The Household Kid

It is now a well established theory that movement of body and limbs can develop sections of brain and nerve coordination. 

A baby or small child keeps on moving limbs and their body continuously. They never stay still. Never rest until sleep. Often parents complain that their baby or child is too unrestful or naughty. 

So a small message to those parents……your child is unrest and naughty because he or she is developing and learning. 

As he moves, his muscles and bones get stronger. This is easy to understand. But there is more in it. Behind every movement the brain also develops equally.  Not only the nerves, but also all types of cognitive and memory development happens. Afterall the brain has to remember the movements and functions of the body parts. 

In the same way, many sports are also beneficial to overall brain development. I have heard that some people believe that in many cases sports, especially those of intensive types, can hinder the development of the brain or make people less intelligent and so on. 

It is true in many cases we may find a professional sportsman having less intelligence quotient or an efficient brain. But for that the sport is not to blame in most cases. It is all in the food and lifestyle of the concerned sportsman. 

When someone plays some intensive sports, then their calorie consumption as well as nutritional requirement goes high up. A sportsman’s body and brain are always growing. So both of them will require a lot of calories and nutrition. So the most important secret lies in the diet of the sportsman. 

Usually food charts of a sportsman are built by the calorie requirements of the body. And better charts also take the nutrition factor also into account. 

But the brain gets almost ignored. As a result there can arise a deficiency of calories and proper nutrition in the brain. That can become a factor for reduced mental activities and overall brain functioning. 

We can discuss the details of this later on in some other article dedicated to sports nutrition or overall nutrition related subjects. I mentioned sports nutrition here to create a basic understanding that sports usually do not hinder any kind of brain development or functioning unless there arises any head injury sort of stuff. And there are more than one reasons for sports helping or promoting brain development and functioning. 

But it will be unusual to expect that any sport can develop any human brain beyond the limit applicable to any certain particular person. Those limits are usually set by many factors like genetics, environment, lifestyle, education and so on. 

Returning to household jobs, though they are usually not as intensive and rigorous as a physical sport, still can induce the effect of it to a considerable degree, at least for an average person or kid. 

So by now you must understand that isolating kids from household jobs on the excuse of studies or something else does not pay off in the end. During exams or other crucial times they have to keep away from household work and dedicate their full time to the purpose. But otherwise, in general times doing such work can be more beneficial than not doing and there are even more reasons than just brain development. Let me come into those. 

Just working does not matter, but the output matters much more. “Do your best……” is a consolation or comforting term, but the world does not move by that. The world moves by “Do the best……”. And to do the best we need to monitor our input to output ratio, both in terms of effort and time. And this very ratio is known as efficiency in the world of engineering. 

I know many students, after putting a lot of effort and time, just managed to gain very average knowledge and skill. This is poor efficiency. We need to make this ratio better. There are many things that can be done for this. Household work can become one major role player in this.  

Our times are very limited. And we all have just 24 hours to do all our things. The greatest champion of the world also had 24 hours and so does the worst player. So where is the difference? 

The differences can be in many dimensions. The most obvious dimension is level of talent. But there is more in this than just that. Differences of resources, factors of environment and many other things can play a very important part. One such important part of efficiency is time and effort. Human time and effort both are very limited and easily comparable. Within this comparable time and effort we need to create uncomparable results. 

Household work teaches the kid better time and effort management. Household works usually are more varieties and less critical. It can teach to use the kid’s  physical and mental resources in a better format so as to achieve things done with minimum or optimized involvement of resources. 

Human resources are the most costly resource and sometimes scarce also. For example, can we create another human resource similar to Einstein or Pele or Maradona or Bruce Lee or anyone of that type by consuming all the available resources of the current world? How many billion dollars do we need to make one Einstein or Shakespeare or Mozart or Da Vinci? 

So we can easily understand that if anything is most costly in this world it is human resources. The small kid is also a piece of human resource. Maybe he has not become Einstein or Mozart yet, but still he can become one, or at least something more than we can imagine right now. 

So it is every parent’s duty to make their child aware about the price of their human resource. And this price can be stated and communicated only by intelligently using that resource for the purpose of benefits of the family and not wasting the resource by not using it. After All you can really show value and gratitude on what you can use, not to those things that you never need to or cannot use. 

So use your kid’s human resource for the betterment of the family also besides his own development and also convey that the family is very much benefited by his or her contributions. That will build up the value and efficiency-psychology for his or her own human resources. The more he will value his own human resources, the more intelligently and efficiently he will try to spend them to greater purposes. 

