Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Book Notes: "Cleaning House", by Kay Wills Wyma


I had to get this book. Of course I did. The premise was to good not to.

Teaching your kids to clean the house, in 12 easy months?  (And when, pray, did the idea of "12 months" become a manageable stretch of time in my eyes? Must have been sometime after I turned thirty . . .)


But, yes: I do want my kids to become capable adults. That's the whole point.

(Well, no. The whole point is to raise them up in the love and admonition of the Lord.

But after that? I would like them to be capable adults.)

This book did not leave me thinking that I wanted to follow the exact same schedule that the author did, but I was encouraged to give my children more responsibilities as they grow, and to remember that they can do a lot more than I assume they can.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's something very satisfying about this for me, your mother! Mom

Becka Olson said...

I was curious what you would think of this one. I really liked the beginning of the book but wasn't able to finish it because I got tired of the format. (I was also reading a pre-release version of it, though.) About half-way through the book it ceased to be about teaching kids responsibilities for me and instead turned into a cautionary tale about why taking a blog and turning it into a book may not be the most successful idea. Did you notice any of that? But maybe some of it is because my kids are still pretty young.

Jessica Snell said...

It did get kind of slow. I still liked the idea enough to give it a positive review, and I liked seeing the changes she noticed in her kids over the course of the book.

But I did read it slowly (sort of like how you might read a blog, over time) and maybe that helped. Actually, the thing that bothered me the most was the hints of discord with her husband. It seemed a bit odd to me to be doing this experiment without the dad's wholehearted participation. But I got the feeling that that dynamic was a bit out of the way of the goal of the book, so . . . well, I'm not sure "so" what! But I noticed.

Jessica Snell said...

It did get kind of slow. I still liked the idea enough to give it a positive review, and I liked seeing the changes she noticed in her kids over the course of the book.

But I did read it slowly (sort of like how you might read a blog, over time) and maybe that helped. Actually, the thing that bothered me the most was the hints of discord with her husband. It seemed a bit odd to me to be doing this experiment without the dad's wholehearted participation. But I got the feeling that that dynamic was a bit out of the way of the goal of the book, so . . . well, I'm not sure "so" what! But I noticed.