really parenting and mentoring and leading and loving, they're just too busy doing all the stuff and things. That's just the reality. You can't argue that because there's 24 hours in a day.

and all that stuff takes time and so if you give your time and attention to taking care of all the temporal stuff then you can't give it in other ways. So I'm going to make an argument that you doing all the work is actually a form of negligent parenting. Right. Because where are you having the conversations together? Where are you having the devotionals, the discussions, the one -on -one, the dates?

All of that is a key ingredient, a key part of effective and powerful parenting because you're actually there. It takes a lot of work to maintain a relationship and to help it grow and develop. It takes a lot of energy, effort, time, focus, attention, discussion, communication, conversation. And sometimes that happens while you're washing the dishes, but only if you're washing the dishes together, not if you're washing it alone.

A lot of times that happens while other things are getting neglected. You're not doing the dishes or vacuuming because you're having a heart -to -heart conversation that needs to happen about something important. Right. And not even to mention all the educational stuff and a big thorough broad education and exposure and experience and adventure. Like, when are you doing all of that? Right. Like, how are you seeing the whole world and all those things and developing skills and talents and abilities in your own education? You're not because...

You're like taking care of chores. Right. Which in that case can become an argument for kids not doing chores, which I get and can agree with that in that case. Because sometimes, yes, like you mentioned before, the kids shouldn't be doing the chores because it's now taking away from their educational experience or their experiential experiences, their growth and development, their skills, which with the...

Rachel Denning (01:28:56.525)
direct message I got, that was one of the things I talked about. In fact, it quoted a Harvard study saying that kids who do too many chores, it can affect their GPA. Okay, right, I get that. Like if your kids are doing so many chores, they're not getting an education, that's a problem. That shouldn't be the case. That's just a simple time equation. They're spending more time doing chores than spending time in education. But hold on, I want to pause there, as though GPA matters. Well, that's a whole nother discussion right there. We're not even going to...

do not matter in the least. There's no correlation between grades and success in life and happiness and happy marriages and families and being a healthy, competent, whole human being. Right. Nothing zero zip zilch nada. This isn't my opinion. But okay. That's another podcast. That's another podcast right there. We can't go there. Chores aren't a oh, but they did say yet. So he said,

My kids are adults, they didn't do any chores, yet they are very responsible and hardworking adults. Well, back to this thing we mentioned before, well, what does that actually mean? Because your definition of responsible and hardworking, and I'm not saying that they're not, I just am, like, I want a definition for that because my definition of something could be very different from your definition of something. And that's where people can get confused because you could say, oh, my kids are hardworking and responsible. But if I...

saw some kids, I might say, no, they're not. This is my definition and that doesn't equal. Yes, you're right. And I would also say that that's a great point. You don't necessarily have to do chores to become hardworking. Absolutely not. Yep. Right. Chores aren't a child's responsibility. Play is. I agree with that. Agreed. But at the same time, especially as we've already talked about this, as they mature, they have to learn to become aware.

of their own, the own mess they make in the world and how to bring order to that chaos. That's part of being alive. Those of you listening, at what point do your children start picking up responsibility for their own existence and how is that done tactfully in a healthy way? These are things you have to decide and practice and implement. Like where does that happen and how does that incrementally go up and how are you going to measure if it's working or not?

Rachel Denning (01:31:21.421)
So you have to think through all this. It's very strategic.

This and then it's saying reading through comments on a chore chart page. I don't know where that was. It wasn't my post I could not help but wonder are people crazy. Why must a two -year -old sort recycling? Okay Don't know where that comes from, but I'm also saying well The two -year -old could sort recycling if they wanted to start recycling like that could be a fun thing to do They have recycling companies that do that

That's the other side. This is a great point though of like any chore has to be relevant. Yes. That is so, so, so important. If it is merely arbitrary, like I'm trying to keep you busy. Yes. Oh my goodness. If, Oh, can I get a little fired up here? If you have your kids do anything just merely as busy work to keep them busy, then.

lovingly I'm looking right in your face saying shame. With an angry emoji? I'm giving you the angry emoji face. Because that's just stupid. And there's so many great things in life. Kids see through that. Yeah, they totally do. And they resent you for making them do work that's like pointless. Okay? That's one thing. The other thing I've seen though that you reminded me of by getting upset about this is when kids, when parents use chores as punishment.

