Parents work as a part of children's life

[Quickening]

In another age, children used to learn skills and trades by just being around their parents as they worked. We don't have that anymore in our culture. Work is about businesses making money, time is money, work is serious adult business and no place for children. That really saddens me as I think if given the choice to come and go as interest leads them, children could learn lots about work, skills, trade, people, businesses.

I work from home so I can be with my children. I do website design, doulaing and will be running sessions on childbirth education in the near future. I involve my kids when they show an interest. They really love watching movies of birth and are always asking questions about it.

How does it work in your family? My children don't know much about what DP does at work because he can't bring them. Sometimes we'll go and hang around as he closes up. DD has learnt about how you close up a shop for the night and ensure its tidy and secure. She was telling me about the keys for the shop's roller doors and how there was a stick with a hook to pull the door down from high up!

[Janet]

Did anyone see "Passionate Apprentices" on SBS? Might be something for you to look up, Lisa. It was about a town in Tas where a lot of homeschooling and young apprenticing happens. It was right up your feral alley. :) (And mine :lol)

[dylan]

I loved that show! Wish I knew where exactly that community was rather than the vague idea I picked up from the show...

This is one of the reasons I am looking at being able to work from home. Learning things through thier practical application (like maths etc) is so much easier than theory. DS has come into work with me, but as my work involves mostly email and phone stuff it is not very interesting for a 2.5 year old :lol Although unpacking boxes and carrying them upstairs he found fun.
DP was a chef, and although we did visit him at work, it was a bit dangerous for a toddler in a commercial kitchen!

[Sadorian]

I do a lot of birthy and breastfeeding stuff that the kids pick up on. They do come out with some pearla's (often quite inappropriate like when T went up and asked a woman in a shopping center why she was bottle feeding instead of breastfeeding).

Daniel is a landscaper and will often involve the kids in stuff. T has done some of the garden designs for our new house which I thought was pretty cool.

[Sarasvati]

Kira was watching me edit yesterday, asking what I was doing, why I was doing it etc. She watches Jake do stuff on the computer, and she has been to work with him (on the weekends LOL). When she was younger she even attended a meeting! She also likes to watch him work on the car, and I'm willing to enable his new hobby if he will let Kira be involved in it if she wants to be.

[Janet]

My children don't notice my work because it's just omnipresent. I imagine over time what I actually do will become apparent. :) DP has just started a small business as well as working outside the home so there will be more opportunities there, I think. I like what I do a lot better though. :lol

[bella]

My children LOVE to unpack the Spiral Garden stock and watch me carefully put it away. They are not interested in uploading products, but do help with the photography sometimes. :) Lily and Heath have been my models too. They watch me pack orders, and sometimes pass me an item, but I'm a bit fussy about it all and like to concentrate so often do that at night. Mostly they're good at WANTING! :p

With my writing, it's just something I do which causes me to ignore them, so I don't think they like it. They see my name and photo in magazines and just go 'oh, yeh, Mum's work' because it's always been that way. They know when I'm writing they're best off going to Dad. :) They do love it when they're included in articles or their photos are in magazines!

I guess my volunteer work with Seed Savers and LETS is more valid for them. I'm really passionate about relocalisation and community stuff and take them along to meetings etc. Plus, both groups affect them directly - they're gardeners, and I pay for things with LETS units like their horse riding... I'm the LETS co-ordinator for our local area (Tablelands) and I am running the meetings for Seed Savers and doing their newsletters - so it's a pretty big part of our lives right now.

[SandraDodd]

My 22 year old son has a fulltime real job. They paid him to move there. He has insurance. His starting income was higher than my husband's was when my husband had his first engineering job after college.

Had my son been hanging around watching us do what we do, he wouldn't have that great job! What he was doing was playing video games, volunteering and later working (for several years) at a gaming store (selling Magic cards and miniatures and Dungeons and Dragons books and board games---table games stuff).

The world is moving faster now than it was when my 22 year old was younger, and it will be moving faster still in ten more years. Many children born now will be doing things we haven't yet heard of.

My kids see me help parents have better relationships with their kids, and they've picked up a lot of those ideas and tools and phrases and awarenesses, and Holly (16 now) especially has been seen advising her teenaged friends on ways to get along better with their parents. Part of it is probably genetic and not so much modelling, because Kirby was a peacemaker and negotiator with and among other children from the time he was five or six, and helped prevent a divorce in a couple he knew when he was fourteen years old and they were in their 20's. He's a guy people go to with their problems.

There are many things we can help our children learn directly. Don't limit the thought to just paid work.

[Quickening]

There are many things we can help our children learn directly. Don't limit the thought to just paid work.

I think you may have misunderstood my original post :) It wasn't about limiting this thought to paid work. When I made the statement about work, I was doing so to point out how society today sees adult "work" as serious business - time is money etc and as a result most places will not allow children to be around their parents during work hours.

