agonyaunt | (no subject)

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Dear Amy: My husband and I have a bright, high-functioning 16-year-old daughter.

I have been teaching her how to perform basic household chores (I do the same with our 12-year-old son), and some basic cooking and cleaning skills in order to have some help at home, but mainly so that our kids will understand that everyone in the family pitches in, and that it’s important to have some life-skills. I am a stay-at-home parent and a busy volunteer at their school.

At first I thought our daughter didn’t understand some of these basic instructions, which I had shown her and then written down. She just couldn’t seem to get things right. She used floor cleaner on the stove, left wet paper towels on the wooden dining room table, damaging it, and a few other mess-ups like “forgetting” to put wet laundry in the dryer, but leaving it on the floor, instead.

Then I overheard her bragging to her cousin that she was purposely messing up in order to get me to back off. I am furious. My husband thinks she’s being clever and doesn’t want to punish her. What do you think I should do now?

– Disgusted

Dear Disgusted: I think it’s time your daughter learned another life-skill – the concept of natural consequences. In short, if she fails a task, she will be asked to do it again, until she demonstrates some basic competence. If she deliberately causes damage, then she should be expected to compensate the family for it. If she does a load of laundry and deliberately leaves wet clothes on the floor instead of in the dryer, you can place the soggy pile onto her bed.

You should do your best to stay calm throughout: “I get it that you don’t want to do this. I don’t enjoy doing it, either. I’ll just hold onto your phone (laptop, etc.) until you figure out how to do this. You’ll get there!” And because your husband thinks this is so clever, perhaps he should take over these household chores that make his life easier and assume some responsibility for teaching your children some of these skills. In my opinion, he is a big part of the problem. If he teamed up with you, your daughter wouldn’t disrespect your household so easily.

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LW's daughter is not being very clever at all. Clever people do not boast about their crimes where the authorities will overhear them, and LW owes it to her daughter to make sure she smartens up. (This, by the way, is apparently one of exactly two pieces of life advice the niblings claim they'll remember always, that and "don't try to catch a falling knife". I mean, my advice is solid, but seriously?)

Also, LW, you do not have a daughter problem, you have a husband problem. You should absolutely leave on a long vacation and allow your daughter and husband to live with an increasingly-filthy house and mildewed clothes. That'll teach 'em.

I love those pieces of advice :)

My grandmother told us, when we were children, about the time she carelessly caught a knife as it was falling. When her hand closed around it she suddenly realized "Well, that was stupid."

She had some lasting damage from the injury, though not enough to severely impair the use of the hand. It could've been worse, though. The story was vivid, and more than enough to cement this advice in my head and now in the kids' heads.

The "put wet clothing on her bed" rankled me a bit, because that's petty revenge more than natural consequences, but definitely make her re-do the chores and compensate for damage.

I wonder if they've actually verbalized that they're teaching life skills, not making arbitrary busywork. "This is why you need to know this" plus re-doing the tasks would pair well.

Also, who has time to lug dirty clothing around? Just leave it wet on the floor. She'll figure it out once she has to google how to get the mildew smell out of clothes.

Borax.

I usually use baking soda.

Baking soda works.

A hot soak in borax water works to even get the deep fryer smell out of synthetic blend cook coats. (Plus the electric smoke smell out of clothes that have been in a house fire.)

Putting wet clothing on her bed = unless she has a very good waterproof mattress cover, her mattress will get wet, which means

either LW will have to buy a new mattress

or daughter will have a high chance of developing health issues from a mouldy mattress eg asthma, eczema etc etc

The potential consequences are not worth it

Much better to eg lock up her mobile phone or her Playstation or something

Putting the thing not done properly on the person’s bed or chair is so passive-aggressive, ugh.

