I prefer biodegradable and disposable everything. I do not like ceramic, plastic, metallic, or any other synthetic eating utensils – the joy of eating dissipates as soon as I am assigned to the sink after every meal. But today, while at the sink, I learned something that I think is worth sharing.
Washing dishes is one of the most menial of the household chores and yet I have heard from so many who say: “Our children will not be able to live alone. They are graduating from high school and they don’t even know how to wash dishes!” I wondered why.I thought that maybe the youth who are considered “unskilled” dishwashers lived in households that either had hired help or a most advanced General Electric dishwasher plugged somewhere near the sink – and possibly, the latest version of dishwashing detergent.But then, I thought it could not be. Most of us are too financially strapped to even consider buying anti-bacterial dishwashing detergent. In fact, I bet that most of the household dishwashing done in Palau is manual – that is, no plug-ins, just bare hands. At my daughters urging today, I finally figured it out. A great number of us do not let our kids wash dishes and that translates to “no practice, no skills.”I am now amused that I – and some of the people I have talked about dishwashing – have essentially banned our children from the sink when they are between the ages of three and nine because they tend to make messes. Further, the number of not too costly dishes we so desperately want to keep as heirlooms are dropped and broken each time a child attempts to clean them or would end up stained on the dish rack and you and I or another grown up would be forced to rewash them again – an expensive venture either way.So now I figure that we are at fault and I see it in my children. My 13-year-old abhors washing dishes, a chore that my wife and I unconsciously decided was too “grown up” for him when he was younger. Now he is expected to wash dishes after every meal and he is no expert – all the Joy would be gone as soon as he is done and my wife would be fuming. The funny thing is, she and I learned to wash dishes early in our lives and yet we decided not to let our son do the same.I now have great hope for my daughter that she learns how to wash dishes before she turns seven. She may break a whole bunch dishes and may use up a gallon Dawn each time she steps up to the sink but that would not matter anymore. She now has opportunities, after every meal or whenever there dishes in the sink, to blow bubbles and to keep her hands clean as she learns not to break the dishes; and my wife and I would not be hounding her when she has to stand at the sink when she turns 13.You and I need to go out and convince people to go the sink and blow bubbles with their children once in a while. Who knows, maybe all of the disposables would become a thing of the recent past and not crowd our dumpsites or pollute our environment; and we would know that all of our children would be not be dished.
