On Saturday, Mary (5) enjoyed the special treat of harvesting vegetables with her daddy.
Her big brother has enjoyed several special events lately, so we were looking for something for little sister when we received an email from a local parish that maintains a very large working garden: vegetables were ready for harvest but the parish needed extra pickers!
Isn't it a funny meditation: We as a society are so far from the land that this idea of going to pick vegetables (what is child labor among immigrants) was so exciting to Mary that she dressed in her work clothes the night before and slept in them. Probably only about one hundred years ago and definitely two hundred years ago, nearly all children would have experienced the common, boring labor of harvesting their own family's garden plot. What will life be like some decades from now? Will children be excited at the prospect of a field trip to go clean a child's bedroom because we all have robots or genetically engineered creatures who do that labor for us?
Mary called me on the way home, giggling with joy that she got to pick corn, tomatoes, squash, and peppers for three hours. Then she and her father drove the harvest over to the low income-based retirement home for donation.
On the subject of service projects, we try to be on the lookout for projects we can do as a family. Our time is too short for us often to be dividing up, or to have one parent taking one child somewhere age-appropriate that isn't friendly toward tiny tots. I remember Michelle Duggar explaining in an interview this same concept for their family of ultimately 19 children: they would do service projects they could do together, like fan out and pick up all the trash on the grounds after their church service. Today's harvesting would have been a perfect opportunity for our whole family, but the plan arose rather suddenly and I already have a long list of time-sensitive chores I needed to complete that day.
This idea is "down the road" a little for you, but I have a wonderful friend who is a mother of 9 -- the youngest is now 11 -- and ever since she's had "older" children she has invited younger children from other families over one morning a week for "babysitting." Her older children are responsible for the childcare although she is still on site. It's been a great way for her children to be trained in serving others and learning the art and science of babysitting and, obviously, a great service to moms like me who occasionally need to run to the dentist or a dr. apmnt!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm sure if you're on the look out for service projects you'll see many opportunities that arise. I'd love to hear more ideas too, as I think this is something important to train our children in as their natural inclination is to be self-centered.