Also, it seems like LW's husband doesn't realize that this is an extremely standard tactic rather than a totally novel thing their kid came up with. When I was an adolescent and a family friend said that their kid was doing this, my mom said, "What I would do is say very sweetly, ohhh, I didn't realize this was so hard for you, here, baby, you can stand here and do every step with me watching you! isn't this much better than doing it efficiently on your own? since doing it efficiently on your own was too hard for you? I thought you were old enough to do it with the instructions you had, thank you for letting me know that you needed MUCH MORE SUPERVISION to learn to do this task that every adult has to know how to do," and the friend's kid looked HORRIFIED, and I was NOT AT ALL TEMPTED to do it that way.

It did lead to me once saying, "don't be a jerk about it like you said with [friend's kid], I really don't get how to do [chore], I just want two things explained," which made my mom snort-laugh but also not put on the saccharine condescending attitude she had demonstrated above.

Cheerful "compliance" ftw

Also, it seems like LW's husband doesn't realize that this is an extremely standard tactic rather than a totally novel thing their kid came up with.

Doesn’t realize, or is proud of his chip off the old block? Because fluttery incompetence when it comes to household chores is the oldest male trick in the book.

Doesn’t realize, or is proud of his chip off the old block? Because fluttery incompetence when it comes to household chores is the oldest male trick in the book.

YES.

Just stop doing her laundry. Do yours and anyone else in the household that you want, but she is now responsible for doing her own.

If you send laundry out, it'll cost at least $2 a pound. One load of laundry is between 6 and 12 pounds, so that's how much it's worth to do any part of the laundry for a household member who is able to do their own - $12 to $24.

I'm only saying.

I find myself wondering why the teenager hates chores so much. Maybe she's just being childish, being a child. But maybe this rebellion of hers points at something she can't articulate. Maybe for instance she has to hide her books because if her mother catches her reading she gets told, "if you have time to read that trash you have time to do the dishes instead!" I'm just wondering.

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS. So much this.

The first thing that comes to mind is: have you tried having a conversation before jumping to punishment?

When I saw "high-functioning" I wasn't sure if that meant "intelligent, competent, initiative-ful and able" or "autistic, or otherwise atypical" and I'm still not sure. Neither sounds natural to me, is what the author probably means clear to other people?

From the second interpretation my immediate thought was, the reason for doing chores is for the daughter to take on (some) fair share of combined household work, and to learn how to do necessary adulting skills. Something that no children know when they're born but usually pick up by the time their adult (with some lamentably common exceptions). Is it definitely the case that she knows and understands this and is refusing for arbitrary reasons? Or is it possible that that's so natural to LW she assumed the daughter would have picked it up, but that perhaps TELLING her would more surely ensure she knew and understood? I'm not sure how likely that is, presumably children who just need to be made to do things are more common, but I also think that generally, telling people the ACTUAL reasons to do something often has SOME benefit.

After all, most girls grow up with a high incidence of people being passive aggressive at them until they spontaneously decide that they would like to take on a bigger proportion of household work: in this case taking on the work is the right thing, but will she correctly generalise from that example to "mothers shouldn't have to do more than their fair share" and not generalise to "I should just go along with what people want me to do if they're insistent"?

Likewise, I'm curious about this "clever". As conuly says, it's not *very* clever. I wonder if it's like, a badly timed *early* foray into non-compliance. That's just speculation, but the fact that she got things so *weirdly* wrong and bragged about it, made me wonder if this is more fumbling than an average 16 year old (many of whom I might expect to just reflexively half-arse the job without particularly thinking about it.) Maybe she just needs to be told not to do that, but maybe she actually needs some practice at not being an arse when her mother is trying to help her, but knowing which instructions *are* over-stated and *should* be complied with only perfunctarily.

I took "high-functioning" as a way of saying "she's definitely not struggling with comprehension or making mistakes accidentally", without an implication of neurospiciness ... which doesn't mean she's neurotypical, of course.

I'm also wondering how much housework the dad does, and whether there's an element of "dad gets away with not doing shit", especially since LW's description of the dad's reaction sounds like pride on his part.

I also noted the oddness of the phrase "high functioning" when used for a person who is, appears, or is assumed to be nondisabled in all respects.

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