If you want to teach your kids to work, why in the hell are you using it as a punishment? Because they're now associating work and chores with a consequence for doing something bad. Which goes totally against the approach we're trying to promote here, I guess, or present, or explain that you're trying to help children see the deep fundamental philosophy and reason for doing chores.

Rachel Denning (01:33:21.613)
However you define JORS, that it's part of the necessity of being alive and existing. And it's part of bringing meaning and value to your life. And anything you do on a regular basis, especially daily, it's not insignificant because it happens every day of your mortal existence. Exactly. If it's 15 minutes a day, that's 97 hours a year. Over 10 years, that's 970 hours.

that you spent doing that thing, that's not inconsequential. Exactly, it's not. You better make it count and it better matter and it better not be just merely arbitrary or stupid. And it's better if you don't hate it and get angry about it because you're spending 970 hours of your life being angry. This is in a decade. There's another approach I've heard people say quite often that they'll be like, well, if my kids are doing dumb things or silly things, I'm just going to put them to work. Like if they have time to waste time or fight or play video games, whatever, I'm just, I'm going to go and put them to work.

I'm like, there it is again. I'm not sure. I get the reasoning behind that. Me too, but I'm not sure I agree with Mike. But it doesn't solve the underlying problem. Let's help you choose to make better choices and choose to use your time in other good things. Let's not just say, well, if you can't choose to do anything, then I'm putting you to work. I'm like, I'm not so sure. Because the ideal here is that we are all choosing to use our time well.

to do good things, to benefit ourselves and to benefit others, to serve, to love, but not in a forced way and not as a consequence. Right, well because one, you're first of all choosing to not fight with people, right? That needs to be the first choice you're learning how to make. And if they don't know how to do that, then putting them to work doesn't necessarily solve the problem. They don't necessarily have the skills.

of how to solve those problems. So that's one of the things you could be helping them do in your parenting and mentoring role instead of putting them to work on a chore, you're teaching them how to resolve conflict. Or to make better choices. And that's time consuming. That's not fun or easy. It's challenging. But if you're saying you're fighting, go mow the lawn, that doesn't help them learn how to resolve conflict. That just...

Rachel Denning (01:35:41.101)
teaches them how to avoid it by going to do something else. Then the second thing is ultimately you're trying to teach them to choose to do the work. That's the ideal that they see the necessity of it and they choose to do it because they understand its importance and meaning to their own life. So neither of those are being accomplished in that scenario. Okay, but on with this. Why is it so difficult to wash a dish, sort laundry, vacuum, wash a car?

that one needs to be taught these things repeatedly through childhood. Well, no, it's not necessarily that difficult. But you're doing it because you're helping them learn that these things are done every single day of your life. And so you might as well learn to do it well and do it with meaning and purpose and joy. And then even teach your kids how to outsource it to other people. Yeah, if you really don't like doing it. Why do we need to have a 10 -year -old acting like a mini independent adult?

No, we don't need to. They don't need to be independent adults, but they do need to be as mature 10 year olds as possible for them. There's nothing wrong with expecting them to act their maturity level or helping them to learn to act their maturity level. To be as autonomous as possible and have what they're pursuing just slightly over their current level, always. As we're going through life. That's right outside the zone of proximal development. Even as adults.

what we're pursuing, what we're trying to do is just be on our current capacity. That's what keeps us growing. Otherwise, if we only go to our current capacity and we stay there and we retreat back from that limitation, then we condemn ourselves to that level. Right. And we remain undeveloped, underdeveloped. Exactly. Then he mentions a book, which sounds fascinating, Peter Gray's book, Free to Learn, that there are tribal cultures in the world that do not expect the children to do much of anything.

The kids are allowed to be kids without responsibilities like the adults because they will one day have their responsibility anyway. Sounds fascinating. I don't doubt that that's the case in different cultures. And there's absolutely some profound and true principles there. Absolutely. I agree. The kids play like they are doing the jobs of the adults in the tribe. Yes, I've seen that. And I think that's especially important for younger children.

