Specific Jobs for Specific Children

There is a good reason that I give specific jobs to specific children. Each night after dinner, each son has a particular job he has to do in order to help me with the clean up. Martin is responsible for clearing dishes. Aaron is responsible for clearing the silverware and the cups. Jonathan is responsible for gathering up our napkins and taking them over to the washer. (we use cloth napkins to save money - and it's surprising how much easier than paper napkins they are for young children to use!)

All I have to say to Jonathan is do your job and he starts scrambling for the napkins. He's very energetic . . . and enthusiastic about his job. . . sometimes so much that he'll try to steal Martin's napkin before Martin is done with it. (Yep, Martin is always the last one eating)
Sometimes Jonathan's enthusiasm goes overboard and he tries to take over Aaron's job. The other night, he did his own job and then ran back to the table and started to grab silverware. . .and then ran back into the kitchen to put the silverware away. He then went back to the table for another fork . . . and this time . . . thankfully, I was able to see exactly where he was putting "away" the silverware. I had mistakenly assumed that he was putting it in the dishwasher . . . oh no . . . that would just be too predictable for Jonathan, now wouldn't it? No, Jonathan was putting the dirty silverware back in the silverware drawer. He sees it come out of there everyday, so why wouldn't it need to go back in there when we were done with it? Sounds perfectly logical, doesn't it?

Well, Jonathan now knows where to put silverware after we use it. But we are certain that we are going to keep Aaron on the silverware job for the time being.

(Jonathan had just thrown the napkins in the washer when I snapped this picture! I suppose it's a good thing that he puts our dirty napkins in the washer . . . and not back in the napkin drawer!!)