Re: An interesting read about CBS...
"The children’s definition of work is somewhat different. “Everyone usually had a job,” said Mike, an 11-year-old from Bellevue, Wash., who participated in the show. Among them were cooking, cleaning, hauling water and running the stores, where, he said: “It was hard work, but it was really good. It taught us all that life is not all play and no work.”
Taylor, from Georgia, agreed. “I learned I have to work for what I want,” she said."
Well as much as I deplore TV and even more so the "reality" genre, this sounds like these kids anyway got somehting positive out of it.
My oldest daughter has been working for me as a shepherdess for two years. After relentless coyote predation on my sheep flock, we penned them up inside electric fence at the barn and then two or three times a day, she takes a book and a folding chair and goes and lets them out into the larger pasture and follows them around for about two hours, reading and chasing away coyotes. She has been doing this, mostly without complaint and rain or shine since she was 12. We've been homeschooling her all this time, but in a couple of weeks, I lose her to high school and I will be building bigger fences and buying more hay. I may even end up getting rid of the flock altogether if the coyote problem can't be solved another way.
Both kids have been doing dishes for about two years as well (no dishwasher!) and helping with all kinds of chores from firewood to laundry.
Just so my many detractors know, this worthless, church-free, spineless and unaffiliated commie liberal has been raising children who know where meat comes from, having been around butchering since they were tots, and how work of all kinds gets done. God help them when they grow up and have to work alongside their video-reared and couch potato peers....