Rachel Denning (01:37:57.965)
I think it's good for the younger children. And I guess we should emphasize that just in case that's being misunderstood because I think it is in a lot of these comments. We're not talking about eight and younger. Like eight and younger, they're encouraged to do chores. They're encouraged to participate, but they're definitely not forced to do them or punished for not doing them. As they get older, nine, 10, 11, and especially 12 and above,

That's when it's more of a, I wouldn't say, it's definitely not forced, but it's an expectation because you are alive. And you eat and you sleep and you wear clothes and you're old enough and big enough to help out. Exactly. Right. So it's simply an expectation. Even in this tribal thing, right? I still would like to see the long -term outcome. Like, let me meet those adults and do a full evaluation on

Based on their cultural standards and expectations, not yours. Not mine, no. But as a whole, so I get to work with people from all kinds of backgrounds. I really, and I've studied this for over 25 years. So I can get a quick assessment on the wholeness of a person, mental, emotional, physical, social, spiritual, financial. I could get that. I would love to meet these adults who are raised without chores and see are they whole, healthy, wonderful.

thriving, happy adults. Otherwise, this model we see, so what? I mean, sometimes I think we grab onto these examples. We see our neighbors, oh, our neighbors did that. They did this, so I think that's good. Like, wait a minute, it's only good if the long -term outcome is good. Yeah, if it's good today and next week and next year and 10 years from now. Yeah, if 20 years from now, like, they are just thriving, wonderful people.

and you can directly link causation to that philosophy, then you're like, okay, that was good. That's solid. Right. And then in a case like this where you're using some tribe, like, yeah, I get it. There's a lot of value in studying that and learning from the way people do things. But just because something works in a tribe where the entire culture is following a certain model, like in that, it's not just the family, the nuclear family. It's...

Rachel Denning (01:40:21.581)
the entire village is doing things a certain way. And so you're going to have different outcomes than if you took this philosophy and applied it to your little nuclear family. It's not the same. It's not even close to the same. So when it comes time, they start contributing. They're happy to be moving on and having responsibility and they know what they are doing. I think it's lovely. Stop trying to make kids into that, which they are not. But again, back to this idea that works in that tribal situation because they have the support of the entire community.

That's why something like that could and would work well in that situation. But you're not going to get the same results if you try this with your own little family when no one around you is supporting that or understanding this philosophy that you're trying to use. It's a very different scenario. And especially if all the bulk of the workload of the chores falls on you. Right. Without the support of the community. Then ironically, you're going to be an absentee parent.

because you're doing all the chores and you're not actually present with your kids. And you might pat yourself on the back and be like, well, I'm not one of those working parents that was always gone. Actually, you were. You were just working at home. You were just doing all the chores at home. And you were in the same room, but you weren't together. Ooh. Man, I feel adamant about that one. OK, last one. Last one.

It starts by saying, I could not disagree with you on this subject in children and chores more. Wow. First of all, my very first question I just would be curious about is, does he have any children? If so, how many? That would be my first question. And are they grown? And are they grown? And what are the outcomes? He does say, I have examined all the research. Wow. Yeah, that's quite inclusive. He must be elderly and spent his whole life studying.

Because as far as I know, no matter what the topic is out there, you could spend a lifetime studying it and still not cover everything that's out there. So you haven't read it all. There is not any study to the effect that chores really help kids, not even the harder for study, which I have examined. In fact, the only study I found that came close to testing this idea was a two hundred and three, two thousand three study at the University of Amsterdam. In this study.

Rachel Denning (01:42:39.373)
which I kind of mentioned before, they found a direct negative path was found between the number of chores assigned and the school success GPA, which again, you said was like, who cares? GPA doesn't necessarily mean anything. Although I do understand. They're measuring academic performance. They're not measuring the character and happiness. They're not measuring anxiety levels, depression. Yeah. Like you said, happiness, joy, being well adjusted.

being emotionally and mentally stable. They're not measuring any of that, so who knows if that's even effective. Although they are saying that chores had a negative effect, which I could understand that, and we talked about. You could be doing so many chores that you don't spend time with your kids, or you don't get an education. Yes, that's a real thing. And it depends on how it's being implemented, too. Too many chores and responsibilities interfere with schoolwork. Great.

