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When the pandemic is over I would more than welcome any childless people who want to come over and try and convince my teens to do housework 
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And yes, I was conscripted into my parents weekly housework patrol. I was also in charge of washing the dishes every night. My parents only got a dishwasher once I moved out and I was bitter about that for years https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ" title="Face with tears of joy" aria-label="Emoji: Face with tears of joy">
After years of nagging we have finally got our kids doing the post dinner clean up, but thatâs about it. Any other task it usually takes me longer to nag at them to do it, then for me to do it myself. Itâs endlessly frustrating.
As a teen I was still a little afraid of my parents. My kids (especially the older one) are absolutely not afraid of me. If I threaten to punish the 15 year old by taking something away from her, she just looks at me and says âfine. I donât want it anywayâ
And yes we do all our own housework, I just had to laugh at people being self-righteous about getting their theoretical children to help around the house. Itâs not as easy as it looks. The nagging often takes more time and energy than the actual cleaning
And when you are exhausted from a long day of work and various pandemic panic emotions and dealing with kids who are cranky after WEEKS of being cooped up in the house sometimes the last thing you have energy for is another fight about tidying up and cleaning up
The one odd silver lining is that now when my kids clean up after dinner together, they talk, goof around and play music and seem to have fun while they do it. The pandemic has been weirdly good for their sibling relationship because they have no one else to hang out with
I guess my point is that pandemic parenting is hard and there is no blueprint for it. We just all make it up as we go along. Or as the fictional Alexis said -
Subsequent discussion on this thread reminded me that my kids do make their own lunches (including school lunches in the before times) and do their own laundry but in this thread I was thinking about chores they do for the whole family, rather than for themselves
