Chip Chick
That is, until now,
Recently, one of her twins stopped doing his chores halfway through the week and missed three days of them. The first two days went by without a hitch, but she thinks a comment made by one of his friends threw him off.
He was with a friend getting ready to play the video game Fortnite on their PlayStation. Her son asked his friend if he could have 15 minutes to get his chores done before they played. All he had to do was sweep the stairs and wipe down some surfaces.
His friend then asked what kind of chores he had to do, and when he told him, his friend said he was lucky that his parents didn’t make him do “girl chores.”
“I spoke with my son and explained to him that knowing how to clean was not specific to any gender, that it was a life skill everyone needed to know,” she recalled.
“I also told him that I understood that other families functioned differently; however, in our family, everyone did an equal share.”
Despite having that positive talk with her son, he still refused to do his chores, so she took $10 out of his allowance for each day he missed, as she promised. When payday rolled around, he only made $20 instead of $50.
Instead of accepting what happened and striving to be better, her son complained to his dad, and her ex-husband angrily called her, demanding to know why he only got $20 when his brothers got $50. He told her she was wrong and that she made their son feel bad.
“I explained to him that our other sons actually did their chores for all five days, so they were rewarded accordingly,” she added.
“[I] assured him that if he had decided to start giving the boys an allowance, then he [could] run allowance however he wanted. But this was ultimately the system I had come up with.”
Her ex then told her she was insensitive and humiliated their son.
