Mom teaches important lesson to her 12-year-old son who simply refused to do 'girl chores'
Cooking and cleaning are some of the basic tasks that everybody needs to learn irrespective of their gender. However, many kids are not taught the right lessons about their responsibilities with household chores early on and this affects them in the future. u/MapCritical8176, a 41-year-old mom, took to Reddit to express her frustrations surrounding her son and how she dealt with his behavior. She started the post by mentioning that she had decided to take a cut out of her son's allowance money. The mother revealed that she has 3 sons and two of them are 12-year-old twins, whereas, the third one is a 10-year-old.
"All of my sons started doing chores around 8 and started getting allowances for their chores at 10 years old. Chores are only mandatory 5 days out of the week, I don’t care what time of day they choose to get them done. As long as they are done by the end of the day. I made it clear to my boys once they started earning money that they would be getting 10 dollars a day for every day they complete their chores," the mom revealed in her post. If the boys failed to finish their household chores, 10 dollars would be deducted from their allowance. She encourages them to save the allowances so they can use them on weekends when they go to meet their father or spend their money on something fun.
This system worked well for them until recently when one of her 12-year-old sons decided to stop doing his chores for 3 days. "When his friend asked him to play Fortnite with him, my son asked for 15 minutes to complete his chore before he got onto the PlayStation. His friend asked what chore he had to do, so my son told him. In response, my son’s friend said 'It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.' I spoke with my son and explained to him that knowing how to clean was not specific to any gender and that it was a life skill everyone needed to know," the mom mentioned.
She also explained to her son that other families might function differently but that doesn't mean they have to follow their lifestyle. "Even after speaking with him the first day he decided to not do his chores, he still chose not to do his chores, so as agreed I took 10 dollars out of his allowance for each day he didn’t do, which was allotted to him only having 20 dollars in his allowance; whereas his brothers had 50," she clarified. This is where the woman's ex-husband stepped in after the son informed him about not getting allowances. "My ex-husband told me that I am being insensitive and humiliating our son," the post concluded, with the mom wondering if she was in the wrong. But most of the Reddit community promptly sided with her.
u/No-Function223 commented, "Your son saw an opportunity to brush aside his chores and took it. He is tripping if he thinks he gets to do no work and get the same thing as those who did. It’s a valuable lesson for life. I’d say you're doing a good job so far." u/Accomplished_Two1611 remarked, "He had seven days to do what was needed to get his full allowance. He listened to a friend and got misled. Hopefully, he will learn listening to the wrong people will get you in trouble." u/excitedorca added, "You’re not taking money out of your son’s allowance, you’re not paying him for services not rendered. The sexist, misogynistic reasons behind not completing the chores need to be corrected and that won’t happen by rewarding it."