What happened to my little helpers?

A major Jewish holiday, Passover, is starting on Saturday night. With the onset of Passover comes an amazing amount of household work. Not only does every single corner of the house have to be cleaned to rid every room of possible leavened products, but the dishes, silverware, pots and pans, and utensils all have to be changed. This means emptying out your kitchen and replacing everything with special Passover dishes, etc. Wow, what fun this is. Next comes covering your counters with tin foil or plastic so your Passover dishes don't touch a counter that has touched leavened products. Your kitchen ends up looking like a space ship gone insane with all the tin foil.

Once all that is done, and you're suitably exhausted, it's time to cook two HUGE dinners for large crowds of family and friends. Special foods. Foods that contain no leavening, and are made of odd things like matzah meal and potato starch. Everything cooked from scratch because the prepared products are disgusting. Salty, tasteless, and scary.

Now, when my teens were little, they were great helpers. They would get all excited about turning over the kitchen, especially when they got to the tape. Taping the tin foil down is evidentally a way cool thing for a kid to do. Both of my kids liked to help with the cooking. They weren't all that excited about the cleaning, but they understood that no cleaning meant no cooking and no eating...for a week. Um, yeah. I could always count on them to peel potatoes, carrots and apples. They liked to chop up spices and vegetables. They are both decent cooks, as I have always had them help me with dinners as well as special meals.

But this year? Help? They think not. Both of them have been completely resistant to helping out. When I call them down for a quick job, it's always "five more minutes" or "I"ll do it later". And then they never come down. So of course, the nagging starts, and with the nagging comes the kids yelling back at me and calling me all sorts of delightful names. I get mad, they get madder, I get madder still, and things just don't get done.

I've make everything myself so far, and the rule has always been that nobody eats ANYTHING unless they make sure that it's OK to eat now and not for the Seders. This isn't a new rule, it's the same rule we've always had. But my son... he doesn't follow rules anymore. Rules are made for other people, not for him. He's special, you see. Specially obnoxious. He went through the Passover food bags and helped himself liberally to things that were not for him. Like an entire Passover rainbow layer cake. Oh, and an entire jar of chocolate spread (It's an Israeli thing). But this was the real kicker. He ate a huge bowl of chopped liver. Not only doesn't he like chopped liver, but it wasn't even finished. I hadn't put it thru the blender yet and it was big chunks of liver, onions, and hard-boiled eggs. YUM! He pronounced it disgusting but at the whole bowl anyways, because he was 'hungry.' 

I'm ready to strangle him. I miss my little helpers. Yes, they made huge messes in my kitchen, but sharing the holiday preparations with my kids was delightfully special. I loved watching their kitchen skills progress, their interest in combining ingredients grown, and their ability to change a recipe to suit our tastes take hold. I don't like these snarling teenagers that just want to take, take, take and do little to nothing in return. I know it's a phase, but do I have to like this phase? Because right now, I do not like it at all.

Comments

[SuburbanCorrespondent]

Oh, honey, mothers of teens the world over feel your pain. Did you catch the NY Times article a number of months ago where they were talking about measuring happiness, and according to the scientists' calculations, "...parents of teens were the unhappiest of all..."? No surprise there.

But, really - I would enforce a no work, no food policy at this point, especially if you are planning to entertain. Then you will have the joy of 2 sullen teens in the kitchen with you, acting as though they have a combined IQ of 11 or so, being as unhelpful as can be. Like my teen daughter last year when we bought a new house - we dubbed her "Anna, the one-armed mover."

[Laura Benedict]

Oh, I'm laughing and crying at the same time, Margalit! The chopped liver story is priceless! (Will you take the cost of his special treats from his allowance?)

I'm a big believer in timers--maybe set a timer for fifteen minutes and, if they work as hard as they can for that time, they can go back to texting, computing, studying, etc. as soon as it dings. Then do it again the next hour.

But I also like the "work for food" suggestion. A lot!

[justAcliche]

I have a strict - if you don't help bring in the enormous amount of groceries that I am forced to shop for, prepare and clean up after - you do not get to eat any of them. Works so far. I only have one who just edged into teendom though.

[TX Poppet]

I said it before and I'll say it again. It all sounds delicious! Will work for food.

[Andrea]

I feel your pain. Seems to me Passover was to remind us of the journey to the freedom from slavery; this "holiday" enslaves you to the kitchen. I got lucky this year. My teen, cusp of 15, was more than happy to help. We cooked side by side and hopefully I really broadened his cooking skills. The promise of a new Ipod for his upcoming birthday may have helped provide incentive.

[rachky]

This hits home! I noticed this year that my 3.5 yr old was the only one who helped clean the house and peel the veggies for Passover. The 10 and 12 yr olds couldn't find enough excuses to be elsewhere! I guess i should enjoy the little guy's desire to help for as long as it lasts... We can only hope that once they become real "grown-ups" that all of those years instilling the helping bug will re-emerge in their own homes.
Happy Passover!

[msmeta]

This sounds just like Christmas dinner at my house. All that work (while everyone disappears to watch football or play on the computer or whatever). And when the meal is over in 20 minutes — they disappear again! (But I usually get more than a few "Thanks, Mom"s, so we keep it up.