Again, there's no evidence that doing chores contributes to a child's success. The Minnesota research was not peer reviewed and thus unreliable. Okay. The challenge with doing, like I'm a research person. I like the research. I like the data. But the problem with data is that you can get data to back pretty much anything you want. And you can alter the data to prove your point sometimes. Besides the fact that it's difficult to study something

like this because what does it even mean doing chores? How do you define that and what does it look like and how do you actually implement that in a family? Right? And how do you measure that that's the family thing happening? Exactly right. You're going to this culture that could just be all squampus with whatever. I mean every kind of complexity of a culture from trends to ideologies to mindsets to philosophies to religions to the lack of all of those things.

And you're trying to measure chores? And they did chores and it had negative outcomes. So therefore, chores must. And negative outcome on what? If you're only measuring grades, then whoa, what about the whole person? Exactly. And the other massive positive effects that chores could have, even if there might have been a slightly negative effect on GPA. So I think it would be virtually impossible to actually do a reliable study on something like this, because it would just be too variable. There's too many factors that come into it.

Rachel Denning (01:44:58.253)
But based off the fact that he's done all of the research, kids should not be made to do chores. The housework is not the child's responsibility. Depends. Depends on the hierarchy of the housework. Which is the child's responsibility and which is the adults. Yes, absolutely, the ultimate care of the house is for the adults because they are the responsible ones, they are the capable ones, they are the competent ones, hopefully. And so, ultimately, it falls to them.

doesn't mean that the children can't do, can't have responsibility. That's what I want to say. What's the opposite of this then? That children should have no responsibility because that does not lead to a happy and fulfilling childhood. And this is based on... Or a fully competent, healthy, fulfilled adult. Well, ultimately, which we're going to get into that because he... He keeps going. That's one of the things he gets angry about. Based on childhood alone...

Children, and this is based off experience, but also our own experience, but working with thousands of families as well, plus doing our own research, not all of it. We haven't studied at all. I'm not gonna be that bold. But as human beings, which children are human beings, you feel more fulfillment by being responsible. And so if you take all responsibility from children, they will feel less fulfilled.

That is the most fundamental principle and practice of a human being from childhood through adulthood is to take on responsibility. Yeah, take on as much responsibility as you are capable of taking on. This is what Jordan Pearson preaches ad nauseam. Which is not nauseam, I enjoy it, but take on as much responsibility as you're capable of taking on. And if you, if you,

prevent someone for taking on responsibility because you determine that they should not for whatever reason because they're a child or whatever you're you're being authoritarian in that case and you are preventing their growth and development because you're you're not allowing them to take on responsibility that right there is neglectful parenting in my mind

Rachel Denning (01:47:12.525)
Okay. The parents are the carers and providers. Again, it's a very similar message that's being pushed out there. So it's fascinating to me, like where this wording is, where this ideology is coming from. They're the carers and providers. Agreed. The children are not the help. Agreed. They're not the help, but they are also sovereign individuals who can and should be responsible because it's best for them. Kids should play.

not work agreed kids should play but again we're also not talking we're not making a blanket statement that the same philosophy and work should be used on teenagers as it is for two -year -olds that's you know that's foolish there's a hierarchy there schoolwork including home school academic work is plenty enough maybe chores are not difficult to learn anyone can learn in minutes agree well

Yeah, chores are not difficult to learn. Although to get really good at a chore, there is some mastery that's involved because, you know, sometimes cleaning a toilet can take some time to really learn or whatever. There's a lot there. Anyways, it's not the child's role to contribute to the family. I disagree with that. Every person in the family has a role and every person in the family should feel that they are contributing in.

small way even the baby contributes to the family by Just bringing joy and being cute Yeah by being and so if they feel like they're not contributing in any way they actually lose Yeah, every human who feels like they're not contributing some way just rips them to pieces and they have major psychological emotional problems and the problem is a child is not going to understand that or be able to Articulate it and so you as the parent are inflicting this

psychological worthlessness on them and they can't understand why. Oh man, this farts me up because the underlying philosophy on this is, oh little child, little person, you're incompetent. You have no utility. Right. You have no use in this family. You have no role to play. You have no contribution to make. That is messed up. The best thing you can do for a kid is make sure they are and feel useful and competent and capable.

