"Ain't that work?"

Illustration from Tom Sawyer
The Mark Twain House, Hartford

“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”

Do you remember that scene in "Tom Sawyer", where Tom convinces all the neighborhood boys to whitewash the fence?

Despite the fact that it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the plot, and there are plenty of more exciting scenes in this adventure, it's one of the most memorable.

Of course it has all the great skill of Twain as a writer and a satirist, and it perfectly illustrates Tom's clever but mischievous character, but I think we love it most, because it's a trick. We laugh at how Tom convinces his friends that whitewashing the fence is a great game, when of course we know it's work. They are being played, and we laugh at how Tom brilliantly executes the con, leaning back in the shade, admiring his work, children begging and offering gifts to have the next turn.

I have found myself running cons, "Okay! time to clean up the toys! who can do it faster? on your mark..."

Whistle while you work, a spoonful of sugar, and all that nonsense.

My two year old is always eager to help me sweep, he gets out his own little broom and dust pan, and I've randomly found my older one arranging pillows on the couch. It's true, kids love games, and when they are young, they don't know the difference between work and play. Everything is play. Especially in that stage where they want to copy everything you do. So when does it become work? and how do they learn?

Unfortunately, probably much sooner than we would like, and most likely they learn it from us; from every time we groan at having to do the dishes, every sigh at taking out the trash, every whine about folding laundry. It's no secret that we are the model, the eyes through which our children learn how to see the world.

It's good psychology, chores need to get done, children like to play, make the chores into a game! We trick them.

But...

maybe we're the ones being tricked. After all, how wonderful would it be to feel excited about putting away the toys; how lovely to play a game, how pleasant to live in the moment and enjoy your "work".

Tom may have played a trick on the other children, but the children still had fun, and the fence got painted. Everyone wins.

I'm trying an experiment, maybe it's not enough to "trick" my kids into doing their chores. Maybe I need to trick myself too. Stop the complaining, especially in those moments when you think they are not listening because that's always when they are. Maybe, if I pretend long enough, I can recapture some of that play for myself.

Just don't tell my kids it's work! Maybe it will take them a little longer to be tricked, when I'm the one who needs to learn.

"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

If you don't have your copy of Tom Sawyer handy and need a refresher, or just a little nostalgia, you can read the full scene here:  http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_tom.html