The Day My Daughter Spent Seven Hours Folding Her Clothes

There’s apparently research which shows that shows that children who do chores are more competent than those who do not, and these kids have more empathy. This is apparently particularly true of kids who do chores that contribute to the family as a whole, like cleaning the cat box as opposed to just putting their plate in the dishwasher.

But that’s not why my kids do chores. My kids do them because at a raw, emotional level it just rankles on the days when I scrub and clean while they play or sit at the table waiting for dinner. It makes me feel like an unpaid maid, and I hate that feeling.

Son and Daughter, however, are normal healthy children and would face down volcanic maternal wrath in a several hour running battle rather than do 45 minutes worth of housework.

One of their first chores was folding clothes, and since mine is not the Partridge Family the kids did not take to it cheerfully and happily. No, some clean clothes were surreptitiously slipped into the dirty clothes hamper. That worked for a week or so, and then I noticed and, yes, there was shrieking. 

But my children are made of stern stuff, and only switched tactics. After a couple of weeks of apparent obedience, I found clean clothes rolled into bundles and stuffed behind the bedroom chair, under beds and behind the radiator. They looked old, wrinkled and dusty.

“Why would you DO that?” I raged. “You actually have to WALK PAST the dresser to jam the clothes behind the radiator. IT’S ACTUALLY MORE WORK! YOU MAKE NO SENSE!”

Which brings us to one beautiful sunny Saturday morning -- maybe about 10 a.m. -- that Daughter was told she was going to have to fold her clothes. We took the basket of clean clothes to the sunroom, a tiny room at the top of our house with windows on three sides and a massive, cozy armchair.

Daughter refused outright and sat in the chair looking at the clothes. I folded my clothes and the sheets while she worked herself into a temper tantrum. The temper tantrum stopped and the sulking began.

I began to feel like I was breaking a horse.

An hour later, it was lunch time and the clothes were untouched. I brought Daughter her lunch to the sunroom. “This is 12, 15 minutes worth of work,” I said, determined to stay calm. “Get it done and you can play.”

Daughter ate lunch, and sat back down in the chair. Then she fell asleep, and I put a blanket over her. When she woke up three hours later, I brought her a snack. In the sunroom.

“The clothes need folding,” I said. “When they’re done, you can play.”

She started folding, slowly and miserably at first and then faster as the pile shrank. Weirdly, she suddenly cheered up, even started chattering gaily, and quickly the job was done. And done well.

She went to play, and, in fact, it was 5 p.m.

She has never since spent more than 15 minutes folding her clothes. But I still, sometimes, very rarely, I find some clean outfits stuffed behind the radiator.

I just can’t figure that out.