Not sure if you've heard, but there's a really cool mom out there who last week decided to go on strike and stopped picking up after her three tween girls. Jessica Stilwell has been all over the news, including an appearance on the Today show yesterday morning, to talk about what she did and why. In essence, the mother of three decided two Sundays ago that she had been doing a disservice to her girls by doing everything for them in terms of household work.
To be fair, Stilwell admits that her daughters are polite girls, who do good in school and in their extracurricular activities. And yet, the issue was how much of the household work fell upon her shoulders and how much they took that for granted.
In an effort to show them not only a lesson, but also how to develop certain life skills that will be beneficial for them in the long run, Stilwell and her husband went on strike for almost all of last week. This meant that although she continued to cook for them, Stilwell did nothing in terms of picking up after them.
Quicker than you can say quick, things started falling apart. The dirty dishes began stacking up, the dishwasher began to overflow and the family room became what Stilwell described on her blog as "a closet, laundry basket and garbage can all rolled into one."
While her girls wasted no time complaining about the mess, the smell and the overall disgusting state of their home, they did very little to make things better. Meanwhile, Stilwell wrote on her blog and drank wine while she observed and wondered how long it would be before one of her daughters would break down.
Eventually, one of them did, and after five days on strike, Stilwell and her husband called it off. The family spent the next couple of days cleaning and supposedly the girls are learning to be more appreciative.
To many moms–including myself–Stilwell is their new hero. It takes guts to do what she did. But I can totally see myself doing something similar when my kids get older if it means it'll teach them a lesson about what it's like to belong to a family. And, more than anything, to get rid of any entitlement ideas that could be brewing in their little heads…
Image via Jessica Stilwell
