In Which I Ponder Family Roles, Chores, and Self Sufficiency

I have started reading a chapter in a little chapter book to Nicco before bed. We read The Magician's Boy and we started Stink, The Incredible Shrinking Kid. I was sick one night last week, so the Daddy had to take over story-time duty. Nicco also happened to get a nosebleed while I was kneeling at the porcelain altar, so the Daddy had to take on nurse duties as well. The next day, Nicco suggested that we give Daddy reading lessons so that he can read "more better." Also, Daddy-sized fingers don't plug small noses as well as Mommy-sized fingers. So Mommy is Reader and Nurse in our house, and Daddy is Gamer and Builder. That's fine. We fit those roles best.

Nicco is growing up and his role in our family is evolving. He's getting big enough to contribute to our home in new ways, a.k.a., chores. His chores are small...things like putting his own dishes in the sink after a meal, putting his clean and folded laundry in the proper drawers, dusting, picking weeds, and taking care of the cat. She is his cat, after all.

So now that I'm making Nicco help take care of his part of the house, I realize that I don't make him take care of himself much. I brush his teeth, I dress and undress him, I wipe his bum after a "sitting one." I remember when I potty-trained Nicco in the two weeks between the end of school and the beginning of summer camp when he was two. My friend Nikki was surprised and amazed that Nicco accomplished the task so quickly, and she confessed that she wasn't especially ready to address that particular task with her son. She's a bit of a control freak/germophobe, and it was just so much easier and cleaner (and controlly) for her to keep changing diapers.

While there are many benefits to having an only child, I think that is something of a disadvantage to having only one kid. Without a new baby to baby, the older sibling is not forced to do things on his own. It's easier and cleaner and more efficient for me to dress and clean the boy myself, and otherwise do things for him that he is capable of doing for himself. I do realize (metaphorically, of course) that if I don't start making him wipe his own bum, he'll need me to do it for him forever. He needs to grow up and I need to let/make him. Ugh.