If you think doing household works are unsmart, then you can be very wrong. Nowadays even many parents think that household jobs are not so smart and sophisticated. They avoid it as far as they can, find a day in a week or sometimes even in a month to do them most unwillingly. If parents think and do so, then what to say about the kids. 

But in the context let me give a small example. In all developed countries, including the US and Europe, people there cherish doing household jobs and do it everyday. Still they stand top in education to economics, everything. That means doing household jobs ain’t as unsmart and unrewarding as it seems to us. At least for most of the people. And if we can dress like the US and Europe, eat like the US and Europe, then why can’t we work like them?

Kids learn from parents. If parents lament doing house jobs, kids will lament even more and stay away at any excuse. If parents reward household jobs, kids will learn so. If they understand that doing these small jobs can make them more smart and effective in most other purposes, then kids will take that like a health drink that makes them grow.

In the same way as it makes kids smart, household jobs also can make them more responsible and serious in the way they will take their life and surroundings. This is a very important aspect of household work. If one is just doing something, then he or she has to do it properly in order to meet the purpose of doing. 

If one is washing the clothes, then the clothes have to look clean. If one is cleaning the room then the room has to look clean indeed. And so on. The examples are endless but I think you have got what I have got to say. 

We all have a house. We live there. Sometimes we live there and also work there. A family can also play there. Take care of each other over there. It can become a school, temple, hospital, restaurant, and whatnot.  No place can be as versatile and multipurpose to one in this whole world than his or her own home. 

So kids must learn to maintain such a versatile and important place in their life. They should feel the role and importance of their home in their life. From cleanliness to Godliness, almost everything for us  right from the home. At least in most cases, unless one is really extremely exceptional. 

Now this is, I hope, so easy to understand. What are the future days of someone who is a kid today? 

We know a lot about our lives here. Especially development of internet and other technology media, data and information keeps flooding us. And it takes us there where once it was impossible to even think. 

So we can feel the competition all around the world. Today’s kid is going to face such grinding competition and pressure if one needs to achieve a good career and money. And we can also know that kids who just study and do no household job are highly probable to become weak. And weak kids are not much likely to get the winning trophies.  

Above I was discussing physical health and mental fitness out of our activities. With that another gain is confidence. Kids can earn good confidence doing a variety of household jobs. And that can turn even more beneficial if they are duly praised and rewarded. When they will earn such bolstered confidence right at their home from their most cherished people, then they get equipped to face the harsh outer world much better and much stronger. 

This is one of the most important parts of household jobs, not only for kids but for all house members. Today’s family structure is already very weak and getting even weaker with every passing day. No one has time to spend time together. Additionally, the social media revolution makes us wander around even more than ever.

Family togetherness and unity is an important thing for holistic wellbeing for any human, ideally or speaking scientifically. Human beings are social and even more family-being. This is a well established fact beyond any argument or debate. Still nowadays the number of pseudo and voluntary robinson crusoe are in sharp increase. But this all is no good for either an individual person or any collective structures like the family, society or country or even collectively the whole of humanity. Afterall we are born in human shape for the purpose of being human and for not being a robot or a non-living matter or anything else. 

Kids who learn to do household jobs right from their young age are likely to feel and understand what a human home stands for, and what value and purpose it upholds. When everyone shares some responsibilities and do that together for the common purpose then family bonds and unity increases. With that increases the team building capacity and leadership talents. 

To many of us household jobs are monotonous and non-productive. But the fact is most of the jobs in this world are quite monotonous and often not so creative or productive. Still we usually need to do them as well. 

That’s why Thomas Alva Edison use to say – 

“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration !! “

When a musician makes himself or a piece of music and plays it for that purpose he needs to continuously play the same note, same tune, same harmony and the same everything, minutes after minutes, hours after hours, days after days and even years after years…. And the one who can take this monotony most freshly and inspirationally and even then can transform those monotonic parts into creative and productive streaks, then he is rightly called a genius……

Thus playing and practicing the same thing day after day must have been quite monotonous and lacking inspiration. Still we need to do all that everyday, most meticulously. For some higher purpose of learning and playing Music. 

Household jobs can add some variance in many people’s lives. Often students can feel very tired doing the same studies everyday. Same for many office goers. But adding some home jobs everyday can give a feeling of difference, both mentally and physically. Thus they will return to their main job with a better and fresher mood. This will increase the overall productivity of the person (also the student)

Thus we can easily see that there is no harm in doing moderate household work. Of course too much can become a problem for both studies and health. But not doing it at all can be equally or more harmful. 

So every student, every kid must be urged to do household work beside their studies and other activities.