I was sharing this story today with a group of parents. I thought it would be fun to post it as well.

Last year Aidan was an “oldest child” in the same classroom that Brendan was one of the “youngest children.” One of the jobs of the oldest children is to give the younger ones lessons. Maria Montessori believed children learned through observing.

One morning Brendan poured too many Rice Crispies in his bowl. As a result he didn’t finish all of his breakfast and was going to dump the remaining cereal in the trash. (He does not like milk in his cereal) On his way to the trash can the bowl spilled and the Rice Crispies were dumped all over the hard wood kitchen floor. I shrugged it off and told him to clean up his spill.

He responded he didn’t know how. I asked him what he did at school if he didn’t know how to do something. He said he first asks a friend or older child. Then he went and got Aidan.

With a tremendous amount of patience Aidan showed Brendan where the dust pan was. Instructed him to sit beside him, and showed Brendan how to angle the pan to brush all the Rice Crispies inside. Brendan watched carefully. Soon Aidan had swept all the cereal into the pan.

He looked at Brendan and asked if he had any questions. Brendan said no. Just as I was thinking what a remarkable moment, what a perfect depiction of what we want our children to learn and how we wanted them to work together- it happened.

Aidan tipped the pan, dumped out the Rice Crispies and looked at Brendan.

“Now you do it.”

Sigh. Too good to be true.

We do our best to have breakfast and dinner together at the table each day. That’s not to say that sometimes meals move to the front room occasionally, but we try to have family conversations. On Saturday mornings and Monday mornings they are called “O’Brien Family Meetings.” (Saturday’s agenda is making a food shopping list and suggesting the next week’s dinners. Monday’s agenda is setting the dinners for the week)

At more and meals Brendan has been talking about classroom jobs. He loves having a job- it is unique to full day children and makes him feel like a big kid. Aidan was the same way at 4. He was called upon to help the substitute teacher once move all the children to the next week’s job and he could do it- from memory.

Jobs are important in a community to make each person feel ownership of their part. Of course the jobs need to be age appropriate but if its fun and understood that its important to help the whole community there is a sense of pride and ownership that even the littlest friends have a big role to play.

Some jobs in our house include food preparation, cleaning up after oneself, putting away laundry, collecting recycling and setting/clearing the table.