Is it fair to ask my teenager to skip art club to help her brother read?
Parenting"You're the clever one. He listens to you," I told my thirteen-year-old when she asked to join Thursday art club. She replied, "Then why doesn't being clever get me an afternoon off?"
While I cook dinner, she usually hears her seven-year-old brother read. My wife works an evening shift, so I'm the adult at home. We originally agreed on twenty minutes, three nights a week. Recently it has stretched to forty because he gets stuck, she corrects him, they argue and I call from the kitchen that they need to finish the page.
The club costs $25 for the term and ends at five. Dinner is usually at six. I could hear him read afterward, but that would move the washing-up and my own work later. I said joining next term might be easier. She heard that as another term of being the available helper.
She isn't refusing every household job. She offered to lay the table and fold laundry on another evening. She says she doesn't want to be responsible for whether her brother gets better at reading. He has started saying she thinks he's stupid.
I value everyone pitching in, and I do need help with the evenings. Where would you put the boundary between a reasonable contribution and a job that now belongs to her because she happens to do it well?