I think it is a shame children are not given the opportunity to satisify their natural curiosity should they show an interest. Natural learning after all is about the pursuit of interests and satisfying curiosity and the thirst for knowledge. There used to be a time where parents would do tasks or work that was readily accessible by their children if they so chose to wander by and see what their parent was up to - they can't do this in this day and age where there is segregation of children from adults and children are forbidden from being involved in "adult business" because these days it is all about time and money and there is no time for children to be present.

When I was young, I got to go with my dad out on boats a lot because he was self employed and didn't have workplace restrictions imposed upon him. I also got to hang out at his workplace too when I wanted to. One of the things I took away from those experiences was how he moved to maintain a contact network and how those contacts also brought in more money to his business either directly or by referring other people to him. That effort and skill I saw him apply, I've also applied to my job even though it has nothing to do with boat repairs :D

[gemi_ny]

Did anyone see "Passionate Apprentices" on SBS?

Ahhhhhhhh....I saw the end of "The Baker's" episode one night, but the sound was turned down so I didn't really hear what it was about. The bread looked nice though (ahhh.....damn that gluten!!). Pre-GF days, I used to get their spelt bread quite often - fabulous toasted! The Summer Kitchen Bakery is about 4 mins drive from our new house!

Oh....and Miellerie honey is THE BEST!!! I don't even like honey!!!



Wish I knew where exactly that community was rather than the vague idea I picked up from the show...


Another reason to join us Huon'ers ;)

As for the OP - I've worked for both my parents in their businesses & gained life knowledge from both. It's not quite like going out into the fields or watching them handcraft something, but I was still involved in their interests & am the person I am today because of that time. Even if we don't "work", I think by having interests that extend beyond children, but including them in them, we can still pass on that knowledge to help them, either implicitly or explicitly.

[SandraDodd]

My kids can see my husband doing woodwork, and sometimes they help, and someday they'll just know a lot of that because they've been around and seen different tools in use and gone with him to buy wood.

His "real job" is being an engineer. They can't go there, because it's a secure facility.

[Blossomtime]

Another reason to join us Huon'ers ;)



They're all Tarremah (that's the local steiner school) families as well ;). The man who wrote and directed the series is a Tarremah dad too...

I've worked from home since Audrey was born and she knew her way around the office before two. She would often sit down and design socks next to me while I worked. DH works in conservation and often goes out into the field. Audrey calls him a "Busher" :lol They spend lots of time looking at photos and plant specimens when he comes back from a trip. She usually sets him a photographic assignment too like "Daddy, you must take a photo of a wombat for me!" Which he usually does :)

My dad worked from home, actually the whole office was there. It was interesting... It was the music industry and we'd usually come home from school and there'd be rock stars on the couch :lol We'd sit in on meetings and started helping out note taking or typing at about 14yo. It was fun and social and certainly never boring :lol It's why my sister has followed Dad into the industry, I'm sure.

[Duchessa]

You make some really good points, Quickening. I think that having kids in the "workplace" is an integral part of life learning. I don't view a clear distinction between work/not work. Perhaps that is because here is little that we do that isn't a part of our working toward our living. Tending the vegetable garden, mustering and checking stock, preserving food, making business calls, mechanical repairs on the farm machinery, crutching, shearing, interfacing with the broader farming community, breeding and breaking horses, feeding and training dogs, mothering, writing, bookkeeping, even cleaning the house are all part of the things we do toward providing for ourselves... we include the children to as large an extent as we can in these things.

Dh also has a home office and runs a global seed business from there - some of that can be inclusive of the girls some can't, but once again, they are included as much as possible. Skills like you mentioned - networking, relationship building are just as, if not more so, important as knowing how to clear the fuel lines on the tractor or address a letter.

I kinda like to think that all children are apprentices to their parents, and it is up to the parents to bequeath them as many skills as possible and facilitate as many interests as possible. I also think that all life is work, all work is play, all play is life etc... (except for maybe the BAS :lol).

[homebirthmum]

I really like this idea/discussion. My kids are always at ABA meetings with me and often play that they are having a 'meeting' later in the day. I hope they are learning all about breastfeeding. Isn't that fantastic.

[SandraDodd]

Yes. The children of parents who are involved in peer- and self-help activities, either as coordinators or leaders or participants, do learn quite a bit.

My children have been around people learning to breastfeed and to parent gently and to home school their whole lives, and have picked up a lot of knowledge of psychology and sociology (without the formal terminology) by seeing how people come to such things, and how they incorporate them into their lives, and what sorts of problems or factors sometimes prevent one family or another from changing.

While part of it is probably inborn (a natural intelligence for interpersonal relationships, especially in two of my kids) some of it is observation and experience. But they're all three good counsellors of their friends, when there are interpersonal problems or personal confusion. I think that's something they learned being around my husband and me and our friends, who are often involved in negotiating and mediating problems with friends and social groups.