My Daducation

Archive for the ‘Toys’ Category

I can remember when I was a kid my parents had the curious obsession with assigning chores to me and my brother and sister. They tried different processes to dole out chores, starting with a list and working their way to my personal favorite, the “Job Jar.” This was a jar that had slips of paper, each containing a job, all thrown in. You had to reach in and grab a slip and perform that job. I can remember my own little tricks to try to get the best jobs, although I was rarely successful because all the jobs basically sucked.

My oldest son has reached the age where he needs to become responsible for doing his own chores. While certain tasks were always his, such as cleaning his room or putting his clothes in the laundry, he never had to do jobs that were for the household in general. While he is a sweet boy, I would never confuse with him someone that looks out for the needs of the household.

In a effort to make it more interesting, my wife offered to let him create a chart of chores he could do, and as a bonus she allowed him to assign allowances to each chore. If he did the job he got paid.

Shortly after the chart was created and placed on the refrigerator, a curious thing happened……he completely forgot about it.

So, as parents do, whenever an opportunity came for him to perform a chore on his chart we reminded him of it.

“Do I have to?” he would ask.

“Yes,” we would say.

He would proceed to grumble under his breath, a talent learned from his mother, while he did the chore. Of course, saying he did a good job with the chore is like saying Britney Spears did a good job raising her kids. Which leads to the next problem.

“That needs to be done again,” I tell him as he emerges from making his bed.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because ‘making the bed’ means actually making it look like no one slept in it. Yours looks like you wrestled a monkey on it. I’m not paying fifty cents for THAT,” I inform him.

“Fine, but I want a dollar because I did it twice,”  he says.

I explain to him that he doesn’t get paid for a job done poorly. He asks me what Mom takes away when I don’t do what she asks. I tell him to mind his own business.

So the chart continues to sit on the refrigerator, only garnering interest whenever the new Lego catalog arrives each month. Like a junkie, he immediately starts hitting me up for cash. I point to the job chart. He bites his lower lip and begins to try to find an easy job. Reminds me of someone…..

Anyway, we have started working out the kinks in our household version of a “Plan To Create Jobs.” While I know the folks in Washington think they know how to create jobs, they have nothing on me. I’ve got a list of tedious crap a mile long. It’s not that I don’t like doing them and think someone else should……well, maybe it is. It also has to do with that fact that he might actually learn something by doing them. He might gain a new respect for how much good ole Mom and Dad do for the family.

I believe our eight-year-old will come around and realize there is no use fighting it. He knows we want to him to learn responsibility. He knows we want him to learn accountibility. He knows I don’t like changing the litterbox.

On a more positive note, the little brother seems to have an interest in helping with chores. But, man, his prices are high!

As a Dad you become excited when your kids show an interest in something specific, as it gives you a little insight into their personality. While my 1-year-old has not yet shown an interest in anything specific yet, except slapping my face, my five-year-old loves pirates. I mean it’s scary how much he loves pirates. This we can trace back to a trip to the beach where we boarded a pirate ship and went out into the bay. Ever since then it’s pirates every day, all day. In fact, we now have one living with us and I can’t find the 5-year-old. But that is another story.

My 8-year-old is the Lego maniac. This started when he was 4 years old, when we bought him a small Lego Batman set for his birthday. He was so excited. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to play with it.

After watching his uncle help him assemble it, he quickly learned how to navigate the instructions and build them himself. So for the next four years we buy Batman sets, Star Wars sets, Indiana Jones sets, Mars Mission sets, Aqua Raider sets, Agents Sets, Bionicles, Rock Miners, and Lego City sets. By now I am he is amassing a Lego Empire.

One day the 4-year-old becomes a 6-year-old. No, we didn’t skip his fifth birthday, I just thought I should get to the point. Anyway, he comes home and informs me that he wants to start a Lego Club at school. I am thrilled at the prospect of my oldest child deciding to put together such a neat program.

“So who is going to bring the Legos?” I ask.

“You are,” he tells me.

“What if I don’t?” I say, completely in control.

“I’ll probably lose all my friends and become a chainsaw killer before I graduate,” he warns.

It takes me several weeks to come to grips with the task.

Well, the Lego-buying has exacted quite a toll on our bank account. Much like “Little Boy” exacted a toll on Hiroshima. Only worse. I am forced into the dark underbelly of the Lego black market. I buy enough Legos to keep 22 energetic first through fifth graders busy with something other than going to the bathroom 38 times. I buy bins to store them in. Then I get a tractor trailer to haul the bins.

When did little pieces of plastic become so expensive to manufacture, box, and ship? While they still offer sets for less than $10, those sets are assembled in approximately 6 seconds by my 8-year-old, who then turns to me and says, “This is IT?”

We recently went to pick up a new Indiana Jones Temple of The Crystal Skull set from our local store only to find it priced around $80. While it boasts 929 pieces the model itself is neat, but not that impressive. Certainly not $80 impressive. I let the 8-year-old know that it wasn’t happening. There are lots of tears and crying. The 8-year-old wasn’t thrilled either.

So I took a look at the various Lego models out there and found the prices were just getting out of hand. In fact, I saw they released a series of houses and apartment buildings you can buy and add to Lego city. I saw the prices. Thankfully they include a mortgage application in the box.

The 8-year-old has started eyeing up the MindStorms from Lego. These robot sets are complete with sensors, servos, motors, and its own programming language, as well as a price tag so high I’m not sure I can recover from the nosebleed. They promise to turn him into a robotic engineer. If this is the case, maybe the money we spent on Legos will be worth it and he can blow off college.

Somehow I doubt it. But at least he won’t resort to chainsaws.