Abigail has her first chore, and she does it with aplomb. In response to her dismay at my not paying enough attention to her, I decided to include her more directly in my activities. So, for the past four or five days, she has had the job of putting the dirty spoons into the dishwasher rack. I put a handful spoons down on the open door of the dishwasher, show her how to do one, and ask her to do the rest. Sometimes she only has the attention span to do one or two spoons, but generally she carefully puts them in one or two at a time, facing the right direction (we do our spoons down), and distributed into different compartments of the silverware rack. Then she claps for herself. I clap for her too. It is genuinely helpful and she does a good job. Then, unfortunately, she thinks we are all done and closes the dishwasher with nothing else on the bottom rack yet. Baby steps, baby steps. I have another chore for her that she is not so interested in, which is putting small items into the washer (socks, washcloths, and the like). I guess I better start giving her an allowance– maybe a penny per spoon?

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