Rachel Denning (01:49:36.557)
Right. And so he says, as for self -confidence, deep relationship, pride, this can be gained via many other ways. I agree with that. These include play, art, sports, family time, et cetera. Yes, I agree with that. But it still does not remove the need to feel useful, to feel that you do contribute in some small way. And this is psychologically based. Like I could get the research from Jordan Peterson on this.

for human beings. We have to feel that we are useful and that we contribute in a way. And so even if we have confidence and pride and good relationships, if we still feel useless, if we still feel that we don't contribute in our own family, that's going to cause psychological problems. I think what they're trying to do is protect children. Yes. And we should. Yes, absolutely we should protect them.

and protect them from too much work where work becomes their occupation as children instead of play and learning. We 100 % agree with that. A child's childhood should be play and learning and life and exploration and fun, but also include a little bit of work and it grows as they grow because work is fulfilling. Work is good. I guess the underlying premise here is that work is bad.

Yes. And work makes you feel bad and work robs you from other good things and that's just not the case. Kids who are appropriately brought into work, they get a such a sense of satisfaction and development from participating in work and so they should. Right. And so I think that's part of the challenge too is if if you as an adult believe these things that work is bad and it's painful, then...

in an effort to protect children, you might want to keep them from having to do these things until they are forced to do them as adults. And that, I think, is part of the problem in this whole scenario, is that adults aren't seeing this in the right light. Adults aren't seeing work as a blessing or a benefit. So it often comes back to what we've talked about before on other podcasts, that's like, if you as an adult hate your job,

Rachel Denning (01:51:51.373)
and you hate your existence and you just think it's just drudgery and grind and life is just terrible, then how could you not adopt this kind of philosophy? It's like, oh, just let kids play because once you become adult, it's going to be so miserable, horrible and terrible. Like, dude, you need to get a job that you love and love your life. You need to find passion and love in life and work. And get out and do all these great things. You need to transform yourself so that you can see like, oh, wait a minute, this is great.

And we can start leaning into this wonderful journey sooner. Right. Which includes this family community of work and love and joy and happiness that's taking place on a daily basis to exist as a family. When done well is such a beautiful thing. It's actually a fun thing. It's actually like, I feel like we have a lot of fun in our house. Yeah. Well working.

doing the daily chores that need to be done. And it's not drudgery. It's just, hey, this needs to happen. Let's put on some music. Let's have a good time. Let's talk. And we teach this philosophy so well that the little ones have picked up on it. And then they went all the way up our three flights of stairs. And they got there like, ah, well, I'm tired. And they're like, wait a minute, no, Dennings don't get tired. And then the little five -year -old's like, yeah, Dennings do hard things. And it was just so cute overhearing their little.

their little chatter of like, we got this, we can do this, we can do this, hard stuff. We can climb up the stairs. And it's this cool little fun philosophy we're teaching about life. But I think some of the people pushing this are trying to protect children from this individual's own miserable existence. In some case, you know what I'm saying? If you really despise adulthood,

Yeah, and all the responsibility that comes with it and all the chores and all the work. You want the child to stay a child for so long, but then - You want him to be Peter Pan. That's exactly where I was going. You're as guilty as the Peter Pan philosophy of trying to avoid responsibility because you think it's a bad thing. Right, but it's not. Done in the right way, responsibility is a beautiful and desirable thing. And it's what shapes humans into wonderful adults.

Rachel Denning (01:54:11.597)
Yes, but we're going to talk about this in a second because he brings up the adult point, but it shapes him also into wonderful children. Yep, absolutely. Because all of our children are wonderful and part of the reason they are is because they are willingly taking on responsibility. And just so you know, that's not just Rachel's subjective opinion of her own children. And we're not boasting here, you guys, but people tell us all the time, they interact to get to know our kids and they're like, wow, right?

your kids are awesome. And they are, they genuinely are, they're great kids. And we're not boasting, we're just using this like, hey, this stuff works, genuinely works. Right. Okay, absolutely everything can and is - She's quoting again. I'm quoting again. Absolutely everything can and is taught without chores. Okay? Possible, but again, like what else are you gonna do if you're not doing chores? You could, you can go out of your way and take your kids to a farm or have them get a job or -

whatever but like seems even more effort. Big words like everything. How can in all caps? Yeah, how can everything be taught without chores? How else could you learn to clean a toilet except by cleaning a toilet? Right, exactly. So in that case you pick your chore of cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen like you can't. How do you clean up after yourself in the kitchen except by actually doing that thing? Right, so everything that's a little too...

