October 22, 2024
13:46
To teach her children not to take for granted everything their parents do for them, an American mother decided to have her eldest son pay for the transport service: “I looked at the travel prices and made him sign a contract before to leave.”
Being a parent, we know, involves many sacrifices, but there is a limit to everything, especially when children seem to want to take advantage of mum and dad’s availability. This is what happened to Jordana Shellmother, journalist and podcaster, who after yet another weekend spent at drive the children around among their thousand activities he decided to seize the opportunity to give them a good lesson on the importance of earning all the privileges and services they have always enjoyed.
The chaos of the weekend
Jordana entrusted her story to the site Kidspostwhere she often writes as a columnist and contributor. On the morning of the fateful weekend, his three children got up early and moved forward immediately a mountain of pretensions nagging: “I want this”, “He did that”, “Can I do this?”
“The list of requests was endless, while my instructions and requests they weren’t even listened to” explained the woman. As if that wasn’t enough, when it was time to start getting ready to go out, the two biggest pests they started arguing with each otherthrowing their pajamas at each other and continuing to ignore any reminders from Jordana to get it over with and get dressed without making a fuss.
“Why was my mother strict with me and now she is a permissive grandmother?”: a mother’s outburst
The Uber driver strategy
Faced with what seemed like a hopeless situation, Shell therefore decided to implement a new and unusual strategy. After losing patience with all the accumulated delay, the mother opened the Uber app on his phone, to evaluate how much it would cost her leave the driver job to someone else. The intent, obviously, was not to send the children around all day with a stranger (even if the temptation was strong), but get an idea of the rates for all those laps that he would soon have to complete.
Jordana Shell. Credits: Instagram/@shoozlife
So, once the checkJordana scribbled a symbolic contract and put it under the nose of his eldest son. In the “document,” the woman asked for $28 to cover transportation costs. Instead of money, however, the boy could have turned the payment due into a list of household chores to do carry out without saying a word.
“I won’t take you to chess if you don’t sign this,” Jordana announced, also adding some helpful life advice: “Always read before you sign anything.” The boy, taken aback, he signedthus allowing the family to leave for the day’s activities.
The moment of truth came upon returning home, when Jordana reminded her son of the deal she had just made. Despite the boy’s complaints, the mother remained firm in her position and between the moans and the half-spoken complaints, in the end the son managed to complete his chores, cooking (even under the watchful eye of his father), putting things right and clothes and helping in house cleaning.
A life lesson for everyone
Although the idea of compensation for chauffeur services was born as an instinctive reaction to a moment of particular excitement, in the following days Jordana realized that, little by little, something had actually changed. The eldest son began to take greater awareness of the value of his actionsfelt useful, responsible, and proud of having learned new skills. And, for the mother, seeing this change was a moment of great satisfaction.
Jordana Shell concluded her story by explaining how this episode was an opportunity to teach her kids to Don’t take it for granted what parents do for them, underlining that rude behavior would not be acceptable with strangers, therefore it should not be acceptable with those who care for them either.
Source: www.fanpage.it
