THINGS I THOUGHT I KNEW....
1) That I could help each of my children discover the particular gift or calling the Lord had built into them and enable them to develop.
2) That I could help my children identify areas of weakness in character and assist them to amend these qualities before they became entrenched in them to the perpetual injury of not only themselves but also their future wives and children.
3) That I could train my children to accept that doing household chores was a necessary part of a being a family team and that they therefore would grow up to willingly and cheerfully look for opportunities to serve rather than expecting 'someone else' to cook, wait on and clean up after them (and all their siblings).
4) That by constantly being 'responsible' for a particular small area of the household economy they would learn to take pride in their work and improve in terms of quality and efficiency.

What went wrong?
1. I don't understand the male mind and didn't realise that they would get to a point when their ears 'glazed over'.
2. I try and remind myself that this is still 'life in the trenches' - I don't know what is going on at 'HQ' and Timothy is not turning out too badly after all....
3. Squalour (sp?) doesn't bother my boys. Maybe they don't see it. Having allocated them jobs they may readily point out 'that's not my job' whilst having neglected to attend to their own - and conscience isn't shouting loud enough. The exception is that today Timothy stepped in and took over (with Philip's help - he had already begun to assist me anyway) cooking the dinner. Timothy also worked through the mountain of washing up consequent to a two-course meal with guests along.
4. Requests are made at job-changeover time for particular duties which are performed more or less indifferently (or not at all) until the day of reckoning comes along. Last month I asked all the children to rate everyone else's job out of 100 (lest they accuse me of bias again...) and those who had in previous months been critical of the way another sibling had done the job ("he doesn't clean the bathroom properly" : "I put my trousers in the wash on monday and they haven't come back out again" : "you haven't brought wood in up to the orange line") are doing no better - or, in some cases, WORSE than those they previously criticised.

Wisdom would come in handy. So would a home-help. Maintaining my determination not to become a nagging mother is taking more and more will-power these days. Meanwhile, I keep on looking 'beyond' and just hope I make it before disintegrating into a complete basket case.