Everything canon is taught without chores thus making them redundant and yet they are the most Essential building blocks of your day. You don't go throughout life without the daily chores of living like this is the part I just don't get I don't know what people are meeting with chores perhaps are they talking about mowing the lawn or digging a ditch or Mopping the floor with who does his chores? Okay, so he continues the only reason

Any parent would insist on making kids do chores, so the parents have less work, which is a bad reason and amounts to taking advantage of the kids. Wow. It's pretty... That's an extremely bold statement. Every family, every parent who has their kids do chores... Is only so they have less work. And not because you actually care about the well -being of the child and their long -term stability and emotional sanity, because...

Rachel Denning (01:56:30.189)
Having responsibility gives you meaning and purpose. That's not why you would do it. By chores, oh, this is good because he actually defines it. I mean tasks such as laundry, mopping, sweeping, floors, washing the family dishes, loading and washing dish, unloading dishwashers, cleaning toilets, bathrooms, et cetera. Obviously, a parent can teach a child how to do these things without making it the child's job and responsibility. Well, yeah, I agree that. You could teach them how to do that. True, but they need to get their hands on it. Right. And well, like you were saying.

You've mentioned before that the only way to actually learn how to do something is by doing it. And then plus, like, who else is going to do these things? Does this mean mom's doing all these things? Right. So, yeah, exactly. Somebody has to do them. So if mom's doing it all, even if dad's doing it, I was like, I'll get this when I get home. If he's doing it all, then he's not being there as the parent. He's missing out on other things that he could and should be doing because he's doing it all. So there's a problem there. But I do want to emphasize this where I've said it before, like,

How confident would you be if I showed you how to defend yourself but you never actually practiced it? Or how confident would you be if I showed you how to swim and taught you everything but you never step in the water and then one day you get pushed in? Do you think you're just going to be able to figure it out because I taught you how to do it? I mean there's just so much value of getting your hands on it. Right, exactly. I'm thankful my parents did not require chores from my sister and me. She's quoting again. I'm quoting, sorry.

Growing up in the 1980s, I'm grateful we had true parents who respected our childhood. We're not putting this in question here. We're not saying disrespect childhood or that children should be miniature adults or that they shouldn't be able to be children. That's not at all our point. We truly believe in that. In fact, our entire educational approach and philosophy is based off of allowing them to act to their age, to be their maturity level. And I think in his...

In his defense here, lots and lots and lots of parents are not letting their kids be kids. And that's so sad. They're working way too hard. I agree. So it's not one extreme or the other. We have to find this middle ground, this balance. Both my sister, me, and everyone I grew up... Oh wait. I never had any problems with performing any chore. Both my sister, me, and everyone I grew up with are living proof that regular chores for kids are worthless. It just seems so extreme to me. Like...

Rachel Denning (01:58:52.781)
There's no value whatsoever at all in having a regular chore, even if it teaches you that regular chores are a part of being alive and you have to do them if you want to eat or wear clothes. There's such a bigger picture thing missing here in this argument. Like, who's doing the chores then? It can't not be done just because we think chores are worthless. Who does them? And whoever's doing them is just carrying this massive, massive load and missing out on other.

I would say more important things. Right, exactly. So he says, maybe the only value for kids doing chores is it takes a load off of lazy parents. Well, no, because our entire approach is doing it for their benefit. Like, I sincerely believe, yes, yes, I'm not going to disagree that there's, I don't receive any benefit for having my children do chores. Like, yes, I still receive a benefit because that's one chore I don't have to do. But.

That's not the main reason for doing it. You use that time and energy that would have been spent in that, you use it to do other things that even benefit the kids more. Yes, true. You're not just sitting around wasting your life. And I see that some parents do. If there's any benefit to you specifically, Rachel, you use that to turn around and benefit the children in our family even more so. So it's like, it's not.

