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Child labor?

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
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While my fingers are thawing out after removing 5" of heavy wet snow covered with ice from my 200' driveway ...

Wondered if you folks find it a bit of a problem hiring young people to shovel snow.

Neighbor to my west has a 16 y/o son. He "doesn't like outside work", so dad plows with his backhoe.

Neighbor to my east has a 15 and 17 y/o. Mom does the snow removal, cuz "the kids don't like to do it." As I write this, the kids are riding ATVs in circles around their front lawn.

Neighbors across the road have four kids, 12-17. Dad does the removal, cuz the kids "don't want to leave their video games."

Am I missing something? Do kids ever do any physical work anymore? Do parents avoid telling their kids to do anything?

Just call me Confused in Connecticut.
Thanks.
Tom
 
Many parents no longer tell kids they need to do the chores. That is why I did the lawn and the snow, although the snow was often a family project. When I married, the youngest was 14, but I enjoyed the lawn mowing as mental relieve from work, and we normally did the snow as a family.

When we asked him to help with projects like digging out stumps or chopping ice, he normally would pitch in, when he was not a sports practices or working out in the gym.

My other two kids were pretty much moving on as I came into the picture, but both do these sorts of things at their own homes. I think maybe we 'boomers' have allowed the kids to enjoy their youths, and I know all of mine got enough physical activity growing up before I came on board, and since then as well...
 
Our daughter (25) still lives at home. I'm the one that fires up the snowblower, but it doesn't do a very good job on the piles the snowplows leave at the end of the driveway. My truck, Impala, and the wife's Accord go over the "berms" pretty good. Daughter doesn't like to go over them with her Jetta. One time a couple years ago, just once, she came whining to me about me not doing the berms. I went into the garage, brought in a coal shovel, handed it to her and said "If at any time I don't do a good enough job, fell free to go do it yourself." End of discussion and lesson.
 
hmm. Growing up, my sibling and I had no choice. It was a given that we'd do whatever needed doing. Snow shoveling, lawn maintenance, till and weed a garden, fix the equipment if needed... we thought everybody knew how to sweat pipe, wire a house, rebuild a 2-cycle mower carb, dig a footer, make sheetmetal ductwork, run a 'snake' thru a drain. Boy, did WE get a surprise. Found out most folks can't do ANYTHING but use the 'phone to call for help.

:shocked:
 
Kids are pretty smart,when they don't want to do something they do a half job on it, so to get it done right you do it yourself and they don't have to do it which is what they wanted in the first place. Have some friends that do that, my youngest is 25 and he is the first to offer to help (of course that may be because he knows he will need help on one of his cars) :yesnod:
 
In my neighborhood growing up, we used to get in fights with kids from other neighborhoods coming into ours and shoveling on our turf. By the time I was in high school, most people wanted to higher the younger kids to give them a chance to make a couple of bucks. By then most of us had summer jobs and the freedom to cause havoc elsewhere, so it didn't bother us. I'm only 21, so this would be the mid/late 90's. Most of my friends work on their own cars, do their own chores, etc.

I think a big part of the problem is that kids are raised to associate physical labor with being uneducated. I think in some cases parents might be embarassed to have their kids be seen doing some "nominal" task like shoveling snow.
 
NutmegCT said:
Am I missing something? Do kids ever do any physical work anymore? Do parents avoid telling their kids to do anything?

Just call me Confused in Connecticut.
Thanks.
Tom
Click to expand...

:computer:
 
When i was growing up You did your chores the right way- or you did them twice...



mark
 
Yep. And you did <span style="font-weight: bold">NOT</span> want my Dad to have to tell you TWICE to do something! :frown:

If I had a dollar for every time I mowed grass/raked leaves/cleaned house/etc., I might be rich today. And on top of the chores, I played lots of sports. No time to be bored, at all.

When I see kids "hanging out" at the mall, or complaining of boredom, I wonder why?? What are their parents thinking? Where <span style="font-style: italic">ARE</span> their parents?

Idle hands do the devil's work, grandma used to say. And she was right! :yesnod:
 
vagt6 said:
Yep. And you did <span style="font-weight: bold">NOT</span> want my Dad to have to tell you TWICE to do something! :frown:

<span style="color: #FF0000">If I had a dollar for every time I mowed grass/raked leaves/cleaned house/etc.,</span> <span style="color: #FF0000">I might be rich today.</span> And on top of the chores, I played lots of sports. No time to be bored, at all.

When I see kids "hanging out" at the mall, or complaining of boredom, I wonder why?? What are their parents thinking? Where <span style="font-style: italic">ARE</span> their parents?

Idle hands do the devil's work, grandma used to say. And she was right! :yesnod:
Click to expand...

That's how I had to get my spending money in my day...there were no hand-outs...you wanted something, you worked for it!! Chores were done as part of family household responsibilities (maybe that's the key word for this thread...responsibility!) :rolleyes:
 
Monkeywrench said:
In my neighborhood growing up, we used to get in fights with kids from other neighborhoods coming into ours and shoveling on our turf. By the time I was in high school, most people wanted to higher the younger kids to give them a chance to make a couple of bucks. By then most of us had summer jobs and the freedom to cause havoc elsewhere, so it didn't bother us. I'm only 21, so this would be the mid/late 90's. Most of my friends work on their own cars, do their own chores, etc.

I think a big part of the problem is that kids are raised to associate physical labor with being uneducated. I think in some cases parents might be embarassed to have their kids be seen doing some "nominal" task like shoveling snow.
Click to expand...

:bow: I commend you. Young-uns around here are too busy with their 'sports', video games and such to earn extra money. They're not bad kids, just not motivated. Perhaps when the gravy train stops and mom/dad don't have them on the payroll anymore, they will become motivated. I used to tell my daughter that whatever she did to cause me grief would be given back to her when she was a mom. I'm now Granny and daughter says frequently, "How did you ever put up with me when I was a teenager?" I reply with "Patience, someday your daughter will be a mother." and so it goes...
 
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