Getting kids to help with yardwork … what’s the worst that can happen?

Earlier this year we had a tree fall down in our back yard, and there it sat, killing my grass and being an embarrassment to our entire family. Well, by “grass” I mean the motley menagerie of crab grass, vines and vicious weeds that has taken over our back yard and by “embarrassment” I mean embarrassment.  It was cold, and I didn’t feel like freezing to death to chop it up and drag it to the yard waste Dumpsters in the alley. And although this isn’t something I look forward to — hanging out in the yard, fighting off pollen and bugs, getting sweaty and sunburned — I would have help: my two oldest boys.

Because they are small and not particularly strong, I figured I could get them to pick up the infinite amount of tiny sticks on the ground while I took care of the big limbs of the tree. All they would have to do is pick up armloads of sticks and take them to the Dumpster right behind our house. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” is something I used to say ironically in situations where it was obvious everything could go wrong. Now I’m a parent, and this is a phrase that goes through my head multiple times a day, and I treat it very seriously.

First: At 6 and 4 years old, my boys see all things long, slender things as swords, so I knew I would have to watch them closely for fencing competitions to break out.

Second: Some of the sticks are sharp and what does every mom say almost constantly: “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” The boys would have to be out of my sight for almost three seconds to go from the yard to the Dumpster. That’s 2.9 seconds longer than it would take to poke out all four of their eyes.

Third: I’ve been in situations like this, and I know exactly how this was going to go.

I’ve made the mistake of getting the boys to “help” in cleaning the house and to call the experience “frustrating” is laughably naive. You would think getting people to help you clean up one room of a house would make it go faster. This is not the case, at least with my little ones. Every toy has to be examined and played with. Which wouldn’t be bad as they would, ultimately, get the toys all picked up and I would be free to sweep, dust and organize all the things in the house that are out of place. But although they pick up the toy and examine it, they tend to just throw it back on the ground when they come to another toy; getting the toys into a toy chest or even just a bucket or box takes hours and the end of which I still have to clean up after them.

The best I could hope for was for all the sticks to be simply moved around the yard; the worst, having two newly blind children. So  I entered the yard alone, leaving the boys to hang out in the front yard with my wife, pulling weeds and preparing the yard for planting. Maybe she’ll be able to get them excited about lawn care. Or maybe I’ll go to the front yard at the end of the day and they would have pulled up all “the green things” and the front of our house will look as barren as our back yard. Either way, I’m sure they’ll have fun.

Originally published on stltoday.com