You're not sitting there like, oh, I don't have to do that. I'm going to go sit in my office and do nothing. Yeah. Do you know how long it took? I'm quoting again. Do you know how long it took for me to learn, for example, laundry? 10 minutes. OK, great. It doesn't take that long to learn these things. We agree. But like you're saying, if that's the reason parents are giving for why they have to do the laundry, like you have to do the laundry so you can learn how to do the laundry. Well, no. You can learn to do the laundry in 10 minutes. You have to do the laundry.

because you wear clothes. And if you wanna wear clothes, someone has to do those clothes. So you, especially as you become more mature, right? And we're especially talking about by the time your kids get to teenagers. They should be able to do these things. Now, some of these people will think that that's child labor because our 11 year old actually does the laundry for the entire family. So, that's I'm sure taboo.

Rachel Denning (02:01:13.101)
I guess we have to define what labor is. Putting laundry in the laundry machine. That's not labor to me. It's like you're throwing it in. There's hardly any labor at all. Right. That's why the 11 year old gets that job because he said, I don't want to do this job. I said, okay, pick a different job. Do you want to be in charge of fixing the cars or mowing the lawn? Like you pick, you decide which job you want. And ultimately he wanted that one because it was easier than other jobs that had to be done. So you're right. It's not hard, but...

Laundry has to be done because you wear clothes. Now you might say, but he's doing your laundry. You're using him. You're taking advantage of your son so that you don't have to do your own laundry, Rachel and Greg. Well, okay, fine. But that's because I'm ordering all the groceries that he eats and I'm making the meals that he eats and I'm paying for the internet for his online classes and I'm doing the Instagram posts.

for his online classes so that he can attend this class. Like there's a lot of other things I'm doing for him. And paying thousands and thousands of dollars so he can go on epic trips with us and do incredible things. Yeah, so you know, I feel like it's a fair exchange when we tally the books up here because I'm actually doing a lot more for him than he is doing for me, ultimately. And he... So I do want to emphasize this though, parents, if the reason you keep telling your kids that they're doing it so they can learn how to do it, it actually makes them feel stupid. That's a dumb reason.

Yeah. Because it's something they can learn how to do and do well in just maybe a couple hours even. You know, if we exaggerate this guy's 10 minutes here, let's say you take a couple hours to learn how to do well. Like if the months and years pass and you keep telling your kids, I'm teaching you, I'm making you do this so you know how to do it, it's dumb. That's a dumb reason. He's like, I know how. I should be done. Exactly. No, I'm having you do this because you wear clothes and this is what has to be done if you're going to wear clothes. Clean clothes at least.

Clean ones, exactly. And then the guy continues. I had the cleanest room at seminary, or everyone said so, so the nonsense doesn't stick with me. So his conclusion then is because his personal experience was my parents never did, made me do any chores, and so when I moved out, I had the cleanest room, therefore you don't have to do chores in order to be neat and clean. Okay, cool. Great, okay. We're not saying that that's the only way this formula works. Nope. But what we are saying is...

Rachel Denning (02:03:35.053)
What you're doing, living on your own, are chores. You're taking care of your space and your things. And I think his argument is like, now that I'm adult on my own, I need to do those chores, but not when I was a kid. Right. And so then we circle back, like we said so many times, well, who was doing them? And if they were doing them, what were they not able to do exactly? What did your mother not get to do because she was doing your laundry for the whole time you were there? Oh, man. Because.

Yeah, ultimately that's part of this whole thing. Because your mother is a person too. And she has a life and she has passions and she has interests and if she couldn't do them because she was doing all the chores because that's a parent's responsibility quote unquote. Like I get it, but that's messed up in some ways. That is not parenting. That's being the errand girl or the errand boy, the maid or the servant. That's not parenting.

And I think a lot of people see it that way like my role as a parent is to take care of all the temporal things like that for me is just Selling it way way way short of what it means to be a parent exactly if you if your definition of parenting is just take care of all the temporal needs and do all the stuff you are living so far below your privileges and responsibilities as a parent agreed plus as a person if especially if it comes at the neglect I

because you're not going to be whole as a person. So in a way, I mean, all we're saying in our approach to chores is we're simply balancing the workload. We're asking people in the family to do the work that is equal to their maintenance. And their capabilities. As they are capable. Right? The younger ones require more maintenance, so it's more work for the parents. But as they get older,

They take on more of that self -maintenance in order to lessen the work for the parents so the parents can continue living as humans, as people, which I think is fair. Well, and important. And important because you're modeling, you are modeling for your children how to live as happy, healthy human beings who aren't just the servants of everyone in the family. Yeah, and you're modeling for them how to be parents and still have a life. Exactly. And still be a person.

Rachel Denning (02:06:01.389)
Right. And so, look, oh, this is what you get to look forward to, being somebody's servant. Exactly. And slave. Why would I want to do that? Why would I have kids? OK, finally, even the phrase, I'm quoting it again, even the phrase, quote, we are not raising children, we're raising adults, which I guess I must have quoted in this post, although I don't recall because I scheduled it a few weeks ago. This phrase is wrong. No, you are raising children.

Now first of all, even that seems contradictory to me because raising means it's growing and if it's growing, it's growing into something. Anyways, you're raising children who will grow into adults. I get it. So right, you're raising children who will grow into adults, but they're not going to stay children forever. We have to remember that. And if ends with all caps, respect childhood. I get that. I agree. I fully believe.

Childhood needs to be respected. It's precious, it's sacred, it's special. But childhood does not negate any responsibility at all. And the whole childhood doesn't necessarily exclude any kind of work. In fact, taking on responsibility and doing some form of work, which is appropriate, actually makes childhood and life more meaningful and more fulfilling. Yes, exactly. More responsibility. Adds depth to life. Yes.

and fulfillment and satisfaction and skills. It's so important. So yes, he's right. We are raising children who want to become adults. It's the long game. My concern is how many people are raising children in such a way that they remain children. And so that's why we have this whole generation of young adults who don't want to become adults. They're all playing Peter Pan because their parents raised them to be little kids and coddle them, protect them.

and they never learned how to take on pressure and work and responsibility. So whenever it pops up, they want to avoid it. And they're back home in the basement and they can't stay at work. They can't adult today. They can't do adulting because it's just too much. It's too strenuous to do the adulting responsibilities of day to day. So they quit their jobs. They come home early for missions or don't go at all. They bail out of marriage at the first sign of pressure or hard work or responsibility. They can't stay in the workforce or even the military.

Rachel Denning (02:08:20.621)
I mean, it is a massive, massive problem right now because parents have been parenting with this, my cute little child, be a child, and it never changed. So 18 years at home, they just still act like little kids and everyone's provided for them and they're so entitled and enabled that they can't function as adults. And so you've robbed them of a full and whole childhood. Right, yeah. Ooh.

And you know, back to this phrase, we have used this phrase before, so whether it was in this post or not, it's definitely a phrase we've used, but what it's meant is that you have to raise your children with a focus, a long -term focus on who they're going to become in the long -term, because otherwise you're short -sighted and you can use strategies and approaches and philosophies that don't produce those long -term...

outcomes that you want of having adult people who are still your children being competent and capable and whole mentally emotionally physically spiritually socially that's a long -term goal chores is just one aspect of it that can work well now granted there are some cases where not using chores could work out fine but

I think it would have to be in a sense where there's a culture built around that that supports that and that helps that outcome turn out, not in a isolated nuclear family, non -community supported approach that isn't going to help that outcome be achieved without the chores in place, without the self -responsibility in place. And ultimately it comes back to...

Like this is one piece of a very complex puzzle. Exactly. How does it all fit in? So if you guys are still listening after this very long philosophizing just on chores, who thought this would, we thought we'd be done in 10 minutes. We could do this on practically any subject. So are we surprised? You have really earned.

Rachel Denning (02:10:36.749)
a big hug from me the next time I see you. Or at least a happy smiling emoji. Yes, you get a happy smiling emoji. But we love you guys. Thanks for being here. If you like this stuff or you know people, share it. Spread it around. Let's get more people thinking about chores and parenting and just getting involved. Philosophizing. If you want more help around it, we do the Extraordinary Family Life Group coaching and education coaching. You like philosophy?

we got more. But you guys, this it all matters so much. It all matters so much and it is complex. And everything we do has a long lasting effect. It'll play in the big big pieces of how we enjoy life and how our children grow up and who they become. Love you guys for your time.